After reading the blog post “Selling shouldn’t equal annoying” by Drew McLellan, I sympathize with her experience at the store feeling forced to donate. I have encountered many similar situations as well, especially with charities. I often see the canvassers for World Vison or some sort standing on the street, usually one on each side, cornering the people walking by. Not only you need to look at those sad pictures of disabled children and reject them, you have to reject them twice. And sometimes even more as I recall once seeing four canvassers standing on each side in a cross section.In fact, I was a canvasser once for a very short time period. During my training, I was trained to bug and corner people.
Although my trainer told us that the form of street canvassers was a much cheaper solution as opposed to TV advertising, I am not sure how well it works. I mean first of all, people hate street selling. It does not matter what it is that you are selling. Most people’s first reaction is to reject. Additionally, most of these street selling charities’ pricing strategy requires credit card information on spot. The canvassers will have access to all your information and they are stored on a piece of paper that seems really unsafe. I don’t know about anyone else. But I will never be comfortable enough to give my credit information to somebody on the street.
A good cause should not be turned into forced selling. More importantly, they should not take advantage of our vulnerability to sick kids in order to boost their donations.