To not want to be asked for charity donations every time I pay for something in a shop?

[pennyHD]

It’s happening everywhere; even at a self serve check out we’re asked if we want to ‘round up’ for charity.

Every single charity shop I go in now does it at the till. I’m always polite and say no, not today when they ask for more money, but a man who works in one of the shops I go in takes a no very personally and starts slamming the till around and shoves my receipt in my hand whilst glaring at me. He once shouted at me for not wanting to ‘help people’ when I said no.

I give a lot to charity but I want to donate when and how I choose to, and not be put on the spot.

And as for shops like Tesco asking for charity donations, they can fuck right off and donate out of their hefty profits.

Thanks SunSparkle - I know the pressures on teams small and large. I've been involved in redundancy decisions myself for a small local charity and they're not easy.

It was certainly the case before the ‘olive cook’ scandal that buried in terms and conditions on forms for charities/companies/catalogues that they sold your data. Since then and the changes to GDPR that is exceptionally unlikely. All opt ins have to be explicit and each charity tends to just use your information for themselves. There are still ‘lists of data’ for sale but these would be from the electoral roll for example. Eg you might get something addressed to ‘the occupier’ from the Salvation Army at Christmas.

im sorry your mum and your family felt hassled. That’s exactly the sort of behaviour the changes were supposed to stop. And rightly so.

They should provide more information and oftentimes the charities give/ask/provide posters and other point of sale things like leaflets to be displayed at plus asking for info to be included on shopper emails or websites and catalogues etc. we don’t get given half of what we ask for as all of these marketing touch points are considered as ‘ring fences’ to help them sell products.

You should never ideally be asked to just give to charity. At the very least there should be a logo and a little blurb for you to make an informed decision and preferably there would be mention in store in the form of a banner or poster a bit more detail. Oftentimes we supply them but they aren’t put up. It’s hard to enforce.

I don’t think they do earn vast salaries for the size of the organisations they look after, the financial turnover, the staff numbers. Most have come from much better paid jobs in the private sector to spend time int he charity sector bringing huge experience and connections with them. Anyone working in charity could earn much more elsewhere at every single level.

there is a nationwide issue of wage suppression and those at the top earning substantially more than those at the bottom but that tends to be less in charities. So let’s say the CEO of Unilever earns £1.5 mill a year and the most junior staff member earns £20k a year that’s a huge discrepancy. But at a charity the CEO might earn £100k a year and the lowest staff member £20k a year. Crude examples I know.

peoplefundamentally have a problem with people working for charities earning anything, and if it’s anything close to market rate they get even more annoyed. But charities need and deserve skilled people to work for them and those people shouldn’t work for free. As I said before, all people working in charities do so somewhat altruistically and they know they could get 30-50% more pay easily doing the same role for a private company.

its disappointing that your friends haven’t received the support they need. I couldn’t possibly comment on why that might be.

Too right

Its the being asked to round up that's annoying. Cancer Research do that. If I've got a bargain I might do that, if the item has been reasonably (or over priced) priced then no.

I mainly donate to Sue Ryder as its convenient for me - they sometimes ask if I want to buy raffle ticket , I say no thanks and there's no awkwardness.

I've got no problem with charity staff being paid a fair rate, indeed if you pay less you often get incompetent staff.

If its genuinely true that ppl are giving less of their income to charity its probably because their wages have stagnated...

I stopped my dd with oxfam after the news of its scandal came out and won't set up another.

The demonisation of charities having admin and wage costs has a loooooooot to answer for.

One of the big charities had a young lady knocking at my door the other evening, ready to persuade me to sign up donate. I told her politely but firmly no thank you.

It's bad enough being bothered in public, but it really riled me being pestered at my own front door.

go away

It used to annoy me then it occurred to me that shops always used to have charity collection tins by the till for donations/dropping your change into, and now we’ve become near enough cashless these are no longer a thing. So I think it’s just replacing that.

That's not on, saying that.

Agree it's unnecessary, and something else to have to read and faffing about with.

