I HATE HATE charity collectors at the door

[lemonstartree]

we are bloody struggling like so many others. I KNOW there are people worse off than us and I contribute where I can. But I HATE people turning up at the doorstep guilt tripping / or trying to guilt trip me into giving money i DO NOT HAVE for causes I don't want to support

AIBU ?

[CuthbertDibble]

Talk to your local Parish Council, ours have made our village a 'no cold calling zone', it's lovely.

[RivalSibling]

I just say that I don't do any business at the door, charitable or otherwise.

However, I do have some sympathy for the charities. They fundraise this way because fundraising is incredibly difficult, especially now, and this kind of activity does offer a reasonable rate of return. However, while it works for the individual charity I think it does more harm than good for the sector because people get irritated and don't usually notice which charity is collecting.

I don't mind people being paid to do it, though. Fundraising is vital for charities and needs to be done effectively - some charities have a long traditional of people volunteering (poppies and RNLI spring to mind) as collectors and it works really well, but for others it would take a huge investment to build that up from scratch and maintain it.

[crashdoll]

They always turn up just as I'm putting steaming plates of dinner on the table. I used to be very polite and listen to the spiel but after many of them, I've got a bit sharper with "no thank you, please do not come again". We used to live on a busy main road and never got any but now, we've moved to a little close and get them several times a week.

[ScarletLady02]

They irritate me as well...they always come at the worst time.

What makes it even worse is that DH is usually the one to open the door....and he always says "I don't deal with the finances...talk to my wife" as he hates telling them to piss off

[50BalesOfHay]

Oh god, I've agreed to do the marie curie door to door. Reading this, everyone will hate me, won't they?

[Corygal]

Well, Marie Curie is quite a well known charity so you should be better off than most. And you're not a professional chugger (I hope).

I loathe it, real beggars have better manners than most callers, to be honest, which says something.

[RivalSibling]

50Bales - be polite and respectful and you'll be fine. Are you volunteering? Good for you!

[50BalesOfHay]

I just agreed to do the collection as a way to thank them for looking after my father in law in his last weeks. I don't think I could cope with the hostility, especially as it's where we live. I'm going to ring them, find out how much they get normally and send them a cheque for that amount.

[BookFairy]

50Bales that's v decent of you. My own dislike of door to door stems from the fact that my town centre is full of charity collectors chasing members of the public down the road. I gave the past year to charities as I couldn't find a job so I didn't have any money to donate!

[ArbitraryUsername]

We had chuggers at the door last night (collecting for the British heart foundation). It wouldn't annoy me too much but they're clearly trained to be pushy. I opened the door, saw it was chuggers and immediately said 'no thanks' but he was persistent. It took me a couple of minutes to get rid of him and made me feel a bit crap. It doesn't matter whether I have the money or not; I shouldn't be harassed at my own door.

[ArbitraryUsername]

Incidentally, any volunteers that come round are usually much more polite and less pushy. Old ladies with poppies don't usually try to guilt trip you or keep you talking.

[slatternlymother]

I live in quite a nice house in quite a nice area and I can almost SEE them thinking 'she's tight. she could give but she wont'

Same here.

But I hate it! I really do! They make you feel rubbish about yourself, despite the fact that I always sponsor friends in races/charity bike rides and donate to bake sales and just generally do what I can, when I can. There is always someone after your money, and that pisses me off no end.

I also couldn't believe that some of them (you know the ones with direct debit sheets ) actually have a minimum donation of £1.75 per week!! Unbelieveable! How is that making charity accessable to all? If you want to give 1p, that should be your decision and the charity should be grateful; it's all those pennies which add up.

[HeartShapedSaw]

I don't think people should be rude to the chuggers..
I used to do this job, and a lot of people do sign up to donate this way. It's a bloody hard job though and most charity door to door people will accept if you're not interested, but not if you have let them talk for ten minutes first because you gave wasted their time, so they try to get a sign up from it.
They are trained to handler objections, and most people that eventually agree object about two or there times before they sign so it is worth trying to 'argue' their point.
They also do get commission on sign ups.

