Why do so few people want to talk about F2F fundraising?

The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association is based in what could be described as the ‘Fire Brigade District’ of London. The London Fire Brigade HQ is in the street that runs parallel to us, there’s a huge training centre, spread over two large complexes, in the street beyond that and, of course, there’s an actual fire station just round the corner.

All of which I think is kind of appropriate considering the amount of firefighting I’ve been doing since I started at the PFRA in June.

I knew when I took on the role of head of communications that it was going to be, shall we say, ‘challenging’. Someone somewhere always has something to say – usually quite vociferously – about ‘chuggers’ (hence the firefighting). So I was quite prepared for plenty of robust debate and dialogue.

What came as a bit of a surprise though was that very few people actually want to talk about chuggers at all. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of people have opinions about street fundraising. And those same people are quite happy to express those opinions, often in extremely strong terms. But try to talk to them about it; try to engage them on why they feel like this, why they hold the opinions they do, and they just don’t want to know.

There’s one guy who must have set up a Google alert for ‘chugger’ because every time a street fundraising story appears online, he’s there cutting and pasting the same block of text – riddled with inaccuracies – into the comments box.

So I left a couple of comments for him asking him to contact me. Each time I was rebuffed in an ‘I don’t need to talk to you because I know what I’m talking about thanks very much’ kind of way.

Then there was the author and blogger I tried to engage about his anti-chugging views. He would only agree to meet me provided our meeting was recorded and posted on his website. I declined because I wanted to have an honest and open discussion with him about fundraising, and not have to put on a PR face to talk through him to visitors to his website. His response was to tweet to his 20,000+ followers that I was a “loser”, send me an email with the salutation ‘c*ckface’ (not even “hi c*ckface” – I was so offended), and send an email to my ceo, Mick Aldridge, accusing me of trying to bribe him (I hadn’t, I hasten to add).

There have been individual councillors, bloggers and members of the public (rarely journalists, however, I’ve been pleased to discover) who seem to think that they have an inviolable right not to have their views about street fundraisers disputed or questioned. They get very offended if we don’t accept as gospel every argument they throw at us and can get very aggressive if we question these arguments.

I think a lot of opposition to chuggers and chugging is based on some misconceptions about fundraising in general. Some people object that they are paid, but most fundraisers are paid, so if it’s OK to pay a direct marketer, why is it wrong to pay a street fundraiser? Of course it isn’t. Some complain that the cost of their recruitment isn’t recouped until they’ve been giving for a year. But all fundraising recruitment methods have a similar cost, so why single out F2F in particular?

Now, I am completely earnest and genuine about meeting any opponents of F2F fundraising in person.

I’ve found that when I can talk to people about F2F and go into some depth about how it works and why charities do it, a lot of those misconceptions fade away and, while their opposition to chugging doesn’t dissolve completely (and I wouldn’t expect it to), it often lessens and becomes more measured.

As usual, jaw-jaw is better than war-war and if I could, I’d site down opposite all 49 million adults in the UK and talk to them about street fundraising if it would improve the overall level of understanding.

Of course, for me to engage with the opponents of F2F, they need to be prepared to engage with me. Yet the people shouting the loudest about ‘chuggers’ are those who seem least interested in any kind of discussion.

It’s going to be a long journey. Hopefully though, I won’t get another email calling me ‘c*ckface’.