@bengoldacre and #chuggerstop
August 20th, 2009 | 
Author: In a spectacular fall from grace it would seem that Ben Goldacre, erstwhile champion of reason, has chosen to lead his flock of followers down a path of hatred towards chuggers. A badly thought out post on Twitter has led to a new hashtag and the hive mind of his followers venting their ill thought out rage.
charity muggers mean your experience of walking down the street is defined by having to say “no” all the time. this is really corrosive.
Oh boo fucking hoo, Ben, sorry that you have to say no occasionally to the odd fundraiser trying to persuade you to support a cause. It’s no more invasive than cold calling, spam or junk mail through the door but I suppose you actually get to vent your impotent anger on some poor kid on minimum wage and that means you get to feel like a bigger man than you do when you are ranting at some call center slave in India.
also, when i’m walking down the street, i’m thinking, and it’s really important time to me. someone is paid to ruin it, for a margin.
Oh yes, Ben, their purpose is to ruin your ohsoimportant thoughts and that is their sole purpose. It’s not entirely conceivably that they could just be doing a job to raise money for a worthwhile cause; obviously it’s all about you.
Now I am not for one second suggesting that all Chuggers are born equal and I am also not suggesting that prior to the introduction of regulation there weren’t a few shitehawks in the industry. The backlash towards the early Chuggers has meant that the companies in the face to face fundraising industry are now scrutinzed pretty strictly in order to ensure that they don’t sully the good name of the charity that employs them.
So let’s look at some of the usual arguements that folk use against chuggers in the time after forming an opinion but before they think about the subject:
They are paid by the charity
Yes, shitbreak, so are all the corporate and community fundraisers who encourage people to volunteer their time and money for the cause.
They are on commission so they pressurise people to sign up
Actually a lot of them have moved away from the commission model. Ethical fundraising companies like Gift do not pay commission. They do set pretty high targets for their staff and those that don’t meet the targets are not kept on the payroll all that long; this is to ensure that they aren’t paying people to sit around on their jacksi costing the fundraising company and the charity money.
They recruit people to sign up and then cancel
Again, there may be shitbags out there but if it’s costing the charity money then they aren’t going to keep the face to face company on for long. Gift make it a sackable offence to encourage them to sign up and cancel; they look for quality donors who are going to donate month in, month out for a while.
They are really pushy
Dude, that may have been the case before proper regulation but now they are not allowed to follow you for more than three steps, are not allowed to obstruct you and if you can’t say no thanks and walk off then you are some sort of twat. All they are after is a willing ear to listen to what they have to say, if you’re too busy to stop then just smile and tell them you are in a hurry.
People who want to give will give without being stopped in the street
Yeah, but there will always be borderline cases who can be persuaded, that’s what raises revenue. It’s basically a sales job and in sales you never wait for the customer to come to you.
So don’t be hard on the chuggers, they have a job to do and it’s probably a fuck load more worthwhile than yours; just smile and say no if you’re not interested. Or maybe even listen to them with an open mind, and consider if £8 a month to someone who needs it more than you need a couple of lattes really is a fucking hardship.
Posted in 
Tags:
Of course Ben’s probably just still upset about the crushing disappointment of realising that the buxom but cute girl with the dreadlocks and low cut top isn’t actually stopping him in the street because she wants shag him, but because she’s paid to separate wankers from their money.
Naa, I’m with Goldacre on this one. Chhuggers are a fucking pain in the arse.
To be honest, if anyone sounds like they’re venting their rage it’s you.
Hardly a dignified or well though-out response to his not un-justified problem with chuggers.
Exhibit Q (plenty more before and after, but this one is obviously impetuous):
“they have a job to do and it’s probably a fuck load more worthwhile than yours”
I think he’s bang on the money. They’ve always annoyed me, wasted my time and tried to make me feel guilty. Not too mention that the money raised is top-sliced in favour of the agency so you have to contribute for a number of years before the charity sees the true benefit.
I’m afraid charities take liberties with their status and chuggers are a step too far. Stop defending this annoying practice.
The problem is that the point that Goldacre has is undermined by the pomposity with which it is made. I think if he’d have said Chuggers are annoying then fair enough, but to claim it’s corrosive and definitive to the street experience and ruins important thinking time is a little over the top.
