It's not just the tactics that are offensive, it's the lack of disclosure. I'd like to know what percentage of money raised goes to the organizations and what goes to the fundraisers. As for me, when solicitors try to stop me on the street, I smile and just keep walking.

Attention Mr. Gunn: I'm polite and energetic, too. When Dialogue Direct canvassers have wished to directly dialogue with me saying, "Want to save...?" I've civilly said, "No. Leave me alone." When they turn and follow this potential donor trying to move away from them I stop, turn, look them in the eye and calmly state, "Take another step toward me and I will punch you in the mouth."

Rude, crude, likely illegal, and works every time.

These companies are taking out a big chunk of whatever they get in pledged charity donations.

They are truly aggressive and disingenuous. There are limitations placed on begging. Limitations on sandwich boards on sidewalks.

I live and work in the Pike Place Market area, so these solicitors attempt to engage me a frustratingly number of times. I've responded in various ways...currently I am completely ignoring them.

As for the nonprofits I support directly, I have contacted them to express my concern with this approach towards fundraising.

Based on this article, I think that the only group in compliance are the Obama=Hitler people, often camped out at 1st & Union.

I completely ignore them. No acknowledgement of any kind. But I've always felt just slightly guilty about that. This article is helpful!

Of course that's better than how I treat the LaRoucheites, who I call f-cking idiots typically as I pass.

Which is far nicer than I am to cars in crosswalks. Yeah I get into a lot of arguments.

This is why I never, ever, ever, give money to charities which solicit me on the street (or at my door). "I need to look into this more"/"I'll donate online" isn't just a pat excuse.

The many crack dealers downtown could show these amateurs a thing or two about doing business downtown.

This issue is an important one. We need "safe streets" and the public needs to be educated about those who solicit whether it is for charitable contributions or initiative signatures. I vote for a Lightfoot-Rasmussen to carry the issue forward to some positive solutions!!!

These companies also often try to get around Washington State's Minimum wage law by only paying the canvassers a rate based on the amount they collect. When in fact it's illegal to pay them less than minimum no matter if they collect nothing.

If you want to have fun talk to the canvasser, ask them if they are paid on a per donation basis. Tell them if that if they are making less than minimum wage to contact a lawyer and have that lawyer write a note reminding them of the law.

The best way to shut this nonsense down is to attack it at the root of the problem, underpaid workers.

Oh yeah, how do I know this? My daughter worked for Grassroots campaign for a month and we threatened to sue. It was for the Democrats fund raising for the 2008 election and being stanch progressives were supportive of the fund raising.

Oh, and remember they are often just kids trying to get a first job. You can be firm and yet nice about saying "no thanks." This is not a reason to be treat people like dirt, vs being cut off in the cross walk.. although I tend to give the driver the benefit of the doubt that they didn't "mean" to cut me off when I remind them of my presence.

Great piece Judy. It's good information. I have always said that if you feel bad for not contributing on the street, that is not the problem of the person asking. Protecting free speech is more important than your own guilt. However, I have been blocked by these canvassers far more times than any panhandler. I really don't like the shaking hand bit and jumping in front of your path. Thanks to your piece I will cheerfully charge through the outstretched hand from now on!

In addition to verbal assaults by canvassers on the street, canvassers routinely ignore the "no canvassing" sign in front of our house, too. And after I say "You ignored the no canvassing sign. Please go away," I have had a couple of canvassers continue to stand there and keep talking to my door. (?)

As I walk by these people quickly, I give them a big smile, a wave and I'm out of there.

Annie

These people are a particular challenge for people who live downtown and pass by them everyday. I can not take a simple walk to the Pike Place market without being approached several times on the way there and by the same people on the way back - especially at Harbor Steps. One of the joys of living downtown is being able to go to the market everyday. If we want downtown to be a good place to live and to encourage pedestrians, this needs to be curtailed.

Its enough to make me wish I had one of those bone-crushing grips. "Hi." Shake, hold, squeeze. "Who are you soliciting for?" Squeeze, tighten. "How much are you paid?" Squeeze, tighten. "Do you have medical coverage?" Squeeze, tighten.

I've trained a lot of volunteers for initiative signature gathering and one of the most basic lessons is if the person declines to sign, don't waste your time, tell them "have a nice day," and go on to the next. Following people? Continuing to accost them? Sounds like harassment or even stalking. And a good way to get people to vow to never contribute to that charity ever again.

