Australia’s favourite appeal since 1965
The War Cry of 9 January 1965 reported that the first Red Shield Appeal would be held on 4 July of that year. The appeal was conducted by the former Eastern Territory and then went national for the first time in 1968 when the Southern Territory adopted the fundraising campaign. In today’s Army Archives article, Salvos Online looks at the history of fundraising in The Salvation Army, eventually leading to the introduction of what has become Australia’s most generously supported charitable appeal.
BY MAJOR JOHN SMITH*
In September 1880, underneath the proverbial gum tree in Adelaide’s Botanic Park, the seeds were sown for a partnership between the people of Australia and The Salvation Army.
At the conclusion of that alfresco evangelistic meeting, immigrant London milkman John Gore offered: “If there’s any man here who hasn’t had a meal today, let him come home with me.”
From that moment, an incremental dynamic relationship between the Army and the Australian public ensued.
Not all who were exposed to the Army’s evangelistic methods or message responded as the Army desired, but what did develop was a respect, trust and confidence in what the people of the Army did in continuing to offer support and responding with concern, care and compassion to their fellow Australians in need or distress.
At no time was it ever thought that the Army could be, or would be, financially independent of public support in the light of the service offered and given.
Army history records that from the very earliest days, it was evident that money was required to support the burgeoning work and ministry of the evangelical movement in East London.
Founder William Booth wrote: “God wants men and money to win the world for Jesus. Will you help Him?” At every opportunity, the Army ‘took up a collection’.
Carolling at Christmas, or weekly open-air meetings and street and shop collections, harvest festival appeals were the norm.
It was one of the never-failing indicators of that respect and growing relationship with the Army and the community that in Army collection boxes in the street, at the gate of a railway station, football ground or in the bars of hotels across the country (in exchange for a copy of the War Cry), a coin always rattled.
Seeking funds
The Self Denial Appeal, ingeniously introduced in England in 1888 and copied in Australia, became the face of the call to Salvationists to deny themselves of some little luxury annually for a week and devote the savings to the Army funds.
It was also the name of the annual Army fundraising appeal across the nations. The appeal proceeds were distributed to the Army’s missionary program, its social work and general funds.
The gathering of those funds was, to quote Australian poet Henry Lawson, “hot and dusty work”, when, for weeks, and sometimes months on end, officers would visit the homes and businesses in their area seeking funds to maintain and advance the work of the Army.
Many are the stories of those money-collecting adventures by officers and soldiers so that the Army’s evangelical, missionary and welfare ministries would be sustained. Added to those efforts were the legendary expeditions of officers known as “special collectors” whose task was to represent the Army primarily in areas where no Army corps existed.
These officers became more than fundraisers. In most instances, they exercised a pastoral or chaplain’s role in remote communities. These appeals for financial support were appreciated as necessary but became increasingly inadequate to support the existing and potential networks of social service response and endeavour.
As demand grew, so did the pressure to explore ways and means to address the problem.
The late Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lucas, who was the Army’s Public Relations Secretary in Sydney in the 1970s, records in a paper entitled ‘Financing the Salvation War’ a sequence of happenings that seems to be the key to how that ‘pressure to explore’ new direction for Army fundraising was broken.
“In 1956, Commissioner (later General) Frederick Coutts, who had succeeded Commissioner Edgar Grinsted, looked seriously at the question of how the territory’s finances could be improved,” Lieut-Col Lucas wrote.
“There were two proposals. One was put forward by Major Gordon Petersen. It included an offer by Mr Sid Herron of the Wells fundraising organisation to train selected Army officers in planned giving and fundraising without charge, and that we accept the offer with a view to introducing the systems, so taught, into the territory.
“Mr Herron was an ex-Salvationist and son of an officer. With him in the Wells organisation was Mr Ron Butt, also an ex Salvationist.
“Proposal number two was put forward by the Commissioner. It was that the territory should consider the ‘stewardship’ concept as it operated in Canada.”
Both proposals were accepted and implemented.
Canadian model
Commissioner Coutts appointed Major Charles Cross to visit Canada on a fact-finding mission to study all aspects of public relations and fundraising activity in that territory. He was partnered in that 1963 survey by Major Don Campbell from the Australia Southern Territory. As Lieut-Colonel Lucas observed: “Like Caleb and Joshua, they returned with favourable reports”.
Majors Cross and Campbell reported to their respective headquarters on Salvation Army advisory boards, effective stewardship organisation among Salvationists, the need for effective public information programs, capital appeals and the manner in which Canada had, since 1942, conducted an annual national-wide blitz and called it the Red Shield Appeal.
Major Cross’ energies were immediately applied to the introduction of stewardship promotion, while in the south, Major Campbell worked with characteristic zeal in setting up a Red Shield Appeal structure.
While operating separately, there was concord in both territories on the need to recruit and establish citizens advisory boards in cities and towns where more than one expression of the Army existed. These boards would be comprised of influential local people whose advice, though advisory in nature, would extend to fundraising.
Major Campbell (later Commissioner) noted that “during 1963-64, significant consultative conferences took place between both Australian territories involving officers of most ranks. These conferences produced understanding and enlightenment about the new pattern of fundraising under consideration.”
The professional fundraising training in Sydney markedly impacted the development of the Red Shield Appeal structure, with the planned-giving concept replacing the stewardship approach, first in the Eastern Territory and then in the Southern Territory.
There was reason to believe that with effective planned-giving programs in every corps, the separation of the Self Denial Appeal as an internal appeal to Salvationists for missionary work, the proceeds of a national Red Shield Appeal would be devoted to the Army’s community welfare, emergency relief and the network of social services.
Along with the announcement that the Red Shield Appeal would be the flagship of Army fundraising, influential community leadership was recruited to match the detailed structure developed and modified on the Canadian model.
Emphasis was given to the setting up and the distinction between the approaches to business, corporate, and key gifts, as well as the residential or doorknock aspects of the appeal.
‘Friend-raising’ appeal
Doorknocks were trialled in several Eastern Territory corps in 1964, including Dulwich Hill, North Sydney (now Chatswood), Hurstville and Parramatta Corps.
In July 1965, the Australia Eastern Territory conducted its first official Red Shield Appeal doorknock, while in the Southern Territory, several Red Shield-type pilot appeals were undertaken until it conducted its first official Red Shield Appeal in 1968.
From 1965 to 1967, efforts were promoted as The Annual Appeal, with the 1968 appeal effectively being the first nationwide campaign for the Army with the official name of the ‘Red Shield Appeal’.
From modest and incremental increases in the early years, the Red Shield Appeal continues to be one of the most generously supported charitable appeals in the country.
A former senior brigadier who had worked long years in Army social services and, in the last years of his active service, was appointed to be one of the Army’s special collectors used to say that “fundraising was friend-raising”.
Long after his legislated retirement date, he exemplified that maxim by working on making friends and enhancing that relationship and engagement of the Army with its community that John Gore so long ago commenced.
This is an edited version of Major John Smith’s article published in The Salvation Army’s Hallelujah magazine.
*Major John Smith worked as an information officer in the Southern Territory Public Relations Department from 1965-75.