@Ian – Yeah, it was a spleen venting and I am not sure where you got the idea that this site was anything different? We get frustrated with stupidity all the time and Ben has exhibited quite a bit of stupidity with what he said; swiftly followed by his many cohorts blindly agreeing with him rather than thinking about why chuggers exist and do what they do.
Oh, and how worthwhile is your job? I’ll concede that as an NHS doctor the props have to go to Ben but as a Grundiad media whore he is on a par with Big Brother celebutard.
@Deano – Dude, the charities pay for the service. They can’t put payroll before revenue can they? How would you feel if your company decided not to pay you so that they could increase their revenue? The number you so stunningly plucked out of your ass is incorrect, most face to face contracts only cost the charity the equivalent of the first three months if you sign up for a decent amount. That’s why the ethical fund raising companies encourage people to only sign up if they are a good quality donor who is going to keep giving for over a year.
I’m not sure anyone is denying that Chuggers (a perjorative term in itself, being short for Charity Muggers) can be an irritating addition to your day. I once got stopped 5 times by 5 different Chuggers on one street (anyone familiar with Bristol? It was Park St, that big hill leading from the Hippodrome towards Clifton). Yes it was irritating but it didn’t automatically give me the right to be a twat to them just for doing their jobs.
And it certainly doesn’t give arrogant assholes the right to say that they are corrosive and are deliberately out to spoil their personal day – that’s an astonighing level of self-involved, pompous and above all laughable egocentricism.
If you need time and space to think, there are better places to do so undisturbed than a busy street full of other people. If you want to walk down a street deep in thought, then go ahead – it’s certainly your right to do so; but to be angry at having to interact with other people who want your attention is a bit naive and not exactly overflowing with common sense.
It doesn’t matter how irritating you find Chuggers; they are people doing a job for a worthy cause and if they can’t have your support they should damn well have the respect you would show any other professional.
Now go away, grow up and then maybe you can play with the big kids again.
@bengoldacre I agree with you, quite a few of these charities are trying to fundraise to research new vaccines and as we all know all vaccines cause autism, FACT!!!SHIFTELEVEN!!!
Oh no, I don’t; because I am not a twat.
@Jimboooo! You say chuggers are a fucking pain in the arse, please do elaborate on this, how are they? Is working to increase a charities revenue such a bad thing.
@Ian you have picked out a small point of rant, when actually quite a lot of the post is thought out and researched and providing rational arguments as opposed to the #chuggerstop nonsense
@Deano Do you have any reason to think these people and their employers earn huge commission from sign ups and do indeed take years to cover costs for the sign up or is this just some hearsay you and your smug mates use as an excuse for being selfish
Now for where I am coming from. I have never worked as a chugger, and in fact until a couple of years back viewed them in a fairly dim light. This was when there were companies top slicing, being wankers and ripping off the charities. This does not happen any more. These companies are regulated in a far better manner by the Charities Commission and further there are enough companies offering this service to mean that charities can avoid the wankers. So now I see them as a viable revenue stream for charities.
How was my opinion changed, I hear you asking. Well, I spoke to people who actually work for charities who are friends of mine, out of curiosity, how profitable chuggers were for them. I bet you’ll never guess the answer: compared to money spent chuggers are for some charities among the very top revenue producers, which is why they use them. Other charities don’t find them too profitable: they therefore don’t use them.
The charity sector is so cut-throat nowadays that charities can’t afford to throw money away, so they won’t. If they wanted, charities could directly employ people to do sign-ups, train them and send them out. They don’t, because paying these companies is cheaper.
Yes it can sometimes be annoying, I agree with that, but we can’t just ban everything that anyone finds annoying, can we?
I do not work for a charity (I actually work in financial services) but I do have friends who do, and I have done a bit of volunteering in my time, so I know a little bit about this, I do not claim to be an expert.
There generally seem to be two broad arguments on this topic:-
1.They are annoying
Not as much as previously, due to regulation. We also find different things annoying at different times. We can’t ban everything and if this is so much of an issue, you really shouldn’t be going in to town centres in case anything else tiny annoys you.
2. They rip off charities
They don’t, otherwise the charities would not keep using them. Several fundraising charities only target quality donors and further will not charge charities for any sign ups below a certain amount (a chugger I know told me this).
