fundraiser

agent de recouvrement

commissioner

chargé de la collecte de fonds

shift leader

Public Outreach Group

Warning- this review will be lengthy. 

I worked for Public Outreach's Ottawa branch from the beginning of September 2018 to mid-October 2018. I worked as a door-to-door fundraiser. Shifts are from 4-9pm on weekdays and 1-6pm on weekends, generally. You are expected to work 15 hours a week minimum. 

A typical day at work involves commuting to a location in the city (decided the day of the shift) in time for the shift's start. There is a debrief by the supervisor at the beginning of the shift which takes around 30 minutes. This involves going over the group's statistics, identifying where everyone will work, and sometimes practicing your scripts. Then, you spend the remainder of the shift knocking on doors to persuade people to sign up for monthly payments towards a specific charity (depends on which charity PO is working for at the time). Transportation to and from the "turf" sites are not typically provided and it's up to you to arrange transportation for yourself. 

I learned quite a lot from this job both about myself and about the company I fund raised for. There are positives about working here which include growing your people skills, working with enthusiastic people, and a complimentary trial for a mental health counselling program through the company. The company fund raises for some important charities and camaraderie among coworkers is generally strong. 

I did have some experiences which rubbed me the wrong way when I was employed there. The first thing was that they put you through a trial period of 5 shifts in which you are not paid the full, advertised $16/hr, but minimum wage ($14.00 in ON at the time I worked there). In these 5 shifts you must raise a minimum of $125 in monthly payments (an average of $25 raised per shift) or you will not be hired. If/once you are hired you must maintain an average of at least $4 raised per hour of working. If you fail to do so for one week, you may either be immediately let go, or placed on a "support program" in which you are coached and monitored by a supervisor for the following 1 week in an attempt to improve your stats. Furthermore, if you don't manage to fix your average after 1 week, you are once again put on a training plan as you were when you were first hired, and your pay is decreased. The decision to either let you go immediately or put you on a support plan is up to the Project Manager entirely and doesn't have much of a basis other than how long you've worked there previously. In other words, there is little to no job security on this job. When I was working there I saw someone who'd been employed for over 6 months be let go very abruptly. I found that in some cases there was little effort to help fundraisers improve and that some people who work there don't really care if they let people go because the turnover rate for the job is so high.

Because of the stress of no job security most of the people who work as door-to-door fund raisers are heavy smokers. This is not particularly company related but it did result in me picking up that habit again. It is a high-stress position and caused me serious anxiety in the weeks I worked there.

I found some decisions about when and where to fund raise highly questionable. On September 21st in Ottawa, numerous tornadoes ripped through the city, leaving many with damaged homes and a large amount of the population without power. Despite the difficult circumstances, we were still called into work in the days immediately following--- to canvas in areas that had no power instead of fund raising in areas of the city which did have power, or even just calling off the shift. I was told by many people that day that to them, it reflected poorly on the charity I was fund raising for. I was also encouraged to use the circumstances as a way to "guilt trip" people into signing up with me (i.e. "You don't have power right now, imagine if you never had electricity."). I found this to be unethical and think it would have trivialized the situation. 

Thirdly, I found the way we are expected to fundraise kind of confusing. Most of the time you are on your own, fundraising well into the evening, when it can get extremely dark. As a young woman, I was often uncomfortable fundraising in areas I was unfamiliar with in the pitch darkness with nobody around who would notice if I disappeared. Not only that, but fundraisers are encouraged to enter someone's home if they are invited in and they don't think anything seems amiss. I think this is bizarre and unsafe, and most definitely not worth it just to raise extra money.

Ultimately I wouldn't recommend working here. It works for some people-- which is why people can work there for a long time-- but it's not for the faint of heart, as you will often encounter frustrated and unkind people. It can be rewarding, especially if you do well and care about the charity you're representing, but overall my experience at PO was not particularly positive.

°typical day of work is being left alone to call about 35 people per hour and convince them to give you money, regardless if what they're doing at the time or how they are doing financially 
°i learned to interact better with a large number of strangers, but also that I don't want to work in sales ever again
 Culture, hardest part, and most enjoyable are as follows:

After being reassured multiple times that they value quality over quantity, they will still fire you if you're not hitting their quota.
They do no take into account any outlying factors, like: their own tech not working properly, their leads being dry and people not picking up because they've already been dialled 5-8 times before you, or even sick days. 
(Even while management was stressing that they were experiencing some of the all-time lows of phone pickup/successful donation, they ignore this and look purely at the numbers you turn out)
Its all about that quota!!
After being told they would work hard with you if they see you're falling behind the money they want, (and providing specific examples of how they might help, such as: one-on-one coaching sessions, transfering you to a different charity to see if it meshes better, improved problem solving, etc.), they will simply let you go in the most casual and tone deaf way possible at the end of a shift.
Their training is non-specific and offers only 'tools you could use while you're out there', but will refuse to help if you give specific examples or ask how to apply those techniques in specific scenarios. 
If you mention the lack of pickups or even technical problems straight up not letting you collect funds, managers turn it around on you using corporate double speak ala "Okay ignoring the things we can't control, what can we do to improve?" Or "That's definitely a suggestion to consider, something we need to think about. Thank you"
Other training highlights I should mention: 
1. A senior employee told me, verbatim, "we have to emotionally manipulate these people"
2. A manager gave a small conference about how the elderly are probably lying ("I don't wanna say that they're lying hahah but y'know it's your job to find out if they're telling the truth")  about not having money, "because [her boss]'s mom said that all the time but she was actually making like $2500 a month on her pension", then she laughed and said "that they're probably making more money than you!" to all of the employees present
3. We were trained to grill the potential donors after being told they're too broke, to prime for personal information to see if they were lying about not being able to afford donations
If you're struggling to close because everyone you speak to is elderly, disabled or poor, they tell you it's your fault and you just need to push them into it using Confidence

I was really excited for this job, but was left feeling uncomfortable at what was being asked of me, then discarded when it wasn't enough.

