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When I was raising money for the LAA I came across some horror stories of unscrupulous charity activities. I was working for a really good firm that go out of their way to make sure that the good name of the charity on whose behalf they are working is not sullied by shady practice or pushiness. But, I know from colleagues who'd worked elsewhere in the sector that this was quite unusual. Like, for instance, we were always told, not to ask more than three times, and don't pursue thatmany times if you got the impression the potential donor was getting annoyed. We were absolutely not to pursue if we had any suspicion that we were dealing with someone vulnerable. And if we'd made a call and someone had gone for it on a monthly direct debit donation, but we were concerned that there was something off kilter - like maybe that person had some form of mild dementia, then we were to tell our team leader straight away and they'd pull the call and listen to it. I had one like that - the guy was very willing and gave me al his details, but there was definitely something not right, so I told my team leader, and she listened to it, agreed with me and they cancelled the order. They sent details to the charity for them to write to the donor if they wanted to, but it never went through as a direct debit, and we removed the name from out call list.
I had another call where the lady seemed totally fine, really chirpy and friendly and as soon as I said where I was calling from, she said, 'oh yes! yes, love, I'll help' but when it came to her bank details she started to get a little confused about what was or was not a sort code or account number and said her daughter usually deals with all that. That was that - I thanked her and said I'd call some other time when her daughter was about and we took her name off the system
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