Chugging

If you walk down a central London street like Carnaby Street, most lunchtimes you’ll come across in-street charity teams who are very keen to get you to sign up a direct debit order with whoever they’re representing that day. It’s called “chugging” – charity mugging.
I’ve known for ages that these teams are not volunteer members or supporters of the charity. Instead they’re professional teams who the charity pays for on the basis of each member that gets signed up. But it does all seem to get a little complicated at this point.
I decided to have another look into this, having noticed that the charity t-shirts or waterproofs now tend to have a small logo of the company that actually supplies the personnel. In the street this lunchtime, Mencap was the chosen charity and t-shirts had a small logo for Dialogue Direct. Their website makes for interesting reading. In particular the FAQs. While there’s a lot of explanation about why this kind of charity collection is highly cost effective, with long-term donators being found, the money side of things is not that clear.
For example:
How much of the money given in the first year actually goes to the charity?
All the money raised from donations, 100% of it, goes directly to the charity, which in turn reinvests a small part of it in future fundraising initiatives.

So how does Dialogue Direct make money if that’s the case? Again, it’s not spelt out, but it seems that Dialogue Direct is paid directly by the charity on a per-donor basis.
The charity only pays for the donors they receive, instead of making a speculative spend in the hope that enough people will respond to the ad or mail-shot.
OK. It begins to make sense. But then there’s a link to another site funjobs4u.co.uk, which is where you can get a job being a “face to face fundraiser.”
Again, it’s worth looking at the FAQ section of their site:
Am I paid on commission?
All the donations you sign up go directly to the charity; we do not pay on a commission basis.

So how exactly are the “face to face fundraisers” paid? Is it a per hour wage, with bonuses for each donor they sign up? And what kind of sums are we talking about? It’s not obvious anywhere on the site what the answer to this is.
A job on the Guardian’s website suggests that someone based in the SW, SE and London might earn between £250-£500 per week.
A piece written by a “chugger” back in 2003 suggests that in fact they get paid on a per hour basis – then £8 – with targets that have to be met.
There is actually an organisation representing all those companies that supply “chuggers” – the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA).
Curiously Dialogue Direct’s website features a quote from one Cathy Anderson of Greenpeace:
“DialogueDirect allows Greenpeace to reach new groups of people, people that have not been attracted by conventional marketing. Because of the success of face-to-face recruitment we have over 60,000 new supporters, all giving regular, reliable financial support to Greenpeace.”
Yet a report from The Observer back in 2004 suggested that Greenpeace were getting out of the industry.
The chairman of Greenpeace, Martyn Day, said that what the industry calls ‘face to face’ campaigning was now having a negative effect on the group’s profile and fundraising efforts. Chugging – short for ‘charity mugging’ – got an increasingly bad name after initial successes led to a flood of charities using young people to ask passerbys to donate by direct debit.
But not everyone is stopping doing it. Indeed some charities are taking it a step further and putting together in-house teams rather than relying on third-party agencies. That same article claimes that 213,000 people signed a direct-debit form in the street last year. If it cost charities as much as £100 per donor, that’d make the industry worth £20m+ a year. That seems a lot, although back in 2002 it was 350,000 so it has fallen back. That may be because everyone is already donating, or it may be because we’re all a bit fed up with having to dodge youngsters in colourful bibs and avoid eye-contact at all costs. And just to confuse matters a little further, the PFRA estimate that in fact 690,000 new supporters were found using “chugging” last year.
In the end, this article from The Guardian’s Ethical Living column is probably the most balanced. Published last November, so relatively up to date, it says that charities have to pay between £50 and £100 per donor, but concurring with the extracts from various websites, the “chuggers” don’t get paid commission.
I’ve always found it little difficult to fully grasp why some marketing folk who work for charities earn quite as much as they do. Of course charities have to be good marketeers, but it pains me to think that one person’s salary might be the equivalent of three hundred people’s annual contributions to that charity.
The bottom line is that if you want to support a particular charity, just go online and sign up. Far fewer overheads and no payments to “chuggers”. There – you’ve already effectively “given” the charity another £100!


