Are You Giving to Charities, Or Telemarketing Companies?
“It’s like a betrayal,” Patterson says, sitting in her kitchen in June, after being shown copies of the North Carolina report and the contract the association signed with InfoCision. “I know I won’t donate again. It’s like they stabbed you in the back. It’s terribly wrong.”
Bloomberg has a pretty stunning report about the amount of money telemarketing companies that work on behalf of charities receive because of one-sided contracts. A telemarketer named Robin convinced 64-year-old Carol Patterson (quoted above) to reach out to 15 neighbors asking them to donate to the American Diabetes Association. A report shows that the telemarketing company, InfoCision, received nearly 80 percent of the money raised by donors—only 22 percent of the money raised went to the charity.
In another astonishing example, InfoCision gathered $5.3 million for The American Cancer Society in 2010, and then kept all of the money. And not only did Infocision keep 100 percent of the funds—it received $113,006 in fees from The American Cancer Society, which means the charity actually lost money. Charities that use these telemarketing companies say they sometimes have to use these “loss-leader” strategies to engage people over the long term, but that doesn’t make it sound like any less of a hustle. According to the report, telemarketers are often instructed to tell donors that a large percentage of the money will go directly to helping people—even if it’s untrue. This is making me think very hard about where I give, and how I give. [via]
The time I interviewed at InfoCision:
I spent a 4 month stint in WV at my mom’s house in a very small town between finishing grad school abroad and landing my first job in NYC. Mom wanted me to save up money over the next few years for the move to NYC. I just wanted to get out of the house as much and quickly as possible and make some money, but there weren’t many options. The closest town with something resembling an economy was 30 miles away, and even then it was a choice of waitressing at a chain restaurant or working at InfoCision. I’ve never worked in food service, so I grudgingly checked out InfoCision.
The interviews were basically drop-in. I was asked to read a sample script with three pitches. One was soliciting donations for the NRA, the second was for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and in the third, I would have to ask people if I could pray with them, ask them about their problems and then hit them up for money. It wasn’t even for a “cause”. It was awful. I politely told the interviewer that I didn’t feel comfortable with some of the ways I’d be fundraising and ended the discussion (which had been fairly unpleasant in addition to the scripts). Not to mention that the salary probably would have paid for the gas for the commute and that’s about it.
About a month later, I packed a suitcase and took the 10hr train ride from WV to NYC, with a second interview scheduled for a position at a university, a 3-week paid housesitting job in Brooklyn, and high hopes. 7 years later, everything has worked out nicely, but that time at InfoCision was definitely a low point that I still remember. Ugh.
This goes for those canvassers on the street too. Greenpeace is the only one that runs their own operation. The rest are run through for-profit contractors and PIRGs. Usually organizations pay a flat fee for the shift, so percentage that makes it back to the organization really varies depending on the canvasser.
@highjump
I’m interested to hear more about how you know this. Not because I don’t believe you–of course I do!–but because I’d like to be able to back this up in my own conversations.
@josiahg I used to be an office director for one of the bigger for-profit ones. The one that canvasses for Planned Parenthood, Save the Children, Amnesty International, The Nature Conservancy, and others. The organization decides how many shifts it would like to send out in which cities and pays a pro-rated fee per shift (if you’re sending out a lot of shifts the cost is lower for everyone because you don’t have to pay to train people on new campaigns) and they get whatever money gets donated to the canvassers minus canvasser ‘bonuses’. Some contracts lose money, especially at first. The contractor hires and trains the canvassers. At my organization canvassers were paid based on commission – minimum wage until they made a low three figures dollar amount that day and then the ‘bonus’ of ~30% of each contribution after that. So the better the person is at canvassing (semi-ironically I guess) the less money actually makes it to the organization. However, what the organization really wants is the personal info so they can hit that person up again so it is in their interest to incentivize canvassers getting donations from several different people. So if you’re someone’s first or only donation of the day more of your money is going to make it back to whatever organization than if you’re someone’s fifteenth donor. At the PIRGs I think canvassers are just paid by the hour. All canvassers have quotas they have to meet to keep their jobs.
If you’re curious to see who they’re really working for, canvassers are really really really not supposed to lie about it. Of course some do, but check the bottom of the donor forms or the fine print on the name tags they are required to wear, not the brightly colored tshirts. Those guys don’t work for Planned Parenthood.
@highjump I put up with working for a PIRG for all of two weeks about eight years ago. At that time in Oregon, at least, they paid canvassers by some complex commission system, not by the hour. And that 30% number sticks in my mind as the bonus as well. Of course, it might be different state to state, or even now vs. then.
@raptor41d I must be thinking of Clean Water Action then (they don’t just work on water issues, they will canvass for anyone).
It is rough work. The best canvassers either love the cause and then move one when a new contract comes through, or are sleezy used car salesmen types that you never want to be around.
@highjump No joke! After a series of 10 hour days walking around in summer heat for uncertain pay, I was dubious, and then the cause we were working on changed and I was just done. For some people it does seem to be genuinely rewarding work, but I was not one of those people.
Because it is hard work, I try to just be polite but very firm when I encounter canvassers, figuring that they’d prefer to be spending their time with someone who might be persuadable.
I could say a lot of different things about fundraising practices, but it does often cost money to get a new donor (if you have to mail 100 letters to get one new donor, which isn’t a crazy percentage).
I still never give over the phone, because that shit is SO EXPENSIVE.
I work for a business that has contracts with several non-profit groups, including veterans’ organizations (American Legion, VFW, AMVETS, etc.), authorizing us to call businesses to solicit ad space in their publications. We own the rights to the publications, print them, do the graphic design… pretty much everything except write the editorial content.
We have salespeople who call businesses to sell them ad space in the back of the publications. The salespeople, unfortunately, are always getting a bad rep because of the shady people out there. We are constantly offering ways to “prove” we aren’t a scam, whether it’s sending a W-9, giving the .org website, or passing along the contact info for the organization’s state department. Not everyone is a scam, guys. Just do your research and use common sense.
Yeah, I’m from the “direct contributions via credit card through the website” camp. I know it’s going directly to the charity that way (maybe minus a credit card processing fee, but still). Also, really convenient because the receipt is right there in your email, ready for tax time. :-)