I also employ @Laurence's tactic... it works, for sure!

I am really more offended by Ms. Lightfoot's rationalization of the deceit, coercion and intimidation employed by Dialogue Direct's canvassers--we're talking about armed robbery here, but without the weapon. But then, her idea of helping the homeless is to buy one of them coffee and let them rant for an hour.

Things like this are what made me realize there is absolutely no reason to go to downtown Seattle. Anything that's there, you can find just about anywhere else, but without being hassled and without having to pay exhorbitant parking fees. Nobody on the Seattle City Council understands this...

Is this the #1 priority of the Seattle City Council? Are you kidding me? The encounters I've had with these people have always been respectful and polite. They're energetic young people just trying to make an honest living. Does every complaint into the Seattle City Hall have to be responded to with more government regulations and red tape?

Perhaps the City Council should spend some time trying to add a little life into Westlake Park, which is just an armpit. Figure out how to get some street life into that place.

OMG, people are upset that someone talks to you on the way to your shopping errand? Get a grip folks. Just say "No thanks, gotta run," smile and keep walking. sheesh.

Richard, I've had the same response as well. In fact it's often interesting to stop and talk to them. They are usually clueless about how the world works and what it's going to change it. I find its often fun to just take a minute and banter with them, challenge their assumptions, ask questions about "how well is that working?".

But really, if you don't want to talk, smile move on, use the person in front of you as a post like playing basketball so they can't get to you.

I'm with Laurence Ballard and orino on this one.

Add Real Change papers, Planned Parenthood, the PIRG folks, ACLU, and other beggars to the left wing money grab going on as a daily 'in your face' on Seattle streets and in the neighborhoods. "Don't Feed the Birds".

My daughter worked for Dialogue Direct last summer as a paid canvasser in downtown Seattle. The situation with Dialogue Direct is that you are on salary but that there are expectations as to the number of sign-ups that you need to fulfill each week in order to remain employed with the company. It has been a great experience for her in building confidence in presenting herself and in convincing others that donations to Children's International is a worthy cause.

With all charities, one should consider how much of the donation goes to salaries and how much goes to overhead and administration. According to Charity Navigator, Children International returns 80% of the donation to its program, 6.7% of donations are for administration and 12.5% goes towards fundraising (which in this case is the salaries for the canvassers).

As far as my daughter goes, while she was working for Dialogue Direct she chose to use part of her salary to sponsor a 5-year old child, Brenda, in rural Guatemala. Prior to starting school at the UW, she had the opportunity to visit Brenda's family while traveling through Mexico and Central America in their small farmhouse and see how her sponsorship is helping Brenda to go to school. Rest assured, the child whose photo you receive and whose birthday you are asked to remember is a real child who does live in desperate poverty.

And while many may disagree with the techniques used to sign up sponsorships for poor children, it are methods such as these that prove to be effective in making a difference in individual children. To a canvasser of Dialogue Direct, one less sign-up per day is one fewer child that gets to go to school or have something to eat. And that is a very strong motivator.

...Or maybe the same money goes to more effective donations instead.

In my daily walk from the bus tunnel to work I am constantly being solicited for contributions, sometimes 3 or more times within a few blocks. It is annoying, but how can one be too hard on what appears to be the laudable altruism of the "volunteers" doing the asking? The revelation that Direct Dialogue is behind this is and that there are no "volunteers" is really galling. So this is business and free enterprise in America today.... making a buck by skimming a little something off the top of just about any monetary transaction, even charitable contributions! I used to politely decline the solicitations, now I will make a point of finding out who these pesky people represent. I want my dollars to go to those in need, not to another questionable "service" business.

While researching on-line, I came across this article in the Zambia Post by journalist Edem Djokotoe in Lasaka Nigeria that describes the work the Children International is doing in that country. The commentary by Djokotoe contrasts the aid work that is being done by Children International with the corruption evident in Zambian school building projects.

If nothing else the article shows that the effort to engage the public in meaningful dialogue extends to readers in Africa just as it does to readers in Seattle.

"A Children International survey carried out in Kanyama and Chibolya in 2003 revealed that 91.6 per cent of the people in the area were unemployed and earned their living vending and through illicit means. I am not much of a statistician, but I want to believe this figure is a microcosm of the 70 per cent of the population who live in abject poverty and can barely survive, let alone take care of the orphans in their families. As things stand, 30 per cent of all households in the country are headed by elderly people above the age of 65.

