Chugging Hell

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.