Tens of millions of pounds donated to charities every year by the public through 'chuggers' seldom get further than private fundraising companies, an investigation has revealed.
Unjust cause: Collection companies often recieve more than charities.Charities pay huge sums to firms that employ so-called 'charity muggers' who stop people in the street and try to persuade them to donate by direct debit.
But the charities often don't see a penny of this donated money because the 'chugging' firm charges are so high.
Last year, 750,000 people signed on the dotted line, giving an average contribution of £90 a year.
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 £3m a year. Guide Dogs said it paid out nearly £2m annually.
Save the Children, Great Ormond Street, Amnesty and others also pay millions.
Newsnight also asked the 20 charities whether they believed they should be open with their donors about the fundraising costs. They agreed but - with the exception of the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK - they refused to say how much they paid to sign up each donor.
Mick Aldridge, chief executive of the Professional Fundraising Regulatory Association, said: 'Some charities might be paying £50 or £60 per donor, some might be paying £100 or £120 or possibly even more.'
'It may look to the outsider - to the uninformed outsider - as if all of their firstyear donation is going to go to a third party but that's not the only way of looking at it.'
He added that overall the charities get £3 to £4 back for every pound they pay the subcontractors, which he said was an excellent return on an investment.
In response to the Newsnight investigation, Cancer Research UK said face-to-face fundraising was just one of its cashraising activities and that the costs were outweighed by the money raised. pkg_fe_dm_linklists.f_group_carousel_slider(in_link_list_group_id=>848) -->