Street Fundraisers - The Biggest Loser Job?

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They're normally chatty people. I normal stop and have a chat, explain that I already give to charity and can't afford to give more, wish them luck and all that sort of stuff. I try not to avoid or ignore people on the street, I think it's pompous to do so.

The last one that stopped me actually resulted in me so far giving £20 to their charity, as unwanted research participants gifts. So it's worthwhile for the charities in various different ways.

Reply 21

stargirl63

It is a job, deffinately. Only problem is that some of them purely work on commission, which doesn't really work out to much to be quite honest.

Reply 22

NubbliNubbleton

I don't mind the volunteer fundraisers with their collection boxes, but bloody hell are those chuggers with the clip boards annoying. Typical 'chugger' is a student who jumps in front of you shouting 'heeeey!', followed by a fake compliment and lots of 'wacky banter'. Then when yo say 'no thanks' they come out with some crap like 'uurgh but don't you care about kids/the environment?'. They are getting paid to do it (and good money I've heard) then try to guilt-trip you into giving money every month, when most probably don't do anything for charity themselves.

Reply 23

Wildebeest

I strongly disagree with such methods of fundraising being legal, although am perfectly happy to see and donate to those volunteering for charities with a bucket on the streets. Yes, you come across the occasional 'nice person', but the majority are horrendously poor ambassadors for the charities that they represent through making an exhibition of passers-by and being rude. It is inappropriate for anyone to feel demonised for not giving to charity on the spot and there is a fair reason not to give when a reasonable proportion of it in these situations will be giving a wage to more fundraisers.

Reply 24

muffingg

Colbert

But you did ffs :facepalm2:

What would you do if you had been looking for a job for 5 months and got rejections from EVERYWHERE and didn't have the experience or qualifications (degree in most cases) required to do the job and received 1 offer after those 5 months from a fundraising company?

Reply 25

bananabrain

I can think of worse.

Reply 26

username220598

muffingg

If you were that desperate you wouldn't have quit after a couple of days.

Reply 27

muffingg

Wildebeest

This is the problem with most people. Most people don't understand the concept of this. All the money that is given to a charity organisation, will go to them. No matter if you put it in a bucket, do it by direct debit, or simply donate.

Let's say the charity gets £100 M a year from UK donors. Probably around £23 M would go to fundraisers. The reason is that by spending those £23 Million, the charity will increase the donations by FAR MORE than £23 Million. So, they spend the £23M to fundraisers, which again bring in maybe £50M. And that would be for a long term so it would add up to the next years' donations.

So, overall it is actually spending money to get more money in. If they didn't spend it on fundraisers, they would spend it on TV adverts and stuff, which are far less effective than face-to-face fundraising.

So, you have a complete wrong image of that.

Reply 28

Le_Bow

Losers? Not really, just fecking annoying.

Reply 29

Wildebeest

muffingg

It isn't a remotely wrong image of would-be charity donors. People are not ignorant to why organisations continue to use such fundraisers: they are indeed profitable, highlighted by the ever-increasing numbers of them on the streets. So have been certain advertising campaigns. The issue at heart here is that some people, myself being one of them, perceive certain fundraising methods as being highly lacking in integrity, despite their profitability. Even if the hypothetical £23 million you describe is reaped back by the charity, the complication remains that some (perhaps vulnerable) people experience a lot of harassment and offensiveness from street fundraisers, which is surely damaging to the image of charities in the long term. It isn't misguided to hold objections to an investment.

Reply 30

FormerlyHistoryStudent

I wouldn't say so, it's all for a good cause after all. I was one for four working days in Sydney when I was travelling, and that was after I'd been handing tons of CVs to shops and applying to other jobs online. The charity one was the only one that bothered to reply.

