Part 2: 'F**k off you chugger c**t!'

Howard Lake | 9 February 2010 | Blogs

My partner Sarah says that being a fundraiser allows you to see the best and the worst of people. You see the best with their fantastic acts of philanthropy. But you also see the worst of people with the often petty and vicious complaints they make.
Here’s an example from Sarah. Sarah’s charity collects second-hand clothes door-to-door for selling to the rag trade. Her charity received a call from a member of the public who said that the next time he caught someone from the charity putting a collection bag through his door he would “slam the letterbox down so hard I’ll break their bloody fingers”. Charming.
Of course, I can bring a lot to this party with the kinds of comments about chuggers that I’ve encountered. First there are the plain rude, uncivilized and objectionable posts of nasty ignorant people. Some recent examples from social media platforms such as Twitter, blogs and discussion forums:

The only good thing about chuggers is that you can take your bad mood out on them and not feel bad about it.

Chugger = piece of s**t who ignorantly annoys you trying to get you to give money.

Some fat c**t walked in front of me and started his speel [sic] so I told him to f**k off. He said "Excuse me, what did you just say". The very fact I said f**k off should suggest to you that I do not wish to engage in conversation with you.
Pure scum or just misunderstood scum? F**kers are doing my skull in tbh.

Some nothing better to do w*nker called to my house last week harasing [sic] me for money for a dog charity. Money for a f**king dog charity. Wouldn’t take any hints and things might have got hairy if I wasn’t bombed out of my basket.

What really annoys me about chuggers is that when you call them c**ts and tell them to f**k off they smile as if they had just received a compliment. So now I just punch them in the face…
Charity Muggers. There ought to be a collective noun for them, like ‘a bunch of f**king…chuggers’ or ‘p*ss off to f*ck you f**king…chugger’. And why are they always f**king Aussies?

This is just a selection from the past couple of months. They are at the extreme end to be sure, but they are by no means untypical.

Then we come to the ‘clever’ comments from people who hold the same basic sentiment as those who strew their rantings with expletives, but are able to express themselves a bit more articulately.

Anyone who can help to get rid of the blight of the chuggers gets my support. Pathetic, hyperactive stage-school failures prowling our streets verbally attacking people to make themselves commission should not be tolerated.

I must say, I loathe this pestilential menace that is chugging and the hoardes [sic] of chuggers. Their persistent, hell-bent approach makes life on our streets day to day a living hell. Ban them I say.

I’m sorry, I can’t let that last one pass without comment. Chuggers a “pestilential menace” that turn an everyday British high street into a “living hell”? For God’s sake get a grip man! Mogadishu High Street is a living hell. Baghdad High Street is a living hell. A high street in Guildford or Chester with a few fundraisers in it is a mild inconvenience at the most.

But it’s not just chuggers who attract the wrath of the public. Poor old tin rattlers come in for their fair share too. Take a look at some of these trawled from the blogosphere in the run up to Christmas:

It’s insane in Newcastle city centre at the minute – you can’t go five steps without running into another group of charity collectors. I know they’re collecting for a good cause and everything, but the place is so oversaturated with collectors I don’t know how they’re making any money!

Our High Street today was littered with what can only be described as Christmas Sluts shaking thier [sic] buckets and t*ts. Skimpy tops and skirts up their ars*s asking everyone for "spare change for charity”.

An old lady tried to get me to give to cancer research and in exchange I would get a flimsy little sticker. She rattled her bucket at me putting me in a bad mood as I had a migraine. I told her she should not rattle her bucket as it’s against the rules now. I was so angry. She said ‘come on its Xmas’. I will be complaining to the council on Monday about her intrusion. [If this weren’t a genuine forum comment, I’d swear it was the script for a new cartoon strip for Postman Plod from Viz. Of course, there is a chance that this is ironic and that irony got lost in translation, as it were.]

And finally, we get to the whole point of this piece. I’m not writing this not just to highlight some of they types of uninformed and objectionable comments that fundraisers sometimes have to face down – and also to put into context my previous blog post about the fundraiser who resigned in the face of hostile public complaints and who should take responsibility for that hostility: fundraiser or complainant.

The real reason for this post is to bring to the fore some of the more deep-seated objections to fundraising that people hold. Here are two comments that were posted in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti.

[I will) probably cut down on my wine intake and donate it to the fund…It struck us as a family watching the appeal on TV last night that here we go again having to dip into our pockets and flashing our credit cards. How much longer can this go on, we’re in the worst financial position we’ve been in for ages and still being asked for more.

This comment shows a resistance, a fatigue maybe, to having to be asked to help. ‘How much longer can we go on?’ this family asks. Notice that this question is not ‘how much longer can we go on giving to charity?’. It is ‘how much longer can we go on being asked to give to charity?’. Which is a very different thing.

And finally there’s this numptie from Australia. He wants to donate to Haiti, but only to a charity “worthy of my cash”, with this ‘worthiness’ measured against four criteria. Why don’t you take a look yourself. http://rumble.net/blog/index.cgi/politix/Donations_for_Haiti.html . I find it hard to believe that someone who holds opinions such as these would want the rest of the world to know about them.

To me comments such as this feel like expressions of a deeper-seated hostility, or objection, to charity fundraising, more than annoyance about what type of fundraising is used. If the sector can engage with views such as this, it needs to do so at the appropriate level of debate. It is attitudes such as these that the Institute of Fundraising’s proposed Right to Ask campaign can tackle head on. That will be the subject of my next post.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.