How to lose up to 50 years of clients income

Yesterday evening I had an interesting doorstep experience.

The doorbell rang and my 18yr old daughter answered the door.

The young (?student?) collector/ agent was wearing a tabard of a well known national charity and asked if anyone in the house was available over the age of 26.

At this point my daughter called me, and the agent started to espouse the values and importance of this particular charity.

When I stopped him in mid flow, and asked why he wanted to talk to people over 26, his reply was it was the charities target audience.

I wont go into the fact that the individual then refused to show his ID until I threatened to call the police and the fact that he and his team leader did not seem to know that this was crass behaviour and potentially illegal to boot!

In the image you can see his attitude as he spoke to his “team leader”.

When I called the company concerned, they did not seem put out by this action at all. Then i called the charity. After some problems speaking to someone (it was late on a Friday!) they realised the implications of what their agents were doing, and the potential problems being associated with the charity concerned

To put it simply, a potential life donor (my daughter is working towards a career that could have directly supported this charity!) was dismissed in her own home from supporting a charity. The belief was that people under 26 cannot sign direct debits!

It is unlikely because of the way she was treated that she will ever support that charity in her life time. How many other potential donors have also been put off by the discriminatory behaviour of doorstep and street chuggers?

Now whilst the individual concerned was not great – the management behind this individual seems worse. Not aware of the impact of such behaviours, and not aware that it was discriminatory in nature.

Lessions for Charities
If you want to ensure maximum income potential for the future – do not discriminate potential donors – sure they may not donate at the time – but who knows what happens during the rest of there life?

What should they have done?
If statistics show that the target audience they are most likely to be successful with is the over 26’s, then quite simply they need to select their collection area and strategies more carefully.
For example they can brief street chuggers to only approach people that appears to be in an age band.They can avoid sending people to wait outside secondary school gates if targeting 26+

When it comes to door step knocking, they need to ask for an adult (over 18) if the person answering the door appears to be young – and then to “deliver the pitch” regardless. To risk turning off a potential donor at that point is commercial suicide in the longer term.

To exclude someone (an adult by the laws of the country) from donating because of their age is total madness from so many perspectives.

Show ID at the door step
This potential person knew I was going to complain so resisted showing ID. Crazy because the individual was issued with it for these very purposes and its designed to protect them and the organizations they were working for.

Mike Morrison
Google