What it’s actually like working as a charity fundraiser

The first thing to say is that the salary claims are often true.

This gig works on a base pay + commission structure. For your base, you make a smidge above minimum wage…

But the real money is in the commission.

I saw guys clearing £50-60 grand a year. Decent cars and lifestyles.

All while trying to lightly imply they’re just a volunteer standing in the drizzle out of the goodness of their hearts.

That’s a ruse.

They’re employees of a fundraising subcontractor—and the ‘best’ ones are usually nasty pieces of work.

These sub-contractors have a ✨toxic culture✨

When you’d go out to a fundraising location, you’d be divided into working groups, usually of 4 each, to canvas a location:

• All the group leaders would have a little walkie-talkie and be communicating with ‘home base’ like it was an army movie.

• There was a live leaderboard not only between the teams—but across the country. With the team leaders being updated on their relative performance every hour or so.

Lucrative bonuses were made available for high-scoring individual fundraisers (£50 - £100) and team leaders (£200 - £300).

This sort of “extreme-sport fundraising” gave rise to some very pushy practices that I believe to be shameful.

Stories of signing up a ‘blind old woman’ were treated with the reverence of a triumphant tale of war. 

Another kill.

In the case of the careerist team leaders, there was a psychotic level of non-empathy that seemed very useful for pushing fundraising subscriptions upon nervous people.

Some tactics I saw used to ‘turn the screw’

• Ask people no-brainer questions to trick them into a loop of saying yes

  • “We’re making sure every child in the U.K. has enough to eat. Is that something you’d support?”.

• Imply you’re looking for a lower level of commitment, that you’re just going to keep them in the loop about the charity work (“I’ll just jot down your details”). Then you spring the donation section of the form on them before any mention of a financial commitment.

• By this point, you’ve often wriggled inside your house. Maybe they’ve made you a cup of tea. It’s very difficult for a potential donor to backtrack from here.

• If there is any pushback, deploy a bit of social pressure.

  • “Anne next door found it in her heart to support us”—99 times out of 100 this is a total lie.

If you need any proof of the mindset of some of these fundraisers, watch the mask slip here as this lovely chap wishes breast cancer on a woman who (politely) says she’s not interested in making a donation.

Fundraiser Factory

These intermediary fundraising companies make a lot of money.

Each sign-up they acquire is worth hundreds to the charity, with most people keeping their subscription active for an average of over 2 years.

The company invests in training sessions for the fundraisers, with a mandatory weekly session of roleplays and ‘objection handling’ with the more experienced fundraisers.

They also use pizza to coax fundraisers into daily for more individualised sales training.

It’s all very low-rent “Wolf of Wall Street”—get the sale at all costs.

They taught fundraisers to:

• Always pitch a subscription as equivalent to something trivial.

  • “It’s £2.50 a week, that’s less than you spend on a pack of biscuits”

• Use ‘per week’ to sound cheaper than p/m of p/y.

• Push new donors to commit for a full year, regardless of their financial situation.

The best I saw someone do was 16 sign-ups in a day. And the train ride home had the energy of a football team that had just won the cup.

It’s Not a Good Deal

Yes, these roles technically offer ‘guaranteed hours’.

But they’re not particularly guaranteed when you consider how high the turnover of staff is.

It was common for a dozen bright-eyed students to be shipped in once a fortnight as fresh blood.

Beyond the ethical quagmire, this job makes you very jaded, very fast.

It’s essentially getting rejected all day. 1000 times. Humans are not hardwired to find that an enjoyable experience because it would normally mean death.

You are the cliche of someone people don’t want to talk to.

Suddenly you’re seeing all the avoidant strategies you’ve used against street fundraisers your entire life—but now they’re being played back to you.

And you can’t blame them. Because you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

P.S Here’s a great undercover report with footage showing some of these predatory tactics in action.