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With their bright jackets emblazoned with the names of Britain's worthiest charities and their voluble youthful optimism, chuggers, a conflation of charity and mugger, have become a high street fixture with the power to inspire a pang of guilt in the hardest-hearted shopper.
But a survey of their tactics has found that some face-to-face fundraisers are not as good as the causes they represent. They have been caught out misleading the public about how they are paid, harassing shoppers who say they are not interested, and asking donors to lie on direct debit forms to help them meet their targets.
The charity watchdog Intelligent Giving, which conducted the mystery shopper survey, said almost all chuggers may be breaking the law and many are breaking the fundraising profession's own code of conduct. It is calling on the public to boycott them and force them off the streets.
The watchdog conducted a survey of 50 face-to-face fundraisers operating for charities in busy London shopping streets over the last month. It approached representatives of 18 charities, including Great Ormond Street hospital, Amnesty International, Shelter, Unicef and the British Red Cross, all of which employ fundraisers. Chuggers raise more than £20m a year for charities, often on a commission.
In 2006 a quarter of Shelter's income came from street fundraisers and 75% of Greenpeace's new members were recruited this way between 2000 and 2003.
Intelligent Giving discovered that just 8% admitted how they were paid. The Charities Act says that "the method by which remuneration is determined and the 'notifiable amount' of that remuneration" must be revealed "before a donor has authorised an agreement to donate".
The watchdog also found that 15 fundraisers from nine charities broke the Institute of Fundraising's own code of conduct by refusing to back off when asked to do so. These included fundraisers for the British Red Cross and Scope. A spokesman for Scope said the incident was very much an exception and the British Red Cross said it "reserves the right to take disciplinary action against any fundraiser found to have acted outside those guidelines".
Chuggers working for WRVS, formerly the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, and Great Ormond Street said they were working as volunteers when they were not, the watchdog said. A fifth of fundraisers had no visible ID and almost a quarter failed to give clear information about the cause they were representing. One fundraiser for the WRVS did not know what the "W" stood for.
"Most of the 50 chuggers we spoke to showed little interest in anything other than raising the maximum amount of cash in the minimum amount of time," said Adam Rothwell, director of Intelligent Giving.
"By employing chuggers who may be breaking the law, tell lies, or refuse to leave members of the public alone, charities undermine the trust we all instinctively have in them."
But Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of the Institute of Fundraising, said face to face fundraising remains "an appropriate and effective method".
"It enables charities to engage with a particular demographic of donor - including young people - and means that charity and donor can enter into a dialogue about what the charity does and how the donor's money will be used," he said.
Rothwell said if a member of the public is interested in a charity they should resist the temptation to sign up on the street. "Instead of succumbing to chuggers' pressure tactics, charity supporters should give direct to the cause by donating online."
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