You might be amazed at what a cynical lot donors have become. We think of them as tender-hearted, caring people who back up their compassion with action. And they are that. But they can also be cynical. I saw that cynicism up close a few years ago when I was assigned to interview donors who were sponsoring children through a well-known international poverty-fighting organisation. Again and again, those sponsors told me that the most wonderful thing about being sponsors was discovering that the children they sponsored were actually real people. Think about that. These donors weren’t wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. They were ordinary people with strong charitable impulses. And they assumed…