Ideal anthropological work:

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Bobby is a fundraiser for a non-profit that works for the public good. He goes door-to-door and tells the public what he is doing and gets them to help with the organizations campaign (Imagine a PIRG type thing). He encounters people from all walks of life--it can get a little ridiculous sometimes.

Some people shout for no reason, some people are awesomely nice and invite Bobby in and offer him food right off their dinner table, while some are downright vicious (dogs have been sicked on some of Bobby's coworkers, and Bobby has been threatened with dogs being unleashed). One thing Bobby is always shocked by is when people are simply not interesting in ANYTHING. People will see Bobby and wave him off and explicitly say: "I'm not interested in anything!"

To which Bobby is saddened and surprised. Once he tried to respond:

"But m'am. We're fighting for Justice! You want Justice, dontcha?"
To which the lady responded:

"I've already got Justice."

"Really? Uh, well, great for you. How bout Justice for other people?"
"Nah, I'm not interested. But you keep fighting sunny. People need to fight for what they believe in. Keep up the work. *shuts door*"
"*through the door* Thanks! Have a goodnight!"

Other folks will claim: "Why should I care? I got a nice house, a pretty wife, a healthy kid. My job is safe. My life is pretty good. I don't vote, don't care buddy, sorry. Better luck with someone else."

Is this just the: "fuck you Jack, I got mine" approach?

What do you think of people like this? What would you recommend for Bobby? Should he just give up on such people? Should he keep trying to remind them of the injustices that others currently face? Or should Bobby work on driving home the point that none of us have real justice? (As MLK said: "An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.")

Lastly: Bobby has told me that there are three major obstacles to fundraising (in his experience)

Those major obstacles are: Dinner, Dogs and Babies. Those will be used as the largest amount of cop-out excuses for why people cannot talk right now.
"Oh, it's dinner time"
"Oh, I gotta go make dinner/something is on the stove"
"Oh, the dogs are barking"
"I left my infant in the bathtub so I could see who was ringing my doorbell"
"I cannot give you a dollar because my second kid just started college"

These excuses aren't actually good reasons not to get involved with a good issue. But people will use any and all sorts of cop-out excuses. Perhaps the most amusing is:

"I'm in my pajamas, can't talk right now."

To which Bobby just laughed and walked away....

Thoughts?

Comments

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Cut? ;-)

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Sure. But I didn't think it was *that* bad. But w/e. No skin off my tuckus.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I think Bobby should can his smarmy self-entitled righteousness.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

And then sell it to you? Cause clearly, you don't have enough yet.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

Send Bobby to my house, I can never resist the door to door canvassers. They just look so earnest, it gets my maternal instincts going.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Heh, Bobby doesn't have much say on where he door-knocks. That decision is made higher up.

But Bobby did once tell me of a town in CT where one woman said:
"I agree with what you are doing, but I won't help you cause you aren't supposed to be doing this in this neighborhood."
So he went to the next door and through the closed door the woman shouted: "Get off the island!" (it was a semi-gated community over a bridge)

The next door he went to gave him a box of girl scout cookies and an orange and helped out. Funny how that works.

[caerfrli.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Bobby can find another line of work for which he's more suited. What his successor in the fund raising job can remember is that the solicitation is not about him or his organization but about the person at the door. Abstractions like justice won't cut it. What has to be explained is how the group's donors can benefit concretely from its efforts and existence. Will contributing make them safer? Richer? More beloved? How?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Why would you say Bobby isn't suited for this?
He's been doing this for several months and from what he tells me is making more than he is expected to.

Being annoyed at apathy is one thing; Bobby is quite good at getting the non-apathetic to give.

People who "aren't interested in anything" don't care if it will make them safer or richer or beloved.

[politikitty.livejournal.com]

Bobby isn't going to change the world. If that's why he's in this job, he needs to seriously rethink his career decisions.

He needs to learn to forgive people for not caring about his needs. It's not their problem, and just because they don't give him time and money does not mean that they aren't interested or supportive of the cause. They are not bad people. They have limited time, resources and energy.

I get so annoyed at the street fundraising that hang out on Castro Street. It's usually giant organizations like HRC, Planned Parenthood, ACLU or Greenpeace.

I am already familiar with your product/message. I can't think of many people who are not. I try to budget carefully, and that includes my charitable giving as much as my grocery spending. Random door to door salesman isn't likely to catch that window of opportunity when it's easier to just donate online.

Even if I wasn't, you are a random person on the street, not a reputable vehicle of information. If you told me something new, I would thank you and excuse myself to fact check your ass before I came close to pulling out a checkbook. Being bombarded with both charitable and material demands for my limited dollars, it's likely that you'll end up one in the pile with the rest of the majority of demands who do not get my dollars.

Bobby should think of himself as a worker bee, no more or less important than the person who sold you that fancy smart phone. He gets paid less because part of his pay is in self-satisfaction for being a better human being than all those dicks who are wearing their pajamas and sending their children to college.

He exists because enough people support his cause and forget to send in those contributions. He's a gentle non-threatening reminder. And if he feels discouraged, maybe he should remember that enough people donate to his cause of choice to pay his salary (or grant enough resources to put together a volunteer organization). If his cause is political, it will succeed if enough people believe in his cause, not so much because of him. If it's something more (poverty, homelessness, epidemics, mental health), an appropriate resolution is much more murky.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

But here's the thing: sometimes Bobby isn't asking for money. It happens, that, on occasion, Bobby is organizing some sort of event or letter-writing campaign that requires *no money* from folks. And even then, people wave him off before hearing even his name (let alone his organization or specific campaign)

"He needs to learn to forgive people for not caring about his needs."