[BrianButterfield]

There was one woman who came to my door and I was prepared to give her change - but she would only let me sign up for a direct debit, which is an absolute no. I would have given her a fiver as I thought it was a good cause but the charity ended up with nothing because of their (not her) greed and she ultimately wasted her time. Crazy.

[ArbitraryUsername]

I really don't think it's acceptable to keep on with the hard sell because most people will eventually give in to get rid of the bloody chuggers. Quite the opposite in fact. I also think it's ridiculous to get annoyed at people who don't donate after you've wasted their time for 10 minutes relentlessly trying to guilt them into donating. You often have to be really quite rude to get rid of chuggers because they are really insistent that you let them get on with their hard sell spiel. People who don't sign up aren't wasting the chuggers time; the chuggers are wasting the people's time aggressively trying to get themselves a commission. I have no bloody sympathy.

[atthewelles]

I donate by direct debit to three charities - one was set up by my father and I know it does great work; one is a very well known third world charity; and one was endorsed on television by a well known personality who is also a friend of my brothers.

I never give money at the door, or to people who jump around me in the street or to people who set up tables on the footpath outside supermarkets.

I don't have a problem with people politely shaking a box on the street as they are usually not pushy or invasive.

Don't start me on kids packing bags in supermarkets for vaguely worded 'charities'.

[ArbitraryUsername]

The use of chuggers always makes me think much less of a charity. Yes haranguing people into signing up to direct debits might make them money; but it isn't a good thing. I think it's deeply acceptable that chugging has now shifted from just accosting you on the high street to aggravating you in your own home.

[NinaHeart]

I work as a fundraiser for a charity - not a "chugger", but heading up a fundraising department.

First thing I want to say is that I completely understand the negative feelings brought up by being asked to donate at the door, I feel much the same. But the fundraisers shouldn't be hassling you - they are trained in appropriate behaviour and you are absolutely within your rights to complain to the agency if you feel they have been at all unreasonable.

But what I really want to say is that charities do some fantastic work and it is getting very hard in the current economic climate to raise the funds needed to carry this on. There are huge job losses and charity closures happening. And yes, door-to-door fundraising DOES bring in long-term funding for many charities that allows them to plan ahead and continue with their work.

I don't want to say to much as might be at risk of "outing" myself, but the work that we do (as an example) is helping to find a cure for some of the most common, frightening and debilitating conditions you can imagine. And that takes hard cash - and voluntary donations are our only source of income.

[Acandlelitshadow]

YANBU.

On a related note I got so fed up of the fuckwittery exhibited by one door to door salesman who would not take no for an answer and was incredibly rude to ds2 I invested in what's effectively a piss-off everybody sign from ebay.

Sadly it didn't work on the next one but I live in hope

[ArbitraryUsername]

But nina, is it necessarily a good thing if door-to-door fundraising brings in money begrudgingly and creates generalised bad feeling about charity fundraising? It strikes me as a situation in which the immediate gain might not really make up for the long-term bad feeling that these kind of strategies create. There must be better ways of engaging with the public that raise funds from good will rather than bad.

[Catmint]

Our local authority give out ' no cold callers' signs. It seems to have filtered out most of them.

Others, I refer to the sign.

Sometimes I tell them I have already chosen which charities I donate to.

Sometimes I bore them into trying to get away by my analysis of funding cuts and partnership projects in the voluntary sector.

[NinaHeart]

Charities wouldn't do it if it wasn't financially viable. So for all those who hate it, there are those who willingly donate to a specific cause.

Unless you are a huge charity (not the one I work for!) you are unlikely to have a sufficiently large marketing budget to be able to engage even a tiny percentage of the population, even less so to encourage them to become a long-term supporter. We have no marekting budget at all. That's NONE.

I know if I told you the name of my charity, you probably wouldn't have heard of us and would never think of donating to us, and yet we have given over £45m of voluntary income in our charity-lifetime to fight horrible conditions that affect 10m people in the UK.

[BrianButterfield]

But do the hard-sell approaches really get more money in the long run? I am so, so much more likely to give money to the kindly volunteer outside the supermarket with a tin, not hassling anyone (likelihood of donation - about 75%, depending on amount of change I have and if I'm in a hurry) than I am to give to a full on chugger (likelihood of donation 0% to date).