Posted

in

Tags:

Comments

5 responses to “Chugging”

  1. karen avatar
    karen

    i think you have written this piece without full knowledge of what chugging is. Basically you seem to be suggesting it is a bad things because chuggers take some of the money but the thing is they need to be paid! Try walking up and down in the sun, trying to talk to people who refuse to stop for 8 hours a day, sweating profusley through ypur amnesty international t-shirt, having people be rude to you etc etc. it is great to work for charities but one must live. They ask for full commitment so chugging can be the ONLY job, there are bills to be paid etc. Also, it is all very well saying people should just sign up online but the majority don’t. Something always comes up, or they forget so chugging brings awareness back to them, it can be forceful but it also serves as more of a reminder. Lastly, we ask for direct debit because charities do not just give money willy nilly, they start projects with local people, this requires ongoing funds as they need to know if the project takes 5 years then funds will still be incoming. Other disasters happening can lead to a decline in funds to that paticular charity so it is better they know they have ongoing support. There really would be no point in just starting projrects here and there and not finishing.
    I hope i have given you a better understanding.
    a ‘chugger’.xx

  2. Adam Bowie avatar

    Hi Chugger,
    I do understand that chugging is hard work. I’d be useless at it, being far too timid to have a broad beaming smile on my face all day long approaching strangers to get them to sign up.
    It obviously works for the charities that use this method, because they continue to use it.
    And obviously you, like me, need to make a living. The company I work for effectively sells thin air (radio advertising). I’m not going to pretend that there’s an enormous ethical dimension – we’re another business in another capitalist country.
    But I do know that the same locations are used far too frequently by chuggers which probably weakens the overall effectiveness as far as I can see. But for all I know London’s Carnaby Street is the most profitable location in the country and so charities and professional chuggers continue to use it.
    I do understand that charities have to raise money using whatever processes they like. I just don’t especially like chugging, in the same way that I don’t like those charity bike ride or parachuting events where you pay a nominal sum and then get friends, family and work colleagues to stump up another thousand pounds “for charity,” effectively giving me a free holiday or parachute jump.
    I suppose it just sticks in my throat when I see charities spending money on marketing when they could be spending valuable cash on the worthy causes they’re supporting.
    And maybe chuggers do this anyway, but I’d like to see an open approach to the public about how much it’s costing the charity to sign me up, much in the same way that if I buy a charity Christmas card at WH Smith I can see that only 25p is perhaps going to the charity. I can then either buy now knowing that they’re getting something, or perhaps pop into a charity shop direct and know that all bar 5p is going to the charity instead.

  3. jamie avatar
    jamie

    I am currently a chugger, and the charity which i have fundraised for, supply a booklet which tells the donor, how much money is going straight to the cause, how much is being spent on marketing and how much is being spent on people like me. If someone doesn’t sign up, but asks where the money goes, i always show them these details. Im pretty definate that all the charities supply this information.
    thats my bit

  4. Hill... avatar
    Hill…

    It would be brilliant if more people ‘actively’ gave to charity! Unfortunately in our current society people seem to have no problems with large corporations with no regard for human rights or economic equality dictating what we ‘need’ to buy (people regularly waste hundreds if not thousands of pounds on ‘beauty products’ or ‘fashion articles’ even electrical or mechanical devices purely designed to distract)and yet people have the bare-faced cheek to criticize charities for striving to raise cash in a cost-effective way!!!! Plainly put – not enough people give to charity of their own accord – Face to face fundraising is one of the few businesses where most of the staff would love to lose their jobs – if that meant that people where donating on their own initiative. So stop buying useless cosmetics, wasting food, ‘treating’ yourselves to luxuries that you probably don’t deserve – you aren’t intrinsically ‘worth it’! Do us all a favour and criticize people who are doing things wrong – fat-cat city bosses, private equity tycoons, arms dealers, lazy and corrupt politicians to name but a few!
    Rant over! Thank you.

  5. Tom avatar
    Tom

    My problem with chugging isn’t the fact the staff are paid – it’s the extreme force with which they make you sign up. I’ve siged up to a load and soon enough I’l be one of the homeless people they want to help!