Should be banned

My Dad inadvertently donated as he thought that pressing the green button was approving the charge for fuel onto his credit card.
My local Lidl does it too - its embarrassing for me cos I don't wear my glasses to go food shopping but do need them to see the keypad - it's fine if I'm just swiping my card but if they start asking me to press assorted buttons it takes a special level of squinting to see what I'm agreeing to! Yes I could take my glasses with me but often forget if I'm just nipping in for a couple of items.

Just been to my local supermarket and got accosted outside. I don't know why they allow chuggers right outside.

In the words of Zammo...

Just Say No.

@SunSparkle, the fact that you didn’t realise how much it pisses people off shows the issue. We know charities need money but they have no right to piss people off like this and rely on the awkwardness/embarrassment of saying or pressing “no” to raise funds. If charities aren’t aware of the awkwardness/embarrassment factor, they should be. If they are aware and don’t care then that’s even worse.

It’s like the chuggers - a charity sector acquaintance once rather sanctimoniously told me that it didn’t matter if people found them annoying or even harassing, it was an important income stream for charities and that was “the most important thing”.

All of my charity donations are private now, I either donate via DD to the charities of my choice, or by charity shop purchases. I refuse to be cajoled into “rounding up” and I certainly never donate to anyone who approaches me on the street or by knocking on the door.

It’s so that companies can say ‘Last year "we" donated over £10 million to food charities.’ etc

Which translates as - We donated absolutely nothing and pressured our customers to.

I find it frustrating too. I don’t mind saying no on the pin pad when paying by card, but quite honestly sometimes I don’t want to be asked at the till if I want to buy something to go to charity and have to say no, or be hassled by chuggers outside. The problem I find is that you never just get asked once, it’s multiple times. It’s a horrible experience in the town I work in. Right by the coffee shops where people go to get lunch there’s always chuggers. They’ll ask me as I walk into a shop, they’ll ask me as I walk out. Then I pop into a shop a bit further up the street and have to walk past them again to get back to my office and get asked a third time. Anyone that thinks that’s not being hassled needs to give their head a wobble. Sometimes they follow me down the street for a few steps, and if that happens to me it happens to others! It’s awful. Even wealthy people can’t say yes to everything. I understand charities need money but it’s incessant.

I find this post really cheeky actually SunSparkle, charities aren’t owed a right to money by the public!

Some facts for you as to why the public are giving less:

People have less money, and time to give.

Charities piss away far too much money on corporate spending.

People prefer to give to local causes where they can see the benefits that the charity is providing.

I worked for a charity and that's one of the reasons I don't give much anymore...

Someone did this to me about children with cancer.

I just said "I don't like children" and kept going.

(I have a child that I quite like and I work for a charity that doesn't use chuggers)

I don’t mind the round up at self serves if I’m spending. £1.80 and it rounds it up to the nearest pound but I do mind if I’m spending £1.07 and it wants to round up to the nearest pound! I work in a supermarket and no one rounds up (it’s quite a poor area) but lots of people who pay cash tell me to put the change in the charity tin, could be between 2p and a quid although some guy put £3.50 in the other day. I think if the roundup was to the nearest 10/20p a lot more people might do it because it’s just pennies and the charities would probably make more money from it 🤷‍♀️

Rounding up is completely superfluous anyway, when you're paying by card.

With cash, it was quite reasonable if somebody was spending £9.62 to ask if they maybe wanted to 'round up' for charity - so they'd hand over a tenner and not have to faff with a few coins in change; but it's absolutely nonsensical when it's just your account being reduced by a certain number on a screen.

Many of us of a certain age still do it instinctively when buying fuel: trying to get the exact round number of pounds to avoid getting coppers in change or having to find an extra couple of pence; but it's 100% academic when you're paying by card!

Yes it’s really annoying. I just click no every time. I donate in other ways.

I do support charities.

But I don't support being hassled. I'll support the causes that speak to me and usually for a short length of time, then I donate to someone else.

And as someone said, the likes of Tesco and Superdrug are going to work with big charities which waste massive amounts of money. If each store supported a small local charity far more of the funds raised would go to front line services.