Since here at Charity Link we make it our business to know all there is to know about face to face fundraising, what better topic to explore than the history and evolution? It turns out that professional fundraising is far from the new kid on the block. Since the birth of charitable causes, there has been a need to finance them. So we weren’t too surprised to learn that charity collectors - or face to face fundraisers - have actually been around for well over a century. Although there’s no doubt things have moved on quite a bit from Edwardian times. Learn about the fascinating origins of the humble fundraiser right up to the now of the modern charity fundraiser job and the (many!) improvements along the way.

The beginning of fundraising

In January 1892, Charles Sumner Ward was the General Secretary of a YMCA in Michigan America. And he was getting frustrated.

Any new YMCA was built using money raised from external sources, so his main issue was that, rather than being able to get on with his ‘real’ job, the lions share of his time was spent fundraising.

He devised a plan whereby directors were asked to leave their desks for an amount of time every day with the sole intention of increasing the YMCA budget.

Since fundraising was pretty unpopular, the idea was to get it done with as quickly as possible. The group of young men would split into teams and head onto the streets for two weeks at the beginning of the financial year to recruit donors to give in instalments.

And so ‘Lightening Canvass’ was born.

Charles plan was a huge success. Volunteers began to contribute, raising the entire years budget within just a few days.

For the next five years, they repeated their new strategy and continued to enjoy the results.

Before long, Lightening Canvass had spread to several other YMCAs across the USA, making the equivalent of £16M in todays money.

By 1912, the UK YMCAs had begun to follow suit, including fundraisers in Manchester, where 350 volunteers raised £14,000 in just 12 days.

The British teams even gave themselves characterful names like ‘The Tender Heart Ticklers’ and ‘The Hustlers’ in order to win over the hearts of the public. A fundraising clock was installed in the city centre to create comradery as people watched the donations increase.

Actual wording from their campaigns read as follows:

“…scouring Manchester during the campaign…merry bands of well-intentioned highwaymen on the prowl, ready to pounce upon every good-natured-looking individual with their cry, ‘your money or your promise.’“

The tried and tested method of creating a timely campaign, with generated anticipation and community worked better than anything seen before.

But despite the success, there were nay-sayers, even back then.

Rev Stanley J. Hersee was interviewed by the Guardian and voiced his concerns, calling it a ‘spasmodic effort… and the backwash was a bad thing. Many people were growing tired of the sort of ‘revolver, your money or your life campaign’.

So despite Wards innovation and fore thinking, there was always going to be protest about asking people for money.

Since then, non profit organisations have continued to evolve the practice of the face to face fundraiser.

Forward to the 1960s, Oxfam began to recruit people whose purpose was to collect regular financial promise from friends and neighbours. By the 1970s, we saw charity giant ActionAid recruiting donors in door to door fundraising.

By the 1990s Greenpeace became the first to develop large scale face-to-face fundraising. It was around then that fundraising agencies began to appear. This was not only to navigate the need for more effective large scale campaign fundraising, but to allow the charity workers to do what they were most passionate about – organise and give the practical help needed.

For the past decade or more, many face to face fundraising agencies and charities operated as a bit of a production line. Typically, fundraisers were hired, trained as quickly as possible, then pushed out onto streets and into venues where their general approach could be definitely be classed as ‘salesy’.

Few stuck it out believing face to face fundraising to be a grueling and near impossible role to fulfil. And if they didn’t perform well (which they often wouldn’t), it was a case of firing them and repeating that process.

Here at Charity Link staff turnover was high; recruiting (and losing) 150 fundraisers each year which subsequently stunted our growth. This had been the case for 7 years. Time and effort invested in recruiting and training was costly, especially the cost of using mentors (who weren’t fundraising whilst training). This ‘disposable’ culture meant people weren’t committed or taking the role seriously.

This hire n’ fire cycle was not only damaging for fundraising agencies like us and fundraiser morale, but also of course for charity brands. The ‘chugger’ reputation started to overshadow the good intentions and fantastic work so many charities were actually doing.

Back in 2018, Unicefs Global Head of Street Fundraising, Daniel McDonnell spoke out at the International Fundraising Congress in Holland.

His remarked that the fundraising channel carried negative connotations - even in emerging fundraising markets - due to charities oversaturating markets and not doing enough mystery shopping.

McDonnell said that many charities were still following an old model of face-to-face fundraising that doesn't properly invest in training or mystery shopping.

This unsustainable and unproductive approach to charity fundraising clearly had to change.

In July 2016, The Fundraising Regulator was established as an independent regulator of charitable fundraising with the sole purpose of ensuring that The Code of Fundraising Practice (originally developed in 2005 by the Institute of Fundraising) is adhered to by all charitable institutions and third-party fundraisers in the UK.

Along with the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, organisations involved in fundraising now have clear, set guidelines on what is and isn’t allowed in professional fundraising.

Fundraising agents are also regulated through mystery shopper programs, which ensure guidelines are met. Their goal; to check fundraisers are behaving well and rules are being adhered to as well as report fundraising fails. Penalty points and fines are incurred for those not falling into line.

The result is a much more ethical and professional practice across the board, which in turn boosts charity reputation, public trust and of course an increase in long time committed donors.

Fundraising Training

Charity Link fundraising agency began our own improvement journey a few years ago, with the intention to raise the bar and show leadership in the industry.

We began by rebranding the old door to door fundraising as ‘home to home fundraising, reflecting the new intentions and emphasising the donor experience, rather than just the sale.

More significantly, we created our Fundraiser Training Academy, which became the springboard for new fundraisers to be brilliant.

All of our face to face fundraisers go through extensive interactive fundraiser training. Ideology includes securing defined learning structure, clear goals and a huge range of support.

A performance framework acted as a focal point for fledgling fundraisers to aspire to - enabling them to graduate after a 12 week period, having achieved clear milestones, clear goals and clear outcomes.

Coupled with routine assessments from mystery shoppers who assess our seasoned f2f fundraisers we can use vital report information to show us where retraining might be needed.

Mental Health for fundraisers

What sets Charity Link apart from similar organisations is our particular focus on the wellbeing of our fundraisers. Indeed this correlates with the increased awareness of mental health generally, and means that all employees have access and opportunity to explore when things might not feel right.

Fundraisers (particularly at Charity Link) are emotionally supported, encouraged to check in with themselves to ensure they’re not suffering from burnout.. A typical symptom in charity fundraising jobs as so much energy is given for much rejection. As well as having full access to the many mental and physical health benefits we have on offer, our fundraisers are supported fully by our caring HR department and entire head office team.

Learn about how to deal with emotional burnout

Because of changes in the industry and leadership shown by companies like Charity Link, slowly the old school reputation of the ‘chugger’ is subsiding.

Even recruitment has changed. Where previously ‘sales’ was considered the number one skill for a charity fundraiser job, nowadays a good fundraising agency looks for more humble qualities.

Natural confidence, being good at reading people, passionate, being amiable and having an honesty and transparency about them are all what we look for in our people.

Read our fundraiser job description

Over recent years, the impact of what we’ve achieved has been clear on face to face fundraising statistics – giving a much higher return on investment and a much lower staff turnover. In fact, pre-Academy, our new starter attrition has seen an incredible drop to just 28%, which is a retention increase of 64%!

We’re confident that Charity Link are setting the scene for expectations in the industry and we continue to push to become even better.