It would be brilliant if charities didn’t have to spend money on fundraising, but that isn’t going to happen. People are too selfish and lazy. Ask yoursleves (I don’t care what the answer is, I just want you to think about it) how much you have done for charities this year. Do you think you could have done/donated more? If so, this is why charities are after a bit more from you.
Yeah it’s a bit annoying, but so is life.
“It’s no more invasive than cold calling, spam or junk mail”
Cold calling can be avoided by signing up to the Telephone Preference Service.
Junk mail can be avoided by signing up to the Mail Preference Service.
As for spam, all e-mail providers filter it out and in my experience do a great job.
But there’s no way to opt out of being “Charity Mugged”. For me it’s being accosted by a stranger that irks me (three times this last week). If it wasn’t for chuggers I’d never be accosted by anyone. Chugging is no doubt effective or it wouldn’t be happening in abundance, but just because it’s effective does that make it acceptable?
Well shit, Stuart, that there is probably why it’s so effective. It punctures your little self obsessed bubble and means you have to acknowledge a world outside of your own much more important shit. That’s fucking outrageous that is, to think that a charity of all people would have the gall to think that their cause might be a little more pressing than the navel gazing that you’re doing while you walk down the high street. I mean, after all, you’re clearly so fucking important that you haven’t got the time to break your stride and say “No thanks, I already give”.
I’ve noticed a lot of the comments are along the lines of “why should some unwashed layabout guilt me into giving money”. If you’ve got a clear conscience then nobody can guilt you into anything. If you’re a selfish wanker who considered doing the race for life back in 2003 but never got around to it then it’s probably pretty easy.
Bit touchy, aren’t we?
As I’m a polite sort of chap I always stop and explain that I’m not going to be signing up. But in each case this last week that hasn’t been enough to convince them to leave me alone.
It’s the gauntlet that fucks me off.
6 chuggers in a row spaced 30 foot apart working for the same charity. I politely decline the first time, but by the 6th “Alright mate?!”, I want to shove them into the traffic.
Stuart, a smile and a ‘no thanks’ is perfectly sufficient, and you don’t even have to break stride.
Stuart, you do also get street vendors you can’t opt out of them either, can you?
As I said annoyances are going to happen in life, you can’t ban or opt out of everything. These charity fund raisers can be keen/persistent, maybe that’s because they take a bit of pride in their job and really do want to make a lot of money for charities.
If you think the only reason they do it is to screw people over and benifit their own back pocket, I think that says more about you and your value structure than them and theirs.
My source was a Guardian article and a chugger I spoke to. Even if it’s only a few months the point stands. Not all the money goes to the charity.
And it’s annoying. Who cares if anyone thinks Goldacre is being “pompous”? He’s right.
Stick that up your ass.
Oh and you should be thanking him for the traffic.
Jimboooo!: that’s a good one – reminds me of the same beggar who waits outside my local grocers and thinks he has some sort of connection with me. And you have to deal with it every single time.
@Deano I suppose, the guardian never makes errors does it? All the money does go to the charity, the charity then pays out some money to the fundraising company for doing its job (pedantic I know, but I feel it is an important money).
Yes it does cost them money to charity fundraise with face to face fund raisers, as it does for any other event. Things like Race for life, comic relief et cetera cost money to run. There are even costs from small activities such as postage. They also have to pay (for bigger charities) accountants and investment consultants (for very big ones) to make sure they get a large enough return on their money.
No fund raising method is 100% efficient, so don’t slag off face to face fund raising because it isn’t 100% efficient itself.
“Even if it’s only a few months the point stands. Not all the money goes to the charity.”
Hahahaha
Twat.
Even volunteer fund raisers (the smiley people with tins and buckets who are easier for you to ignore) cost money. It costs money to put some branded clothing on their back it, it costs money in postage to send them the materials (tins, wraps, stickers) which themselves cost money. It also costs money to employ someone to keep a pool of volunteers motivated and enthused enough to give up their time on a cold saturday morning to be ignored by twats who don’t want to spare a few quid.
Shit costs money; that’s a mother fucking FACT. Not everyone gives their time freely, do you?*
*Rhetorical question, I don’t give a shit if you do or you don’t; you’re the only person you have to justify it to.
