Have You Got a Minute for Canvassing?

When we hear our doorbell ring, if we're not expecting someone, we peer surreptitiously through the window to see if the bell ringers are holding clipboards. If they are, we don't answer the door.

When I go to the co-op around lunchtime lately, it's not uncommon to see two people in matching T-shirts, holding clipboards and roaming the city sidewalk outside the front door. They greet each person who walks near them (i.e., everyone, since they're encamped right by the door), with a friendly "Have you got a minute for the environment?" (or fill in the blank for whatever cause is on their shirts).

It's a brilliant verbal gambit, because it's hard to say no. I really wouldn't mind this attempted conversation if they actually wanted to inform me about the environment, or ask for a signature on a petition, but that's never what it's about. (I did stop to talk at least a couple of times, you see.) But it's always about asking for money.

Now that many people have caller ID and can screen out unknown callers, it seems that person-to-person fundraising has gotten more common. I knew a few people who canvassed during the summers back in college, but I never had anyone come to my door back in those days, and I'm sure I never saw anyone doing it in public spaces.

Why does it bug me so much? I think it's because I know they know that once you've met someone, even if it wasn't a self-initiated meeting, human nature makes us feel a bond of interdependence. And humans are wired for interdependence because our survival so often depended on it. After all, we aren't the biggest, the strongest, or the most well-armored, and we don't have the sharpest teeth or claws. We've got our brains and we've got each other, and that's it.

I read recently that canvassers are sometimes taught to touch the person they're talking to on the arm if they can, and that giving is much more likely from a person who has been touched. The fact that they know that and use it makes me mad.

The Village Voice ran an article about the street canvassers of Union Square, and after reading that, I realize we have it easy with our canvassers in Minnesota. According to the author, Elizabeth Dwoskin, the canvassers she talked to don't actually work for the organization they represent. They work for a professional canvassing organization, Dialog Direct, which is hired by organizations:

Although the Dialogue Direct website promises that its approach ensures "the fun stays within fundraising," about 40 percent of new canvassers quit in the first week.... Dialogue Direct expanded into eight American cities in 2003.... And nonprofits are finding that the in-your-face approach often works better than more traditional fundraising models like direct mail, telemarketing, and expensive television commercials.

"You want to access the general public, and no matter how advanced your technology, the best way to access the general public is to get people talking to people," says Dialogue Direct VP, Matt Bergin.

Right -- it's about "people talking to people" -- make that "people talking at people."

One canvasser quoted in the story said:

...every objection comes from a certain place: "Either a lack of comfort, a lack of information, or a lack of empathy." She admits that dialoguers can be annoying, but adds: "I think Martin Luther King was probably a bit annoying."

I know I don't lack empathy with these causes, and I generally don't lack much information on the topics the canvassers are flogging. I do lack comfort with their methods, so maybe that's it. If Martin Luther King had been standing on a street corner trying to raise money this way, he might have been better funded, but there wouldn't be a national holiday named for him.

The Voice article ends with an incredible verbatim verbal assault by one canvasser on a med student. The canvasser had only signed up one person for the day, and it was getting late, so he hounded this unfortunate woman halfway across Union Square, calling out her name, guilting her about how she spends her money, trying to compare his student loan debt to hers. She finally manages to get away from him, and the canvasser says to the reporter:

"Are we really that annoying that if you stop for 30 seconds, we're going to ruin your day? What's the big deal?" he asks. "Ninety percent of people say they don't have time because they have to go to work. They are so self-centered. They feel if they take 30 seconds, the whole world will come crashing down."

The answer to that is YES -- you really are so annoying that stopping for 30 seconds would ruin someone's day, especially if you're going to treat people the way he had just treated the med student. And we're not necessarily self-centered -- we're tired of being accosted constantly by people asking us for money. You don't know how much money we donate to causes of our own free will -- and you can bet that all of that money goes directly to the organization, without any of it being paid to a canvasser.

Which brings me to my final objection to canvassers -- how much of the money donated actually goes to the cause. According to the Voice article, in New York the Dialogue Direct canvassers are paid $10 an hour, plus bonuses: $50 for the day's third sign-up, $70 for the fourth, and $180 for the fifth. In other words, the more successful the canvasser, the smaller the percentage of money goes to the cause. Other canvassers are paid on commission, and it's not a small percentage of the total.

I realize all fundraising costs money, but I wonder if the organizations who employ canvassers, either directly or indirectly, realize that their potential audience is tuning them and their message out. When I hear the name Environment Minnesota, for instance, all I can think of is the canvassers at the co-op.

I doubt that's what EM had in mind when they decided on canvassing as a fundraising strategy.

Other resources:

• Discussion about whether canvassing is exploitative on the Philadelphia City Paper website.
• Strip-Mining the Grassroots by Greg Bloom on MyDD.com