To not want to give to charities at the checkout or on the street.

[WeCanOnlyDoOurBest]

At a shop today I was asked by the store assistant at the point of paying with my card if I wanted to donate to charity. This has happened numerous times in other shops/stores as it flags up on the card machine, and I have the option to tap yes or no. However on this occasion it was pointed out to me, she was looking right at me waiting for an answer and watching if I tapped yes or no. It didn’t say which charity it was on the card machine and I declined. She gave a slight shake of her head and I left feeling really uncomfortable.
I also hate it when I get stopped in the street, I find some of them use a very pushy ‘salesman’ technique and try to make me feel like the worst person when I refuse to handover my bank details for a regular monthly donation. The last one asked me, ‘don’t you even care?’
I do give to certain charities, and I’m happy to donate food into the donation box in Sainsbury’s, Tesco etc, I’ve also raised money for cancer research by way of being sponsored on a walk.
What concerns me about giving to charities is how much of our funding and donations go into helping that particular cause? And how much is the big chief being paid out of our donations? For example Simon Cooke, the chief executive of Marie Stopes International earns an annual salary of £430,000.
I see begging adverts on TV… help the donkeys, help the cats, the polar bears, the tigers etc etc. We’re asked to donate to war torn countries, and I see the poor little babies and children half starved in terrible conditions and the mother holding the child is looking far from underfed!
AIBU to only want to give to certain charities? I feel in my heart I would rather help the people and good causes in my own country, because frankly times are hard for a lot of families given the rising cost of living, even for those who are working really hard.
I guess it comes down to me thinking ‘Charity begins at home’, and asking myself the question ‘does the funding go into the right pot that helps the cause?’

Have you got a source for that? Which company is doing that. It would be illegal so probably best to report to HMRC - it will be easy to look into.

Personally I like donating at the terminal - it's so easy and I don't have to carry cash. If I have a monthly DD or larger one off donation I'm more picky about the charity but if it's 50p or old toys to the charity shop they can have it.

I don't stop to talk to chuggers or at the table beyond 'hi, sorry, in a rush, have a good day'.

If you believe that a charity is fundraising in an unethical way you can make a complaint to the regulator.

www.fundraisingregulator.org.uk/complaints

Wow they could charge the charities for that service. It's hard work measuring impact and outcomes for funders. Even more so when you're nothing to do with the charity!

All of this! 💯
Thanks for typing. I couldn't be arsed 👍

Then they could moan about the amount of money these terrible charities, that are trying to meet a social need that the state doesn't, are spending on these imaginary machines. That would be fun.
Bastards. Trying to make it a better world. How very dare they?!

I agree it is annoying, but just say no, thank you.

A great reply to a chugger who said “oh you don’t care about such and such then” is to say back
“oh right so I assume by that comment you are doing this for free on behalf of the charity and not being paid” or “so how much of your salary from this are you giving to this charity”

They go bright red and shut up.

I always donate to Air Ambulance,we never know when we or our family will benefit!

I can't ever recall seeing an old-fashioned collecting tin that just said 'charity' on it.

Nobody is asking the assistant to explain all about the charity to every customer - just a small printed sign giving the charity name and a very brief description of what they do is fine.

Card payments may have overtaken cash use, but printed signs are still very much a thing!

Absolutely agree with @NoctuaAthene and@Haroldwilson . The CEO of MSI is heading an organisation which works in 36 countries providing contraception and abortion care as well as STI and HIV testing, maternity care and cervical cancer testing. They help girls stay in education rather than become young mothers and campaign for access to contraception, safe maternity and sex equality. They also run sexual health and abortion clinics in the UK
They were criticised for CEO pay in 2020 and the report since withdrawn. The £434k included a bonus which has not been repeated and the usual salary is around £200k for a charity which has an annual income of over £300million. Compared to the private sector it's peanuts

Of course they're entitled to ask. What we're objecting to is them interrupting your transaction before you can pay for something - and often don't even have the basic decency to send a small sign to the shops that are collecting on their behalf to display next to the till, to tell you who they are.

