Facing Up to Face-to-face

Stopping passers-by in the street and asking them to sign up, there and then, to a monthly electronic payment to your nonprofit may, on the face of it, seem the quickest possible way to lose friends and irritate people.

And so it is. Fundraisers worldwide may have found face-to-face fundraising stunningly lucrative — in the short term, at least — but they’ve also contributed to general resentment and dislike of the way charity fundraisers do business, and probably to quite a few future bequests being scrubbed from wills. In many main streets and shopping malls of the United Kingdom, Europe and elsewhere, potential donors are routinely crossing the road to avoid the fundraisers they see waiting in ambush ahead, clipboards and EFT forms at the ready.