This is the reality I came face to face with last July when I found myself at the Chibolya Centre run by Children International. It was lunchtime and the 78 children fortunate enough to be on the feeding programme were tucking into plates of nshima, kapenta and rape. I couldn’t help noticing a group of women and children at a distance, theirs eyes transfixed on those who were eating their lunch with relish and wild abandon. It was very evident they were hungry, but all they could do was sit and watch.

I found the whole scene quite depressing and I asked the project nurse, Mrs Pamela Sandu Kangwa how the Centre coped with the situation of having more mouths to feed than it could afford. “It is difficult. Many of these women come with extra children every time they bring those who are on the feeding programme to the Centre to eat. When there is some food left over, we give it to them but if there is nothing, they go home without eating. It is very sad but there is nothing I can do to help,” she said."

http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=9924

These people don't even exist to me when I pass them by. Luckily, I have no social skills or else I might feel a little guilty for ignoring them. But they are attempting to impose an unwanted business transaction upon me so I treat them with the same fundamental disrespect that they show me by treating me as nothing more than another mark.

"Real Change" is one of the last real newspapers in town. The vendors are earning money by selling it and none of it is spent on administration, expensive advisers etc. If you talk the people selling it, they are just trying to get back on their feet with a "real" job. In fact much of the journalism in "Real Change" beats the stuff on this on-line rag hands down.

Judy, thanks for doing this piece and stimulating so many commments.

Real Change vendors are earning their way and never accost people. But, living in Belltown and walking frequently there and downtown, I often see
tourists and families accosted aggressively on the street by threatening
solicitors and/or panhandlers.

For what it is worth, I respond to any phone solicitation by asking that written materials re the project, charity, etc. be sent via mail. Not surprisingly, they never come.

I was visiting LA in May, and was acosted (that actually what they do), by these people in a lot of places. They don't take NO for an answer, right up to the point of harrasment, knowing exactly how far they can go without fully crossing the line.

The Dominic Holden had the best repsonse to this activity:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/dear-street-canvassers-stop/Content?oid=8525385

I keep the cutout response sheet provided ready for when I get accosted here.

To say these solicitors are threatening is a bit over the top TVD. This is a bit of a tired stereotype that homeless people who are on the street soliciting money are 'threatening' as well. Only in Seattle would 'Thank you, have a nice day' be construed as threatening.

This is what freedom of speech on public property looks like sometimes. You don't have control of other people and you just have to learn to deal with them.

Imagine what Times Square would be like if New York City had a Tom Rasmussen who wanted to regulate away the street food vendors, face painters, comedy club ticket salesmen, street artists, CD salesmen and trinket sellers. You'd have a place that would perhaps be alot like... say Westlake Park.

"... It’s hard to navigate your way down any high street nowadays without being approached by a bouncy, spritely young person vying for your direct debit details. We all know that chuggers are not fundraising solely out of the goodness of their heart, but what you may not know is that they are often not even employed by the charity they are raising money for.... Charities usually pay these companies between £80 and £160 for every donor they sign up. But when the average donor will only agree to give £90 annually, it often takes over a year for the charity to break even. This is bad news when you consider that the number of chugger recruited donors cancelling within just three months is currently at an all time high.
If a chugger convinces you of the need to donate a small sum once a month, don't sign the form there and then. Go home and set up a direct debit commitment with the charity directly, via its website.

http://www.lovemoney.com/news/get-the-best-deal/5-things-charities-secretly-spend-your-money-on-10302.aspx

But a BBC investigation has found the charities are often paying the companies, in effect, £100 or more for each signature they collect – meaning in many cases the company is paid more than the charity will raise from that donor in the first year. And many of those signed up by these sub-contractors do not complete 12 months of donations. Research shows that more than half the people who sign direct debits pull out before the end of the first year. As part of the investigation, BBC's Newsnight contacted 20 leading charities. The British Heart Foundation confirmed it paid the equivalent of £136 per signature. Cancer Research UK said it paid an average of £112 to recruit each donor and in total paid face-to-face fundraisers £3million a year.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1306567/Fees-high-street-chuggers-eat-millions-donated-charities.html#ixzz15VGHCpdM

