Do you avoid chuggers?
Charity Muggers: I avoid street canvassers for do-gooding organizations. Does that make me a jerk?
By Sandy Stonesifer – Posted on Slate.com, July 1, 2009, at 7:00 AM ET
Do you have a real-life do-gooding dilemma? Please send it to ask.my.goodness@gmail.com and Patty and Sandy will try to answer it.
Dear Sandy,
I regularly see chirpy, T-shirt-wearing representatives of social-service and environmental organizations soliciting donations on the street. They often approach me with lines such as, “Do you have a moment for the environment?” or “Can’t you spare five seconds to help battered women?”—with the obvious implication that if I don’t talk to them, I am so insensitive as to be unwilling to spare a moment for (insert cause here). Even though I often share their convictions, I find this approach incredibly off-putting and, because of this, never stop to talk to them.
Am I wrong to avoid them? Does this marketing approach really make an impact? Isn’t there a better way to spread the message about worthy causes?
—Jessica, Boston
Sandy: I once answered a newspaper ad for a job as a “community outreach worker” and found myself in a horrible daylong group interview to be one of those chirpy, T-shirt-wearing, clipboard-holding streetwalkers who annoy you so much. I snuck out during a break and spent the summer baby-sitting for 3-year-old twins instead. I’m almost positive it was easier.
That experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Now I, like you, tend to sneak away by crossing streets or donning headphones when I see them approaching. And apparently we’re not the only ones. More than two-thirds of Brits admit to crossing the street to avoid what they call “chuggers”, short for “charity muggers”. A solicitor for the ACLU said that of the thousands of people who pass her every day, only 30 stop to listen and a measly five donate. Which raises the question you ask, Jessica: Does this approach really do anything besides annoy people?
My first answer is that it must. Why else would charities spend money to hire them? Most street solicitors aren’t volunteers. In fact, most aren’t even employed by the charity directly but by an agency contracted to fund raise for them. One company, Dialogue Direct, claims to have pioneered “face-to-face fundraising” in Austria. The company allegedly recruited 260,000 “long-term committed donors” for their clients, whom they call “charity partners,” in the past year.
Not all organizations that employ street solicitors are for-profit companies. A 501(c)(4) that does the same work, the Fund for the Public Interest, is based in your hometown of Boston. They say they’ve “gathered over 20 million petition signatures over the past 25 years and raised over $20 million for [their] partner organizations in the last year alone.”
My second reason for not donating through street solicitors is efficiency. According to Charity Navigator, for-profit fundraisers actually keep 25 to 95 cents of every $1 they collect. A Portland Tribune article says that Dialogue Direct is paid $180 per new donor enrolled. And this (painfully slow) YouTube video shows a “dialoguer” explaining how she is paid an hourly rate plus bonuses per person she gets to donate. On her third day of work, she made $700 by signing up nine new donors. Past canvassers for the Fund for the Public Interest say that their work with Save the Children was commission-based, and employees received 15 percent of the donation for “one-off” supporters and 20 percent for “Lifeline Sponsors.”
While I’m happy to hear that at least some canvassers make a living wage, commission-based pay seems counterproductive. Charities rely on long-term, committed donors, and a harried canvasser trying to meet a daily quota doesn’t seem like the best person to foster that relationship. If you are thinking about making a donation, make sure to ask how much of your pledge will go to the fundraising organization versus the charity. If the number seems inappropriate to you (whatever amount that is), then go home and donate directly.
As long as street fundraising enrolls new donors and makes money, charities will continue to do it. So if you don’t like it, don’t give. As long as you aren’t rude, I see no reason why you should feel bad about avoiding them.
My comments: I believe my city may have ordinances restricting sidewalk solicitation. Panhandlers can actually be fined here! I’m not sure because I’m almost never walking downtown. Dallas is not a pedestrian friendly town; it’s just not laid out that way. But occasionally charity solicitation may happen near a mall or in front of a supermarket. Usually, they actually use the cashier of the market (approved by the store chain management) to solicit a dollar or so which is just added to your grocery tab. Many ‘disease research’ foundations go this route; there’s no long explanation necessary and no cash needed either. It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no, thanks’ situation. I usually say ‘no thanks, I give to charities already, where I can prove a tax deduction’, which is true.
Where I get caught walking on the sidewalk and maybe act like a sap is when I’m out of town visiting (business or pleasure) a big city like, say, LA or San Francisco, where there may be a “chugger” every block or so. I almost always stop and talk to the solicitors, hear their pitch, and yes, usually donate $2 to $10, and/or sign a petition. That’s something I would never do at home. It has to do with a superstition I have about getting home safely. I figure if I’m going down in an airplane, god forbid, a nice last thought I might have is, “well, at least I gave to the ‘crack heads summer camp & rehab center’ or the ‘mammograms for homeless dog bitches’ or some such cause. And with that thought I relax a bit— “I was an OK guy, I did my share”, I’d like to think, although in a real emergency I’d probably be saying The Lord’s Prayer and diving toward those little scotch bottles they keep in back (Actually I don’t drink booze anymore, but I haven’t flown since I stopped.)
And after one of those landings that I was sure would explode all the tires on the plane or when I see the plane wing get hit by lightning? I figure, as I walk shaking up the exit ramp, “ha, it only cost me $100 bucks or so on the streets to ensure my (and others) safe arrival back home!” And that’s pretty cheap isn’t it?
