Shortlisted for the columnist competition on ideastap.com, February 2013.
For the average person perusing their local high street, little
is more traumatic than accidentally making eye contact with a crocodile-smiled clipboard wielder just ahead. As he or she strides amiably towards you as if
they’d known you all your life, you feel a sudden desire to become one with the
pavement.
Tabloids have gifted us with the word ‘chugging’, a
portmanteau of ‘charity’ and ‘mugging’, to encapsulate this socially awkward
experience. Just as with the zombie apocalypse, we know the chuggers are coming
for us with their shining eyes and uniform of cagoule and eerily white
Converse, yet we are woefully unprepared when that day arrives. Whilst opinion
polls show that up to 80% of interviewees were against the use of paid street
fundraisers, chugging remains one of the most lucrative forms of charity
fundraising, with an average return of £3 for the charity for every £1 spent on
hiring chuggers. For all the people who rush past, mumble excuses into their
socks, or even step in front of traffic to avoid chuggers, plenty of folks do
stop. And of those, a fair few commit themselves to direct debits which run, on
average, for 5 years. In a recession where charitable giving has fallen off a
cliff, this long-term commitment is crucial to many charities’ survival. This
is perhaps why there seem to be more chuggers than ever before.
It is that peculiar guilt and fear we feel at walking on by
that is utilised by chuggers. Unless you spend your spare time thinking up
hilarious and witty retorts to use on chuggers such as ‘Chug off’ and ‘Curb
your enthusiasm’, or you can sprint like Jessica Ennis, you might not be able
to avoid it. But isn’t it a little odd that we feel this way? We know that chuggers are often skint and
desperate students rather than people with a profound calling towards the
tertiary sector. Heck, many of us have friends who have chugged for a living.
One of mine attested to how grim it is: ‘Essentially you don’t do the job
unless you’re really broke/desperate for work and you live under constant fear
of being fired. People would turn up for work, do half an hour and be sent
home. It was brutal. The senior fundraiser managers are on huge salaries.’ So
while it’s wrong to assume that everyone who chugs for money wouldn’t give
their ‘free’ time for charity, the training given to paid chuggers doesn’t
exactly promote altruism. My friend put
it more succinctly: ‘You had to be a wanker to get by’.
We’ve lost the plot if charity, a tool for socio-economic
wellbeing, is contracted out to companies who use financial uncertainty and
aggressive tactics to cow their young staff. But the public anger tells us
there’s nothing at all wrong with our cultural sense of fair play. We can use
our very British embarrassment at the current situation to build a better
future for fundraising. We can give our regular support, financial or
otherwise, directly to charities. There is a world of volunteer schemes, fundraising
events and community projects out there. We can take charity back from
parasitic managers on bloated charities. Let’s chug off and do it.
