OPINION:LAST WEEKEND I came across a Twitter fight on the subject of "chugging".
“Chugging” is a portmanteau of “charity” and “mugging”, and it refers to on-street charity collectors who try to sign people up for direct-debit contributions. The coinage of “chugging” (and “churgling” in the case of door-to-door fundraising) reveals the sometimes-hostile public attitude to this kind of fundraising.
The row erupted on @chuggerwatch, a Twitter account that provides regular reports on the whereabouts of on-street fundraisers. There was a lot of anger on Chuggerwatch. Members of the public did not appreciate being high-fived or having their hands shaken by the fundraisers. They did not like being told that their hair was nice.
One recent contributor to the debate is Sen Catherine Noone of Dublin South East. I visited her website and found a statement there calling for the banning of “chuggers”. My initial response was one of disbelief. Why would anyone have a problem with charity fundraisers? Isn’t it hard enough for charities to bring money in?
I’ve worked in the charity sector (in a paid capacity) and I know how difficult fundraising is, so I have never taken offence at anything a fundraiser said or did.
Surely there are more important issues out there to be tackled, not least the social deprivation and human rights abuses that these charities are fundraising to fight? I wrote to Sen Noone with my concerns, and I took a closer look at the subject from the point of view of the public and the charities themselves.
I hung around with a couple of fundraisers in Dundrum in Dublin on Wednesday morning. While most people simply smiled and walked on, one or two positively sprinted to avoid being “chugged”. I spoke to around 20 people on the street to get their opinions (you could say that I, as a journalist, “jugged” them). Roughly half either approved of or didn’t mind the fundraisers’ approach. The other half were either uncomfortable or downright annoyed.
Given the plainly mixed feelings on display, I tried to discover why Irish charities continue to use this fundraising mechanism.
“About half of all our fundraising income comes from direct debits,” Richard Dixon of Concern told me. “It’s a hugely important source of funding when making a long-term commitment to projects in the developing world.”
According to Dixon, over 6,000 new direct-debit sign-ups were collected for Concern on the street in less than a year by paid staff.
“Direct-dialogue fundraising is a good way of spending money,” says Helen Duignan, former chair of the Irish Fundraising Forum for Direct Recruitment (IFFDR). “There’s no big upfront cost as there is with a TV campaign. I am surprised at the level of vitriol I hear against the practice. I know that chuggers are in-your-face. People have an expectation that charities should be purer than pure . . . if they stand quietly in the corner, no one will notice them.”
Duignan, who no longer works in the sector, believes that some collectors are too heavy-handed, and she blames the remuneration structures of some fundraisers, which award bonuses to collectors. “This kind of pay structure puts pressure on the fundraisers, who in turn put pressure on the public.”
Total Fundraising is an agency which provides fundraising staff to some Irish charities. The company has 100 employees here. “We do offer bonuses or ‘performance-related pay’,” says director Simon Scriver. Scriver says that his company receives about one complaint for every 500 people signed up through Total Fundraising agents, or about 60 per year.
There is a code of practice governing the sector, originally drawn up by the IFFDR and more recently adapted by the Irish Charities Tax Reform Group. A large number of Irish charities have signed up to it. What’s really needed, say advocates, is a legislative framework for the area.
The Charities Act 2009 covers the conduct of on-street collectors, making it an offence to use “unreasonably persistent approaches”. However, the Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, has ruled out any immediate implementation of the Act for budgetary reasons.
Deirdre Garvey works in the NGO sector and she is no fan of paid fundraisers. However, as a founding CEO of The Wheel, which links voluntary and community groups, she sees the bind that charities are in.
“Charities know that chugging annoys the heck out of some people but they also know that it works. It raises significant amounts of money. Irish people love to engage with charities and donate at street level. They also like to complain about it.”
I understand that some people do not want to be approached on the street, in a friendly manner or otherwise, and they have a right to be annoyed about it. However, I encounter a wide range of intrusive sales tactics every day, from broadband salespeople on my doorstep to pop-up ads on my computer screen. If “chuggers” deliver for the most vulnerable groups in our society, I for one can live with them.
