Should charities use chuggers?

Murphy_The_Cat

urban_spirit wrote:

I would hope sweeping generalisations are not made about personal circumstances of posters on MSE.

hi urban spirit

I've not had my tea yet and my brain isn't fully functioning.

What does your above post mean, please.

MTC

urban_spirit

Hi Murphy the cat.

I felt that a reference in mieke's post ("Too poor??...etc") was referring to the limited budget part of my post. I was trying to not get personal - obviously went waaayyyy out on a limb!!! My brain not fully loading tonight either;)

(p.s. love the cats in your post)

mieke

hi urban spirit

I did not refer to anyone's posting - just a general observation!

Mieke

Fifer

mieke wrote:

Advice to those who object: a friendly smile, a polite 'no, thank you' or even
'I already donate' - and God forbids ' have a nice day' as you walk on - invariably deals effectively with chuggers!

You must have unusually polite chuggers in your area. Up here, the majority don't take 'no thanks' as an answer. There wouldn't be a problem if they did.

mieke wrote:

Don't get so worked up! You must be saving money through this website and instead of moaning about chuggers, why not give half of every saving you make to charity? Then you can justifiably say that you 'already donate'.

It's rather presumptuous of you to think that most of us don't. I do, but take great care in choosing the charities I give to and wouldn't dream of choosing one on the fly in the street. But whether I donate or not is no business of a complete stranger in the street's, just because they happen to wear an 'Oxfam' t-shirt.

laughing_cow

mieke wrote:

Advice to those who object: a friendly smile, a polite 'no, thank you' or even 'I already donate' - and God forbids ' have a nice day' as you walk on - invariably deals effectively with chuggers!

This is quite often not the case in central London. I'm a small woman and I've experienced large male chuggers persistent in blocking my way even when I've said a polite 'no' - I find this verging on aggressive. One poster on this thread has cited being called a "c***" by a chugger.

mieke wrote:

Don't get so worked up! You must be saving money through this website and instead of moaning about chuggers, why not give half of every saving you make to charity? Then you can justifiably say that you 'already donate'...........

...............Try it and find out for yourself and then find it in your heart to give something to charity - be it by Direct Debit, in a collection tin or by donating your time!! Too poor??? Not so poor that you cannot afford a computer or be on-line!! Stop moaning about this subject and do something positive instead!!

I find these sweeping generalisations a little insulting. You are presuming that those who complain about chuggers do not already donate their time or money to charity.

mieke wrote:

And of course one expects to have to pay for people recruiting more donors!! Why should those who work to raise money for charity not be paid a decent amount? It is a job! Are you telling me that a car salesman should do his/her job for free also? Charity workers have bills to pay like everyone else and the salaries tend to be way below what we could earn in the commerical sector!

Of course there need to be paid staff in the charitable sector, in fact I have friends who work for charities. However, as it has been mentioned, private companies make a profit out of chugging and I personally would rather give the full amount directly to the charity

irritable

Too many charities, all of them good causes. I therefore find that I have to be selective in how I donate. Therefore I decided that I would only donate to the local children's hospital and no other charity.
Any form of charity collection is a paracite in my eyes, the more aggresive they are, the less pleasant I am. I find the worst type of collectors congregate in the foyer of my local supermarket.
If they stand still and hold the tin/bucket hopefully they simply get ignored - approach me and they will receive a mild rebuff. Try to talk to me and they receive the full verbal battering, including being compared to beggars in a third world bazarre. !!!!!!!s, I cannot stand anybody who tries to persuade me to their way of thinking. The worst beggars are those acting for a religous sect who donate the money they collect to non-UK projects. Oxfam, do not ever try to convince me that your charity is in any way worthy and the use of Chuggers simply makes it worse. Just off at a tangent, having run the gauntlet of beggars, the supermarkets have now set loose their people trying to sell gas, electricity, telephone calls and insurances. By the time I get approached by one of them I'm just about to give up on life, double !!!!!!!s!!!

Jinja_2

Hmmm quite a few opinions on here - most of them bad I have to say.

Personnally I work for a charity that uses 'Professional Street Fundraisers' - OK Chuggers if you want to go down that road - and indeed manage the activity for the organisation.

Now I am not about to say that you are all wrong, you don't know what your talking about and you should all stop moaning - you are entitled to your opinion as much as the rest - personnally I can't stand many things - and moan about them as well.

However from a charity prospective i just want to add this. Street fundraising works (whether you like it or not) it raises vital funds for many charities to do great work. Now it would be great if everyone in the UK (and abroad) sat down on a yearly basis and worked out who they were going to give there money to and how they were going to do it - truth is they don't! The UK has a relatively poor giving ratio compared to other countries (Ireland in particular) and people need to be prompted. Chugging is just another way to do this.

On a quick note of costs - yeah it costs money, and yes the companies used make money but stop and think a minute. Do you think that the mail packs that come through you door are free? No, we pay designers, we pay print costs, we pay Royal Mail (shed loads!) and we pay fulfilment houses. The adds you see on TV and in papers - you think they are free... think again - TV and Press are making a mint out of it.

In reality fundraisng costs money - you spend to accumulate and thats what chugging does. Like it or loath it charities make money out of it and its here to stay for a while...

... and one final thing - if you do get abused in the street by chuggers please take a moment to register who that person was and report it back to the charity - we take this kinda stuff very seriously and you will soon find that that person doesn't have a job anymore...

sillymoo_2

Does anyone know the legal position on this...ie if someone phones up and says they are doing a survey you can legally demand to know what they are selling.....or charity workers can't shake their tins (as it were!!)...what can these chuggers legally or not do!