There were some good aspects (I had some memorable conversations with people, and got to see some interesting outer parts of the city I probably wouldn't have got round to seeing otherwise), but these were outnumbered by the bad aspects. The first one was that I ended up losing money rather than earning any, because we were paid purely by commission and we had to pay for our own travel costs; the second was that I just felt really, really selfconscious and embarassed, and pressurised as well. They made the right noises by saying that it didn't matter what personality type you were, but I noticed that all the successful ones were really outgoing, which I'm not. I knew all the sales techniques etc. perfectly in theory, but felt too embarassed to put it into practice. Plus, my supervisor got on my nerves by telling me to get 10 people's star signs in a certain amount of time, every time he'd asked me how many people I'd spoken to and the answer wasn't enough for his liking - what he didn't seem to get was that at least when you were telling people about the charity they knew why you were speaking to them, whilst whenever I asked someone what their star sign was, all I got was a 'what do you want to know that for?!' and a strange look. So embarassing. My best time of the day was late afternoon, because I'd relaxed a bit by then and felt more able to approach people.

Reply 31

Anae

MTR_10

Street fundraising also devalues the concept of giving to charity. Turning it into an aggressive money-grabbing excercise in line with ticket touting and drug dealing.

Giving to charity is not something people should do because some obnoxious git blocked them in the street and asked for their bank details, it is something people should do in private with the intention of helping others who need it.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Sorry. You are though. I'll leave aside your 'obnoxious git' and 'money-grabbing' comments for a second. The main point here is that you appear to think that a lot of people, left to their own devices, would give to charity off their own backs, completely altruistically simply out of the goodness of their own hearts. This does not happen. It just doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people aren't good - they are, fantastically wonderfully good - but especially nowadays with people's hectic lifestyles 99% of people need someone to say "Stop a second. Think about this. Take 5 minutes to actually step up and do something instead of complaining about everything you see on the news and either thinking 'there's nothing I can do' or 'I'll do something about it later'." You know one of the main reasons I did it for a year and I loved it? Every single person, every single one, that I signed up, said a genuine 'thank you' afterwards, and I felt like I'd made a friend in that 15 minutes. Also, there's a thing called a 'quality control' phone call, which is a call to the donor about 2 weeks after signing up asking them how they found the fundraiser - i.e., making sure they DIDN'T guilt-trip or anything like that. As a fundraiser, I got to see the things people said about me, and it was incredibly heartwarming.

And with regards to the 'obnoxious git' and 'money-grabbing' comments - firstly, while I'm not saying all fundraisers are lovely, brilliant people (anywhere near - that would be just as much a blanket statement as you have made), a great deal of them care hugely about the charity they work for and are wicked people if you actually stop for a chat once in a while (even if you don't sign up) rather than continuing on with your superior attitude.

P.S. this sort of became a general response to the thread rather than a direct reply to your post. Apologies.

Reply 32

muffingg

Colbert

If you were that desperate you wouldn't have quit after a couple of days.

8 hours standing with no break at all (because we were late) and then a very poor day with hardly any signing at all and by being ignored by everyone and by being literally 99% dead physically and mentally due to having to hold my bag and carry it everywhere with me and having to carry a 2kg folder in your arms for the entire time of 8 hours. I'm sorry, but I couldn't continue to make my body suffer any further.

Reply 33

Clubber Lang

Iread somewhere that it costs the chaity around £100 or somehting per signup so they ened the customer to hang around for a couple of years before they make a profit

overall it works out worth it financially tho

Reply 34

shadow99

I've tried something like this once and it wasn't very funny.
Not a good job but ok if you want to help a charity.

Reply 35

bobbington

Charity muggers should be banned. It's not like people don't know about these charities and what they do. We don't need people trying to grab us and annoy us when we're trying to get home from work every day. If I want to give to charity, I will, through my own accord. No need to preach and force the issue. The's a reason it's called charity mugging.

Reply 36

Fusion

muffingg

ptsd?

Reply 37

Anae

Shout to Mufingg who is a seriously sound and mature bloke as he pos repped me for providing a decent counter-argument in his thread :smile:

nice one man, respect for that.

Reply 38

hulon

Anae

1. Sounds like you were just rubbish.
2. It's not for everyone - I've seen incredibly intelligent, hard-working people not be able to do it simply because it doesn't fit them.
3. In answer for 'I mean why would you wanna stand on the road for 8 hours and be ignored by EVERYONE and still having to stay positive and smile at everyone and wish them a "Have a good day!" ?' I did it for a year, and I met some of the most amazing people randomly on the street, had some incredible experiences, made a metric ****-ton of money for charity, and it was genuinely one of the most worthwhile, fun, eye-opening, skill-developing things I've ever done. If not THE most. It all depends on how you approach it.