He has no problem with strangers not caring about his needs. But his *societies* needs are something everyone in the society ought to care about.

And yes, people have limited time, energy and money. Bobby isn't asking for an extended period of time. He has told me that he has gotten $120 from a guy he spoke to for no more than 70 seconds (he timed it on his watch)

Now, maybe that guy already knew Bobby's group very well and was a past supporter (Bobby didn't tell me that info) but it actually is a quick and easy conversation to have.

The things Bobby works on *are* more important than the cell phone salesman. Bobby isn't looking for personal profit and gain; he is fighting for the public good. That's more important than selling an Ipad2.

And Bobby won't, individually, change the world; but his group has certainly changed parts of the world. This isn't a debatable point.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Bobby just reminded me of one of the best little chats he had:

"Not interested."
"Really? You are OK with how politicians are handling their business?"
"No, I'm not, but I don't know you. *shuts door*"
"*through the closing door* Here's your chance to get to know me! *door is shut* Take care!"

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I dunno. When I go door to door, I'm not getting in arguments with people. It ain't worth my time. I have a set number of hours in a day - I can argue with 1 person with no results in the amount of time it will take to hit 3 people who might benefit from my message.

There's also a good chance his idea of "justice" is not someone else's, but that's an entirely different can of worms.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

So you just let apathy continue? You don't even try and jar them out of their indifference?

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

I've honestly never had a canvasser for a non-profit org come to my door. I've had the cable company, some utility scam artists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the census takers, but never your door-to-door volunteer. I have no problem being decent to people who knock, so I'd probably invite him in for coffee, even if I couldn't support his charity monetarily.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

He's sometimes confused for verizon workers and one guy opened the door and was on the phone, he said: 'wait a sec' got off the phone and started 'before you say anything, i know why your here i work with the census' and Bobby was quite amused.

If you work for the census why didn't you do it?
Scam to make more govt jobs!? =0)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Just like any other marketing, the point of going door-to-door is to find the people that already support you, they just don't know about you specifically. It's not to try and convince people to change their opinions about your issue.

I do try to be not rude to them and just say "no" and leave it at that. I don't need to give an excuse as there is no requirement for me to be interested in whatever they're selling (and yes, Bobby is selling something). I never buy from anyone who is soliciting me, especially when they want a snap decision.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

re: last paragragph
Bobby meets four of you a week.
--

And no, he isn't selling. The services being provided are not going to any donor more than any past donor. So there's no sale of service or good for the money. There's putting your money where your mouth is. Agree with the cause? Give us money to fight it. We're gonna fight it without your money (cause someone else will give money) but you can give money and help fight it too.

I don't see it as a sale. What do you think it is that he is selling?

And lastly: but dammit, shouldn't people care? Shouldn't apathy be viewed badly? What's that quote:

We must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Is this just the: "fuck you Jack, I got mine" approach?

Yes.

Many people believe in the 'every man for himself' philosophy that our country was founded on.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I don't do business door to door, it's as simple as that. I've done it as a job before and if for nothing else I know how many people in the industry lack any sort of ethics and wouldn't believe what I was being told in any case.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I don't understand this anti- door-to-door policy people have. It's as if someone coming to their door somehow negates the value of their mission.

How is a phone call better? Or a piece of mail? If fraud is the issue, it's very easy to do over the phone or in mail, and online isn't exactly hard either.

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

Fear of change?

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

A charity that has to resort to begging on the streets is going nowhere. Perhaps Bobby could better serve his interests by writing a few grant proposals.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

That's a rather stupid way of looking at things.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

You seem to be falling into the old trap of "If you're not with me, you're against me".

The truth is closer to "If you aren't against me, you're with me".

Even so you must be prepared to accept that not everyone's Idea of "Justice" will match your own. Even when examining what you may consider to be a universal concept there is a lot of room for disagreement.

There is a poignient scene in the musical Across The Universe where in Lucy confronts her boyfriend Jude over why he isn't more involved in Anti-War movement.



^ By the criteria you've outlined above clearly jude is just an unfeeling asshole. ^

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I prefer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa_GGoDa2uM&feature=fvst

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Why should people assume they want what Bobby is "selling"?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

He's not selling.
They don't know what it is.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

I am going to go out on a limb and say that Bobby does not actually work for a nonprofit, he probably works for a for-profit consulting and canvassing services operation like Grassroots Campaigns, Inc, or if it truly is a non-profit, the Fund for the Public Interest (a "progressive" organization that argues that it does not have to pay minimum wages - way to make the Chamber proud).

The money he raises probably only trickles back to the non-profit, considering he makes $67 a day plus 30% of everything over $100 he raises (67% for $100 or 48.5% for $200) or 52% of anything he raises or some similar pay scheme. Often this will be less than

Yes, he does serve a purpose, like most outdoor sales, he is primarily a lead generator. Your $20 donation today will ensure a lifetime of solicitations and possibly a large future donation that will go through traditional fund raising channels, which have a 30-40% overhead.

Of course, he is not union either. No sir, I am not willing to give money to support his operation's overhead. Besides, I give to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the IWW and the Human Rights Campaign directly.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

your limb breaks and you fall to the ground

you lose 3 hp