Fifer

Jinja wrote:

Hmmm quite a few opinions on here - most of them bad I have to say.

That's an opinion. Not one I agree with though. You appear to be suggesting that the end justifies the means but I do hope I've misinterpreted you.

I do think that if chuggers are being persistent (as they usually are in my experience), that constitutes rudeness so they should expect the same in return. I have no obligation to contribute to any charity (although I do choose to do so on my own terms) and certainly no obligation to explain that to a stranger in the street. A polite 'No' should be enough, but sadly it rarely is.

White_Noise_2

Just wanted to chime in. I find it interesting that so few of you are charity focused. It is not always the starving child in Africa. There are charities for a multitude of causes including blindness, deafness. A particular favourite of mine is the The Drake Music Project (who don't use face-to-face). Since at some point most of you or someone you know will require the services of a charity be it mental health, age, disability, red cross at a football match or rock concert, the list is pretty bloody big so I'll stop there. Statements such as "charities are paracitic", or words to that effect are fundamentally contradictory and demonstrate only a distinct lack of varied life experience.

Okay, let's clear up a few eroneous "facts" that the majority you seem to be labouring under -

"Chuggers" are not on commission. The majority are on a fixed hourly rate of pay.

In the 8 years that this type of fundraising has been around, there has never, not once, been a substantiated case of fraud. But, if there were, you are protected by the Direct Debit Guarantee when you donate - look it up. Suggesting that fraud is possible is like suggesting that British Gas won't fraudulently use your details when you pay your gas bill using direct debit. The same is not true of cash in a tin and that is why cash (tin) collection is currently legislated under the 1916 Police, Factories Miscellaneous Provision Act. One of the problems that Licensing Officers around the country had after the Tsunami was people setting up with a bucket and collecting cash. There was no way to determine if it was legit or not. In more than a few cases it wasn't. There is currently no legislation that governs face-to-face activity, although this is being addressed in the new Charities Bill. The regulator of face-to-face fundraising is the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (https://www.PFRA.org.uk)

Why don't charities use voluteers more? Well, they do - check out https://www.do-it.org.uk for voluteering opportunites around the UK. The benefits of using of using Professional Fundraisers is that they go out in all weather and take an unbelievable amount of abuse on the street from ill informed and misguided people.

All fundraising (even when using volunteers) has a cost. When asking the question, “What proportion of my donation is used to pay the cost of the fundraiser?” the literal answer is none. 100% of the money goes directly to the charity via direct debit or standing order, with no possibility of embezzlement on the way, as no cash changes hands. It is not the case, as popularised in the media, that agencies 'take a cut' of the money raised on the high street. To claim that and be consistent you would have to describe the direct employees of a charity, or the ad agency that writes mail copy, the production company that makes the advert, or the Royal Mail that carries a charity's letters, or the TV station that charges for advertising space as 'taking a cut' of the fundraising income of the charity, or indeed, the Borough Council which charges a percentage of business rates on charitable premises. Or that the sale of a % my donated goods to a charity shop goes straight to the landlord. All of the money raised goes directly to the charity from the supporters account (via direct debit) and it is the charity who decides what proportion to reinvest in fundraising in the same way as it chooses how much money to invest in outreach work, or IT, or any other resource.

Charities pay their PFO's a set fee per donor recruited. This fee varies depending on the volume of work - which is determined at the beginning of a campaign by the charity. The attractive thing for charities is that they only pay for what they get. With other forms of fundraising there is often a large investment with no guaranteed return. Many fundraising activities actually lose money. However, charities have contractual guarantees that ensure they will get what they pay for exactly when they’re expecting to get it. Typically this ensures a return of 5.1 which, frankly, blows other forms of fundraising out of the water. Perhaps this explains why the medium has become so popular.

Direct Debit is much lower risk for them as the contracts with Agencies guarantee results. It’s often cheaper too because Agencies reap economies of scale, which in turn results in lower prices. There are several Agencies and consultants now so each charity has plenty of choice about who to work with. There are however, several notable examples of charities doing this work in-house at varying scales. With agencies, charities can run campaigns at a time that suits them financially or strategically. If you run an in-house operation you need to have enough work and money to go all through the year – and very few charities do.

Outsourcing is a perfectly common practice for charities in all sorts of areas of their work and makes particular sense with certain types of fundraising where there isn’t in house expertise, or charities do not want to have to invest in the set up costs or take on board long term fixed liabilities. Telephone fundraising, television commercials and mailing packs are just a few other examples.

If you have a bad experience of face-to-face fundraising I would recommend that you direct your complaint to either the PFRA (https://www.pfra.org.uk), the charity directly, or the agency itself (you might be surpised by how seriously they take it).

As for the necessity or charity in the world today, if Government took responsibility for all the things that it should (thus negating the need for charities) your collective PAYE and NI would go through the roof. Since currently it doesn't, there is a huge need for charitable services. Martin, I believe that you yourself are involved in a registered charity that recieves most of it's funding from Government, but, if it didn't recieve funding in this way, I would imagine that you would suddenly become a huge advocate of the face-to-face method.

The bottom line is, if you don't want to donate via this medium, fine, don't. Politely excuse yourself, congratulate the fundraiser on doing a worthwhile job and be on your way. If you are polite and smile, you will recieve the appropriate response. Scowl or curse or blank and you run the risk of getting the same response as you would if you did the same to a "regular" member of the public. But, over 500,000 people (typically 30 somethings) chose to sign up to donate to charity in this method last year which clearly demonstrates that aversion to this method is in the minority.

For more facts I recommend you stop and chat to a fundraiser. Who knows, you might actually enjoy it.