I don’t like Big Issue sellers, and the bloke from the AA trying to sell me a membership I’ve already got, and the cocks that Sainsbury’s allow to infest their car park and shout “Car Wash” at me, and people who knock on the door in the middle of some piece of enlightening TV (or at list some piece of TV containing attractive female newsreaders) to try to persuade me to change my gas and electricity supplier, and beggars, and chavs and the prick down the road who thinks that driving a poxy Rover 45 will not make him look like a seventy year old if he squeals the tyres and spins the wheels at every opportunity. Just STFU and leave me alone.
Or something. Get real, Ben. It’s not like you’ve been captured by Barbary corsairs.
Commonly Sensible, your name-calling badly undermines any points you’re to make. Don’t resort to ad hominem attacks, it makes you look like a child.
Sounding childish doesn’t invalidate the arguments commonly sensible sets out. If you think people who use naughty language and name calling can’t have a point, then good for you. Don’t make it true now, does it?
(Twat.)
When did regulation come in? Was it more recently than november 2008, when this report was made http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7747150.stm ?
If you want to give to charity it is far better, in terms of how much good is done, to give to them directly (send a cheque, donate on their website, whatever) than to give via a chugger.
Say a charity is 70% efficient (Oxfam and Cancer Research UK are around this). If you give them £10 direct then £7 goes to help whoever they help.
If you give them £50 via a chugger the first £25 can go to them and their company, and the people in need receive $3.50.
The first option is cheaper for the giver, and helps the needy more, but the second raises the charities turnover (and hence profile) more (as the chugger’s fee goes via the charity).
Which is part of why I think “if it didn’t work charities wouldn’t use them” is a bogus argument.
@Axiom The “if it didn’t work charities wouldn’t use them” is not a bogus argument. I work for a charity which, like all the rest, is up shit-creek with the recession. We make the decision on all of our expenditure on the basis of cost-effectiveness taking into account drop-out rate, outlay costs etc. It has got to the stage for us that it costs more to put “chuggers” on the streets than we get back in sign up-rates minus immediate cancellations – so we don’t do it any more.
It would be great if we lived in a world where we could rely on people giving to charity without being asked – the fact is we don’t. If charities didn’t ask for money most of them would go under (especially small, specialised ones without a recognisable name) and the rest would have a decline in income. Don’t blame the charities, blame the nasty, selfish, money-grabbing wankers we’ve all become. Oh and remember that Governments (Labour or Tory) want to give over more and more services to the Third Sector to provide.
Although the companies that provide the chuggers get a cut of the first donation, the whole reason why charities try and get people signed up to direct debits is so that people will give regularly for a number of years – and all subsequent donations go directly to the charity.
Everyone needs to get real. Charities don’t run on jumble sales any more. They would love if you all gave directly to them without having to hire a fundraising department to find newer and better ways to get you to part with your cash, but the fact is you don’t.
“Don’t blame the charities, blame the nasty, selfish, money-grabbing wankers we’ve all become.”
Is charity donation declining? Are there any numbers on this? I’m genuinely interested to see what proportion of income per head is donated to charity when compared to, say, 10 years ago, and 10 years before that.
Stuart, the question is not “Is charity donation declining?”, but rather should be “Are unsolicited charity donations declining?”.
I think you’ll find the answer to that is yes (it certainly is for the charity I have worked for for the last 7 years) and the answer to the first will simply only reiterate the point that fundraising is about asking people for money, whether that is online, in press, via TV, in mailing packs, via events, or via face-to-face.
Charities would love not to have to ask – just think how much we’d all save in costs across the board, and we could just have cheques and cash sent straight to the bank to process, saving us all those costs too. Then we would be more “efficient”, as someone interesting called it earlier, too. Sadly, that’s not real life.
Just out of interest, if a charity has £10m in the bank, are they morally obliged to spend a proportion of that money to generate more funds (I could of just typed “fundraise”, but that would have blinkered some people I fear)? Of course it depends what their yearly expenditure is, but if a charity I supported had funds sat effectively earning 0% interest, I’d certainly want to know why they were not looking to use that money more effectively, be it investing it as sensibly as possibly or sticking it in a high interest account (note: not a foreign based ISA!). Surely fundraising is not far wide of that mark? Charities have an obligation to fundraise in my eyes, an obligation to our donors, and more importantly, our beneficiaries.
