Top 5 Reasons To Love Chuggers

Face to face fundraising, chugging* if you will, has been copping a battering in the Australian media of late. The criticism, as often happens has been that it’s expensive (which is incorrect), the people who do it are not Australian (partially true, but not through want of trying), and that people find it annoying. This last point is the one that really matters, it completely subjective and so requires no rationalisation. It’s also the opposite of the way people should feel about this form of fundraising. Face to face is a fantastic thing for Australia to do and have and we should be proud. So here is a quick list of the reasons why Australian’s should all love chuggers.

1) Its turned Australia into a nation of super heroes

This isn’t an exaggeration, face to face fundraising is responsible for raising billions of dollars. Those billions of dollars save lives. From malaria treatments to meningitis vaccinations. From disaster relief to campaigning against honour killings. The money that face to face fundraising has raised has enabled charities to do much, much, MUCH more good in the world.

Australia like to think of itself as a generous country, but this is because we have face to face fundraising.

In CAF’s 2013 Five year World Giving Index, Australia came second most giving nation. The index is marked on recency, frequency of participation in three categories:

• Helping a stranger
• Volunteering
• Donating money

Although Australia is a fairly good all rounder the thing that keeps us up the top of the charts is that lots and lots of us give money regularly. Lets be clear, getting this many people to give this way is ONLY possible because of face to face. In 2013 an estimated 200,000 people started giving to a charity because of F2F. That’s close to a percentage point of the population of Australia and WAY over if you consider the people face to face doesn’t ask to donate because they are too young, or not in a position to donate. That sort of growth is something that we should celebrate as a nation. Not only are we pretty bloody generous already, but we’re getting substantially more generous every year… because of face to face
Not only has face to face meant more donations to charity and more people giving, but its revolutionised the type of people who give. Before face to face most donors were around retirement age. Generationally this proved a problem as, you know, older people die sooner. Face to face starts people off as donors when they’re young and helps them engage with making the world better when they’re in their 20s. This is a fantastic sign for the future of the country. It’s habit forming if someone is engaging and donating at such a comparatively young age, they are more likely to do so when they’re older. Face to face is building a nation of people who actively contribute to making the world a better place. It also means that there’s kids today have every right to cock a snook at their parents and grandparents generation.

2) It is really effective for the charity

There is really no comparison. Face to face brings in more donors, more reliably than any other form of fundraising. Advances in fundraising concepts like on line advocacy and two-step asks, we are really just playing around the margins. Face to face is the only way to get people to make a transformational difference. Some of the comments on the recent media articles have been from people working in very small organisations saying that they never pay fundraisers. Small organisations do amazing work and when I say the next sentence, it is in no way disparaging to them. However, a small organisation will only ever make small amounts of change. To scale up requires growth and that, pretty much always requires investment.

If face to face DIDN’T exist what would the alternatives be? Direct mail fundraising growing to such a level where every charity has to mail everyone they can all the time? If you consider face to face fundraising to be an annoying methodology, would you prefer to be receiving three or four letters from charities every day which you throw straight in the bin? No one has ever said “I wish I got more letters asking me for money”. As a methodology face to face has the same emotional impact, positive or negative of other forms of asking people for mone. On top of this the break even point for a donor recruited by direct mail at the moment is two and a half times as long as on the streets, more competition would only drag his out.

3) Human to human is morally the best way to fundraise

One of the arguments for Face to Face fundraising that I absolutely disagree with is that the end justifies the means. This suggests that the act of asking in person is bad. Its not, its the best way of asking.

Firstly there is the fact that the it feels great to give in this way.

When we give money, we get a great rush of endorphins that makes us less stressed, more happy and feeling A1 awesome! This is an effect best felt in the company of others and unless you plan on filling in donation forms by yourself in the middle of a mall, Face to Face offers you a chance to feel this good in public.

Secondly by having a human in front of you, you have a chance to ask questions and get the espouse in the easiest possible way. Fundraisers may not have all the answers, but they will know the many of the most common. Talking to a chugger will save you hunting round a website for it (and lets be honest, you wouldn’t get round to doing this anyway).

Thirdly, by having fundraisers out in them out in the street or coming to your door also means that you are prompted to do it. The number of people who give to charity without prompting is minuscule, less than 1% of the people who give when asked. If we relied on people’s knee jerk generosity only 1% of the good works the Australian public does would happen.

4) Paying people to raise money is an excellent thing

When I was working as a fundraiser on the streets, people would regularly shout at me to get a proper job. This always seemed an odd opinion to me. What constitutes a proper job. Admittedly face to fundraising isn’t something that requires a degree or formal apprenticeship, but there are many jobs like this. Surely objectively as an unskilled occupation raising money to make the world a better place is more noble than working at a fast food restaurant flipping burgers? As casual employment there are few things as worthy as fundraising.

Also, to counter one of the arguments that’s often levelled against it, no one does it for the money. It doesn’t pay anywhere near as well as any job that doesn’t involve the word “charity”. (I’m not going to argue the reasons why this shouldn’t matter here, instead I’ll just link to Dan Pallotta again.) And when you consider the amount of abuse people who do the job receive, they are certainly not remunerated as well as they should be for doing a good thing.

5) The worst thing you can say about it is that you don’t like it

Perhaps the most common complaints that have come up in the media or to me in person is that they just don’t like it. To be honest people are entitled to any opinion they want. All those people who smile at you and ask you to help the world out. How dare they, how DARE they. Here is a pro tip for people who don’t like face to face fundraisers, ignore them.

If you feel you are doing your part, that’s ok. Don’t stop and talk. If you feel that you’re not doing enough to make the world a better place, but really would rather not do any more, that’s ok too. Don’t stop and talk, you have lost precisely nothing. If you are someone that would like to make more of a difference in the world, but are in a hurry or a bad mood or simply not in a position to do more at the moment, it’s still ok not to stop and talk to them. But why would you want to stop people who want to give from being given the opportunity to give money. Why create a scenario where someone’s life is NOT saved because you don’t like not talking to someone.

Face to face fundraising is a wonderful thing with wonderful consequences. As a nation we should embrace it and the hard working people who do it. Stop using anti-face to face rhetoric as a way to fill slow news days and start telling stories the wonderful work done by Australian charities and NGOs. Negative media doesn’t stop people signing up, but it does make politicians think they should start talking about legislating against it. This is a real risk and one that as an industry we should take seriously. But first lets talk about why it’s fantastic, let’s celebrate the most important fundraising methodology of our time.

*I use the term chugger here in my efforts to reclaim the world. The word obviously isn’t going away. One day I hope that we can use the word “chugger” without confusing asking people for money for a good cause and physically assaulting people for personal gain.