If they really must use the interrupting transactions method, there really should be some visual indication that you will be asked if you'd like to donate - and to which charity - beforehand.

Great topic! So (name changed) I’m a “Career Humanitarian” who has worked for a bunch of international (a few UK based as well) non profit/ I-NGO’s/ charities spending a lot of my adult life posted to various “war torn countries” to manage different types of programming so I can answer a bit in terms of funding.

For your bigger / established names the vast majority of our salaries come from institutional grants and foundations and these are costed into projects so for example… EU humanitarian assistance will give Charity Y 8 million€ to implement a health programme in Country X - in this budget will be a mix of direct funding (going to the people in need) and also money to cover other things needed to run the programme, like salaries, office rent etc.

Depending on the charity they may use personal “giving” (street fundraising/ monthly donation fundraising) in different ways - for example the DEC (Disaster Emergency committee) is a group of UK charities who joint fundraisers for specific disasters like Syria Response, and then that money goes direct to programming in that country but split across a bunch of organisations. Some charities fundraise for a specific goal like when the war in Ukraine broke out, one UK charity immediately launched a street campaign, raised like 500k in a week and immediately sent their quick deployment team to do distribution of essential items. For this the full 500k went to only items as the staff that implemented this were already employed by the charity in other areas and were “redeployed”. Some countries pool this fundraising for different small programs running in a country focusing on a thematic area of what was advertised like a “winter appeal” alongside the bigger institutional funding.

All charities have to publish annual financial reports which show where the money is going. I think for example Oxfam publish “for every 1£, 80p goes to charitable purpose, 10p for running costs and 10p to generate future income”

For grassroots and local charities it’s much easier I suppose to see where “your” money goes to. As with the big charities I agree sometimes it can be hard to really connect where exactly your 1£ / 10£ / 100£ has gone to.

Sorry that was so long and congrats if anyone is still reading!

They need to tell you which charity they're asking you to donate to for starters. It's your choice, so if you don't want to then don't. You won't be the first that day to refuse.

I've decided who I make regular donations to, which are children and animals.i sometimes make a donation to a street collection, but I won't give my bank details to them.

I live in what is basically a village so when something awful happens it’s big local news. The only time I make a donation at the till is if they are raising money in those situations. Money for the family of a police officer killed in the line of duty, money for a family that lost their home in a fire, etc. it’s handy to be able to drop my contribution off while buying groceries.

For big charities I prefer to research, not make a snap decision.

Come on, now you're just inventing issues.

If they can get the shops to support them with collecting donations, do you really think the store would deny them the use of their own WiFi or demand they send their own cleaners in to wipe over the terminals?

People who run burger vans and even Big Issue sellers sometimes have card readers nowadays - I'm sure these household charities could afford to invest a tiny amount for one in each store if necessary. Running charities and fundraising costs money - everybody knows that - and they'd cover the costs im no time.

in reality, the stores themselves would likely pay for a terminal - just like I'm sure Tesco doesn't charge the charities it supports for a contribution to buying the big boxes for customers to put the blue tokens into. It would be immensely easy and very cheap for them to install a charity terminal and then put up a sign next to it to tell people which charity it's for this week/month/year - probably cheaper and simpler for them than emptying out the blue tokens, counting them and then processing a payment manually.

If the charities don't want to benefit from the huge amount of potential donations that people would make by card, there's nothing stopping them from putting out an old-fashioned tin for cash donations only.

Your penultimate paragraph really does go to perfectly prove one of OP's main points: this bizarre assumption that, if somebody doesn't give to YOUR charity at the time that YOU ask, it must mean that the person never gives to any charity at any time.