Oh, and Axion, that report was widely criticised for being inaccurate, and not even close to impartial. The charity that produced the controversial report needed to generate traffic to it’s website to sustain funding. It didn’t, and it has now been merged with another charity as it was losing money. So, those who criticised the fundraising techniques of other charities continually went under because they couldn’t fundraise effectively. Oh the irony.
Remind me, which charity let down it’s donors Mr Rothwell?
As there are people commenting here who are far more knowledgeable about these things than me, I shall say simply this:
Its or It’s?
“Its” is the possessive pronoun; it modifies a noun.
“It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has”.
Incorrect: The mother cat carried it’s kitten in it’s mouth.(Possessive pronoun, no apostrophe)
Correct: The mother cat carried its kitten in its mouth.
Correct: I think it’s going to rain today.
(Contraction of it is)
Correct: It’s been a very long time. (Contraction of it has)
Some people get worked up about chuggers; I get worked up about grammar.
That is all
It’s no use trying to catch its tail, y’know, and the next person I encounter who types “loose” when they mean “lose” will feel the force of my headset spanner across the bridge of their nose.
Interesting that you assume that most people stopped by chuggers would only spend their money on expensive coffees. Perhaps one of the reason that chuggers are turned down is because many people can’t afford to give £8 a month having lost their jobs?
I can assure you that I have seen chuggers follow people for more than three stops recently, as well as obstruct people.
Why anyone would give money to someone who is rude to them I don’t know. I usually give to charity by visiting charity shops (and I wonder how many of the chuggers who try to bar people’s way shop there).
Finally, your comment that “you get to feel like a bigger man than you do when you are ranting at some call center slave in India” seems personal and unfounded.
FAO: Commonsensical.
Thank you for your (pedantic and condescending) feedback. A simple typing error doesn’t invalidate the comments though, and I’d rather people focus on the points raised, as opposed to getting side tracked on a grammatical issue.
Mind you, whilst I’m hear, did you really mean to type “Don’t make it true now”? How very lax of you my good man.
Back to the topic…
LEAV BEN ALON!!!
Sounds like at least some people are having the experience that just saying ‘no, thanks’ is not enough. If so-called chuggers really are obstructing people, following them down the street, etc then it’s no surprise if people respond with hostility. Perhaps this is a function of location?
To Interesting:
Reading what you say about the decline in unsolicited giving makes me wonder which way round the causation runs – especially if, as Blackadder suggests, it is the smaller, lower-profile charities that are hurting most. Perhaps people aren’t giving much unsolicited because their charity share-of-pocket (and top-of-mind awareness) is always taken by the most aggressive marketers? In that case (and it’s no more than a hypothesis), agressive marketing would obviously be benefitting the individual charity but likely harming the charity universe as a whole.
“agressive marketing would obviously be benefitting the individual charity but likely harming the charity universe as a whole”
Yeah, it’s the marketing that’s causing the decline in giving rather than the decline in giving causing the marketing.
No really, that’s just exactly what it is.
@ Interesting: I never said it invalidated your argument. In fact, I went out of the way to say that I wasn’t getting involved in the discussion, not knowing enough on the subject. So getting huffy, snippy and otherwise uppity it all very well, except that you missed the entire point of the 1st paragraph.
And if you can’t get your grammar right and are over the age of 16, then patronising and condescending I shall be. Get it right in future; I’m sure there’s an education rattling around in there somewhere. (Incidentally, “While I’m hear”…I’m not even going to start. If you can’t spot that one, I’m not even going to bother).
And I am not possessed of a penis.
Well, sort of. But it’s got batteries and I only wear it for special occasions, like shafting grammar-specials.
Bless you.
FAO: Commonsensical.
In my best Winner voice, ‘Calm down dear it was only an online message’.
I was actually mimicking your post of the 22nd in part of my message, and there was honestly no real offence taken. Your comments about an education are correct, but, if the truth be told, I was always had a science/maths based mind, hence the occasional error in my typing when in full flow, even years on. Similar to your error when you typed “it all very well”. These things happen, and I just thought you pointing it out merey deflected from a decent discussion about the Chugger topic at hand. Anyhow, thanks for your concern, I will try to proof read in future. Kisses and hugs, now let’s be nice, its easier.
Go on, bite…
;0)
….if I could post you kittens and sunshine, I would.
That is all.