Though not as common as they were a few years ago, well branded youthful face to face fundraisers, aka 'chuggers', are still a regular feature on the British high street. Their UK success led to a number of very successful companies providing the same service in other countries. Face to face has become the keystone of almost all NGO new market entry strategies.

However a new report by the UK charity monitoring and comparison service Intelligent Giving calls for a public boycott of chuggers
, suggesting many are untruthful about their mode of employment, ill informed about the work of their respective charity and refuse to back down when members of the public express no interest. Intelligent Giving argues this malpractice certainly break guidelines set out by the UK's Institute of Fundraising
(IoF) so chuggers should be forced off the streets.

Statistics cited in the Guardian suggest roughly £20 million is raised by chuggers in the UK every year, with 75% of Greenpeace's new members being recruited this way between 2000 and 2003. It might therefore be difficult to argue with Lindsay Boswell, Chief Executive of the Institute of Fundraising, when he argues face to face fundraising is still clearly an appropriate and effective method of fundraising; facilitating a one on one dialogue about the charities' work perhaps lacking elsewhere.

However questions must be asked about the cost of these chuggers... how much of the potentially irritating, charity do-gooder enthusiasm is driven by the extra commission they take home at the end of the day? How many annoyed and harassed people see them as the forefront of "charity" as a whole and hence refuse to give via other means too? Aren't there more effective ways to recruit donors or supporters as we near 2009?

We should also ask why Intelligent Giving leads the charge for cleaning up face to face, why not the charities themselves? Surely they should care about the individuals representing their causes across the nation and in some cases, the world? Or are they just happy to count the income and ignore the potential longer term damage caused poor practices?

And for Intelligent Giving - what would the better alternatives be? It is great to highlight the limitations of the current methodologies, however they are far better than they were just a scant few years ago. The completely unrealistic suggestion to go online and give seems born from the same notion as the Intelligent Giving site. It is there to service the hoards of generous individuals wandering down from their bed of a crisp winter's morn, wedge of hard-earned fifties in hand, noodling on the challenge of where to spend their "spare cash". The fact is people don't often wake up like that. Otherwise there wouldn't be companies making profits of hundreds of thousands of £, $ and € every year from running face to face campaigns.

Perhaps Intelligent Giving could suggest some ways to help charities get members of the public to connect directly with their online donation pages. Especially at this time of economic and seasonal gloom. No doubt Intelligent Giving could also help charities increase their conversions online and show how to create the all-important connection Lindsay referred to.

Maybe it is time for "watchdogs" to get more involved with the practicalities of raising cash. The companies making a good living from chuggers, the IoF, Intelligent Giving and charities should all be aiming to raise more cash more effectively. To do this we all need to share insight about success and applaud lessons from failure.

Couldn't we drive greater income for all by show-casing more cost-effective, manageable and robust ways to raise money across all platforms while embracing greater experimentation with digital?