So, here’s a situation I would like to set before you and have you tell me whether I am rotten to the core or, in fact, an entirely reasonable person behind whom you will rally as we set forth to end a creeping scourge before it has time to consume our land. Okay? Okay.
It’s three situations, technically, I suppose, united by – as I see it – a profound flaw. The last three times I have given money to charity spontaneously (by which I mean, at a stall set up somewhere on an affluent thoroughfare or lobby of a supermarket rather than via direct debit or Crowdfunder and so on), I have been asked for more. Right there and then, I mean. Not asked to set up a regular donation, not asked to take a form and think about things or any of that. Asked if I could give more than I had just said I would give.
And not just asked, but repeatedly asked, with increasing, I don’t want to say aggression but certainly with an attitude that would have effectively browbeaten a younger me and which would undoubtedly work on anyone less ornery than I am now. Especially as they were all men, which always carries with it a little extra force and imbalance in the sudden, unsought interaction if you are female.
(Before we go any further, none of these was a scam. The charities involved were by no means the big brand names in their respective fields – homelessness, refugee aid and the fiver was for a cat thing – but I recognised them and knew they were legitimate.)
One wanted me to bump up £5 to £10 (that was the cat thing), one £20 to £50, and one – in Chelsea – all but sneered at the £50 I suggested. “Everyone else has given more than that,” he said. “I don’t live here,” I said, gesturing at the Ottolenghi café, Brora shopfront and Sarah Chapman store that are indicative of the average Chelsea (trust-funded) income. “I’m just visiting.” Of course I wanted to withdraw my offer completely but that seemed, you know, pretty hard on the people I was ultimately wanting to help. At least I refused to have my name added to their mailing list.
I understand, of course, that times are hard for charities. But I would be hard put to come up with a more counterproductive “solution” to the fall in donations than this.
Asking people for money is a fraught business. Doing so in the street or similar is even more so. You are already effectively exploiting people’s unpreparedness. Every donation extracted by a “chugger” (charity mugger – those people who block your way on the pavement and ask if they and their clipboards could have a minute of your time) is in part a forced payment to get out of an embarrassing social situation and/or interruption to your schedule that will otherwise throw your whole day off.
But largely, the ends justify the means. There are very few people who sit down unprompted these days and tithe their income (though I did know one and honestly, he was too good for this world and suffered enormously because of it). Most of us need at least some metaphorical jabbing of ribs – be it appeals during terrible disasters that finally spur us to make regular contributions to the Red Cross, or to the Trussell Trust when another shameful set of statistics about starving children in the UK hits the headlines – to push us over the complacency line.
But subjecting potential donors to the hard sell – the hard give? – disrupts this fragile balance between ends and means. I, and I suspect everyone else who experiences it, am now going to think twice before engaging with anyone with an eye on my disposable income.
Hopefully we will mostly think a third time too and overcome our fear of being chiselled so that the intended beneficiaries do not ultimately suffer – but what a risk these charities are taking. Not least because it is impossible to tell these days by how people dress, for example, or the ridiculously overpriced retail outlets they are walking past, how much they can afford.
I am very fortunate in that I do have spare cash to give in the first place and that I am very easily angered when I feel people are – this is the technical term – taking the piss, so my meanness (in perhaps every sense) will always outpace my financial resources and protect me. But I can easily imagine any one of the three people I dealt with being able to extract more from someone more vulnerable than they could truly afford.
I’m afraid we have to say a hard “no” to this new development. It’s a classic example of short-termism: it will benefit the few pioneers for a short time, and then ruin things for everyone including them very quickly thereafter. To reject it is the right thing to do, even if in the moment it feels so very, very wrong.