When I complained to my partner about chuggers months ago, he said, “But they’re volunteers. You should be nice to them.”
“Volunteers?” I said. “Are you crazy? They’re obviously paid. I have no doubt that the charities outsource it to companies that take a good chunk of the money.” Well, last weekend, the Wall Street Journal had an article by Anne Kadet that confirmed my suspicions—and then some.
“What these fund raisers and their nonprofit clients don’t like to chat about is the financials—the outfits initially declined to disclose any details, but they all have their 2010 contracts on file with Washington State. The fine print yielded some interesting findings, which they later confirmed. Children International, for instance, pays fund raiser DialogueDirect a $245 fee for each new $22-a-month sponsor. The ACLU and Amnesty International USA, meanwhile, pay fund raiser Grassroots Campaigns $175 to $180 for each half-day canvassing shift that will produce, on average, less than $150 in donations.

There’s no law requiring commercial fund raisers to share a percentage of the take with their clients, and the New York attorney general’s office says it hasn’t taken any action against the street canvassers. But Washington State, which issues an annual commercial fund raisers report, ranked DialogueDirect at the bottom of the state’s 109 registered fund raisers after it returned -23% of the year’s take to Children International. Grassroots Campaigns, meanwhile, ranked fourth from the bottom, returning zilch.” http://tribecacitizen.com/2010/06/02/the-chugger-infestation/

See also: http://www.walletpop.co.uk/2010/08/28/charities-missing-out-as-fees-for-chuggers-wipe-out-donations/

The basic question is: What are the rules of the public space? Anything goes? Civility? Politeness? Is the public space overseen by: Law? Common sense (mine)? Needs of commerce? Culture? Who decides what's right to do on Seattle streets? Me? The City Council? A referendum? Should there be community standards? Who sets them and how? Thanks, Ms. Lightfoot, for the engaging piece.

@tgriffin

"...Washington State, which issues an annual commercial fund raisers report, ranked DialogueDirect at the bottom of the state’s 109 registered fund raisers after it returned -23% of the year’s take to Children International. ..."

I remember reading this study while my daughter worked at Children International. The conclusions, if true, would suggest that the canvassers are both being taken advantage of and are misrepresenting the charitable organization to donors.

Upon deeper review though, the conclusions seem to be completely at odds with the data provided by other charity rating organizations, like Charity Navigator. And if one looks at the study's methodology, it is apparent that the Secretary of State office is inapproriate applying it to the Dialogue Direct/Children International relationship.

In the event that you are interested here is the link to the report on the Secretary of State website:
http://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/charities/CFAR2010.pdf

The report specific for Children International is on page 29.

If one review's the report, one notices that the methodology used to rate the donations cannot be used correctly based upon how Dialogue Direct obtains commitments for children sponsorships.

The methodology is intended for situations when all donations are processed through a commercial fundraiser. In the case of Children International, the monthly donation to Children International is not routed through Dialogue Direct. Consequently, Dialogue Direct has no knowledge of the monthly contributions or future contributions should a sponsor decide to re-enroll or sponsor additional children after the initial two-year commitment.

Here is the caveat for using the Washington Secretary of State report:

"DialogueDirect, Inc. does not collect or have access to any donated funds as those who agree to sponsor send funds directly to the charities we work for. Sponsors obtained through the fundraising efforts of DialogueDirect are monthly sponsors, giving a minimum of $22 per month and
intend to support (but are not obligated to support) the charity with monthly gifts for at least 2 years. While some donors will sponsor for less than 2 years, many donors will support the charity with monthly donations well beyond 2 years. Therefore, the amount of donations received by the charities for DialogueDirect, Inc. fundraising efforts in 2009 will continue to grow over the years.

Children International sponsors agree to sponsor an individual child with ongoing monthly contributions. Many of our sponsors continue to contribute for many years. Due this ongoing commitment, it is necessary when looking at the value of a campaign to look at the income generated over a number of years. Projected contributions of the sponsors acquired through DialogueDirect over eight years are on file with the Secretary of State’s Charities Program."

I work near Westlake and I'm asked for money from street solicitors every single time I leave the office during the summer. My record is 8 asks in 3 blocks. I always make eye contact, smile and say no thank you. It works 99% of the time. Polite decency doesn't cost me a dime. Sure, they’re annoying and I even admit to dodging them occasionally by hiding behind a group of people, but rest assured when the rain is Seattle is back and all the tourists are gone, so will the street solicitors.