This is one reason why so many people feel awkward saying No, even if they don't freely want to (or can't) give on that occasion. Many charities - and people collecting for them - seem to have the strange idea that they are the only charity out there; or at least the only one that matters.

I don't recall personally saying that it was a 'terrible intrusion'. I have no issue myself with declining to give, if I don't wish to, but there are a lot of people who worry about what others think of them and would feel guilted into it - especially if it's their local shop and they know the assistant well, albeit the assistant has no idea what other charitable giving or volunteering they may do.

Moreover, by making it a compulsory part of a transaction (whichever button you press), people with poor eyesight and/or learning difficulties may well not realise that it's not actually part of the transaction to pay for what they're buying, so although it might not be a large amount to most people, they're effectively being laid open to being 'tricked' into giving.

So I take it that you both have the funds and the will to donate generously to every single charity that ever asks you? Including the ones that don't even deign to give you their name and just merrily sail under the 'charity' banner?

Yet again, the bizarre assumption that if you decline to give to any charity on any occasion, that means that you never ever give at all!

Indeed - the charity collection boxes had the charity name and number on them just as now there will be a sign in the till area with the charity name and number on.
So I don't get your point.

Maybe you've never experienced it personally, but I (and, by the sounds of it, others on this thread) have on multiple occasions used a card payment reader that has asked if I want to give extra 'for charity' with no indication as to which one - not signs nearby at all. This seems to be particularly common in petrol stations, I've found.

As you say, a small sign next to the terminal would be so simple - I wonder why many of them don't do that?

I give to local animal charities and my local hospice, as I feel my money goes to where it should and not some big charity, with CEOs and other largely salaried individuals. I give my time as well as donations, which I feel is as important as financial contribution.

@DalzielOrNoDalzielAndDontPascoe if there isn't a sign literally by the till the information will be elsewhere in the store.
Yes the assistant might say "would you like to donate to charity" all the customer has to do is say "what's the charity?"
I haven't looked closely at every till I pay at so I can't say for 100% certainty there is signs but I also have never been asked to donate to a vague and unknown charity.
The information is there if I need it.
You're acting like they are trying to scam you.

I think the ‘harassment’ comment must’ve been someone else’s because I did not say in my post that I felt harassed being asked to ‘press a button on a machine’.

@WeCanOnlyDoOurBest yes you did 😁
(You need to click on the screen shot because it cuts off where you used the word harassment)

Even in my small town, most of the people who work at the petrol stations are from abroad and don't seem to speak or understand very much English at all, lovely though they are.

Even if they did, though, why is it their job to explain to every customer - whilst the queue is building up - what the charity is and (if not a household/obvious name) what they do?

I don't know if I'd call it an actual scam, but I do believe that they've set the amount deliberately low - typically 25p - knowing that most people won't question it; or if they do, others will think they are tight or petty to do so, so many will give by default.

If they asked for, say, £3, or £5, or £10, surely plenty of people would give - if they knew the charity and believed them worthy of their support (if they could afford it, of course) - but maybe they figure they can get more by effectively mumbling "Charity" alongside a tiny amount per transaction that many will not overly bother about or delve deeper for info, whether they actively want to give or not?

@WeCanOnlyDoOurBest simply though.....all you have to do is say "no" or if you want to say a few more words "not today".
Just do that 🙂

Of course we shouldn't give to Chuggers, it is absolutely impossible to know at a glance or even at a name if the charity is worth its salt, if most of the money goes to the cause and if they are promoting politics and idealogies along with their cause.

Like most who refuse to give to Chuggers (charity muggers) I give to several charities and have a longstanding direct debate donation to a couple. That's not the business of the chuggers or their apologists.

The default, decent way to behave is to not harass strangers for money, but as that won't happen you just have to learn to simply say "No" if you have to say anything at all.

As for the shop assistant, she sounds like a silly cow desperate to have something to feel superior about. She'll be clucking and tut tutting at someone for something no matter what you do, so forget she ever existed.