• Fundraising
• How charities use your money
• Who regulates fundraising?
• How to make a complaint
• General vs. specific appeals
• Membership and sponsorship schemes
• Fundraising FAQs
• Fundraising factsheets
  • Mailings addressed to you
  • Unaddressed mail
  • Telephone fundraising
  • Street fundraising
  • Doorstep fundraising
  • Advertising in newspapers and magazines
  • TV and radio advertising
  • Raffles and lotteries
  • Fundraising events
  • Internet fundraising
  • Mail order trading
  • Leaving a gift in your Will
  • Gifts in memory
• Fundraising costs
• Fundraising case studies

Street teams are usually employed by professional fundraising companies, which are contracted by charities to do the work. Some people expect the fundraisers to be volunteers and therefore unpaid.

But all fundraising costs money - whether it is an appeal sent through the mail or a sponsored parachute jump, and charities only use face to face because it works well for them in comparison to other ways of raising money.

The costs of face to face come at the beginning - the charity usually pays a flat rate fee per supporter (typically around £90) to the fundraising firm - while the benefits come in over the longer term.

This means that someone who pays a small amount by monthly direct debit for a year may not donate much more to the charity than the cost of signing them up, but by the second year, their regular donation begins to make a significant difference.

Donations are usually made under the government's Gift Aid scheme, so the Treasury tops up donations with an extra 28p for every £1.

Obviously charities hope that donors recruited from street fundraising will continue to give for many years. Sadly, many people will stop giving over time, with around 10-40% terminating their direct debit or standing order within the first year.

Many people believe that this means the charity will lose money because it has had to pay an agency to recruit these individuals. This is not always the case. Most charities have an arrangement with their agency so that they will be refunded the costs of recruiting paople who stop giving within the first few months, or within the first year of their relationship with the charity.

The nature of the contract between the charity and the fundraising agency can be confusing. When a street fundraiser tells you your donation will go entirely to the charity, this is strictly speaking, correct. The payment goes straight from your bank account to the charity. The money is never actually handled by the fundraising company.

But it is also true that there is a cost as the charity will pay the company for its services, although this usually will not relate to the amount of your donation.