Britain’s
urban centres have been invaded by ‘Face-to-Face Fundraisers’ over the
past few years. Termed ‘chuggers’ (shorthand for ‘charity muggers’) in
popular parlance, these brightly-tuniced purveyors of bubbly roadside
patter are the ambassadors of a growing economic parasitism within the
British charity industry and, like any parasite, will eventually
destroy their host if left unchecked.
This morning, as I emerged blinking from Chancery Lane station on my
way to work, I was confronted by a young lady sporting a nylon tunic
emblazoned with the words ‘Every Child’ and a fat clipboard full of
Direct Debit forms. As I approached, she began to play out some
ridiculous dumb show of desperation worthy of the sad clown in a
cut-price circus and entreating myself and the guy walking immediately
ahead of me to “Pleeeeeease stop and talk to me!” in pathetic,
‘can-I-have-a-pony-Daddy?’ tones. In response to her transparent and
two dimensional plea, I fixed on my best chugger-proof thousand yard
stare (they can’t catch your eye if you look through them!) and
trundled blithely on. My fellow pedestrian, however, felt no such need
for reserve in his response, calling out loudly “there’s a good reason
why no-one’s talking to you, love, it’s because you’re a f***ing
parasite!”
A crass and imbalanced response to a kind-hearted soul trying to make a
difference, you might say; a callous dismissal of the efforts of a
good, honest individual to make a difference to the cruel world we live
in? Not so, say I! Let us take a moment to examine the economics of
this new, self-made industry sector and see if there might actually be
some mileage in this young man’s claim.
Some years ago, whilst I was still at university supplementing my
student by loan working in a bar up to five nights a week and living in
a shared house, one of my then housemates came home announcing that she
had found ‘an amazing job’ which allowed her to work just one day a
week and bring home more money than my five bar shifts used to earn.
Intrigued, I asked for more details of this wonder job and sat back as
my housemate launched into a breathless account of how she and her
fearless new colleagues were out to save the world. “Firstly, she
gasped, in a froth of self-congratulatory altruism, “the best thing
about the job is that it’s working for charity!” So far, so good I
thought; charity is good. “Basically, you go out with a team of people
and you talk to people in the street and you ask them to sign up to
donate money for your charity.” “Which charity is this?” I asked. “Oh,
it could be a different charity every week, we work through an agency”
she replied. At this point, alarm bells began to ring.
To cut a long story short, it transpired that my housemate was being
paid around £9.50 per hour to stand in the street, harassing the
general public into surrendering their direct debit details and donate
to charity making, over a ten hour shift a daily total of £95, which
was a pretty damn good take home for a days work for a 20 year old
student. Add to that the fact that employment agencies of any sort levy
a charge on top of this daily wage to the employer, in this case the
charity, which can easily be equal to or even in excess of the actual
wages paid to the employee. Lets be generous in this case and assume
that the agency in question charges 30% on top of wage charges. That
leaves a daily cost to the charity in question of £123.50. After a
rushed mental calculation, I exclaimed to my housemate “wow, you must
have to work really hard to pay for yourself; how many are you expected
to sign up in a day?” “One” she replied, “at least while we’re new to
the job, later on you’re expected to be better at it, the really good
ones get four or five in a day!”. Four and five in a day sounds like a
pretty low rate considering the cost; “how much are these four or five
people donating?”; “about £3.50 a month on average”.
I was gobsmacked! I couldn’t help it, the calculator came out.
“I hate to piss on your parade,” I said, five minutes later “but at one
signee per day for £3.50 a month, you’d need to work for 35 days
straight, or seven full working weeks to bring in enough revenue from
initial payments to pay your wages for a single day. To put it another
way, the one person that you sign up today has to maintain this direct
debit for just shy of three years before what you did today becomes
profitable for the charity that hired you. I fail to see how this is a
good thing you are doing.”
Two days later, my housemate returns from a second shift ‘chugging’,
“we are raising awareness” she says, “increasing the public brand
visibility of the charities we work for”. Sure you are, you’re raising
my awareness of the fact that people in nylon tunics are to be avoided;
you’re raising my awareness of the depths to which unscrupulous
agencies and cash strapped students will stoop; you’re raising my
awareness of exactly how much voluntarily donated cash intended for
charity use gets siphoned off into the pockets of middlemen and smooth
talkers. I fail to see how this is a good thing!
If you really want to donate to a charity, do it via their website.