+ The weird corporate culture they're creating feels a bit like a virtual summer camp where the bosses try way too hard to feel like they're your friends

The job would have been enjoyable without the threat of losing your livelihood if you're having a bad week, or if the charity doesn't refresh their leads soon enough.

A typical day of work consisted of meeting team on-location, setting up booth, standing long hours, approaching people walking by to chat, engaging people in conversations about world issues, inspiring people to make a positive impact on these issues, facilitating donations both electronically and on paper and ensuring the charity was being represented accurately and ethically by myself and co-workers.

Throughout eleven months of working with Public Outreach I learned about current issues around the world concerning gender equality, micro-finance loans, community development, the cycle of poverty, animal abuses and global animal protection laws, refugee camps, emergency medical care in volatile areas, human rights issues, emergency relief, advocacy and lobbying. I also learned a lot about how to  personally relate to people from many demographics and how to successfully build rapport tailored to an individual. 

I felt thoroughly supported as an individual and as a teammate by my three managers over the course of working at Public Outreach. They were able to effectively balance a professional and personal relationship with me, invest time and resources in my professional and personal growth, and gave me helpful constructive criticism in areas needing improvement. 

I looked forward to coming to work every day because I had the privilege to work alongside passionate people who cared deeply about creating positive change around the world. I learned to work and cooperate with people who I would not normally interact with and found common ground with each co-worker. 

The hardest part of the job was maintaining high performance and consistently meeting quotas for donations every day. The job could be mentally and physically draining at times and it could be difficult  to consistently maintain enthusiasm and high performance despite occasional harsh weather conditions. 

Overall, working at Public Outreach challenged and stretched me into a stronger, tougher person. I developed strong interpersonal skills and a stronger, more realistic world-view. I loved meeting so many new people and connecting with individuals on a meaningful level. I thoroughly appreciated facilitating positive change globally as well as in the lives of the people that I talked with. Working in a community of caring employees and a generous city made me appreciate the power of the individual and of community. Going forward, I will take the skills and lessons that I learned with Public Outreach in my professional and personal life.

If you are an individual that wasn't that confident in socializing, working at Public Outreach will develop you in ways you wouldn't think. There is an amazing amount of fun coworkers and the job you do on the streets, doors and malls feels incredibly rewardable. Working at all of these types of fundraising locations give you a different vibe, so fit is entirely up to you and incredibly flexible.

I can confidently say that working at Public Outreach was one of the best decisions I made in my life, as it taught me how to break out of my shell and admire the greatest qualities of myself. 

Barring that, it wasn't a perfect job, far from it. I could not be happier quitting. I would not recommend Public Outreach to friends or family, as with its great interpersonal development opportunities, it is hindered by horrible management and stress inducing job security. I've had friends let go with little to no notice, and although they do promise an "development plan" to coach struggling fundraisers, it seems that they only apply it to fundraisers that become favourites. 

Most of the quality, caring and helpful managers are let go or demoted after a few months from working there. There is a large upper management clique that will belittle their lower managers for not hitting goals on bad weeks where it was near impossible to hit those goals in the first place. All while they sit in their offices and coincidentally show up to help fundraise on high traffic, peak fundraising weeks, as an effort to pad their own numbers. 

There were many instances where the lower managers (FTLs) came out crying from meetings that were preceded by screaming contests. Absolute turnoff and completely unprofessional. Power trips are incredibly common, I've had friends demoted because they disagreed with what an upper manager had to say about a slow week. The internal politics are some of the worst I've seen in any environment, and you need to play them in hopes of getting any type of promotion and heck, even keeping your job. 

These same screaming, senior managers also have refused to move workers from places fundraisers deemed uncomfortable. After various sexual harassment reports by female co-workers (including me), upper management refused to change the mall we were working in thanks to contractual obligations. They gave us a suck it up, or go home for the day attitude. This has happened in the same specific malls constantly, but upper management still refused to take it off our rotations. 

Also a massive drinking and smoking problem between the workers, more than I have seen in any job before. 

Overall, I don't regret my experiences learned at Public Outreach, as it had made me a better human being, but it is definitely a job I would not go back to.

Worked downtown Toronto in an English team. Management is VERY supportive, always ready to answer your questions, lift your spirits and give you coaching on what you feel is lacking. Coworkers are very friendly as well, and every day you get at least half an hour of training during which you can hang out with others, and also half an hour of PAID break. You aren't really pressed to work all the hours so if you feel like you need to rest you are free to in expense of the amounts of hours you get paid for and time you need to meet your quotas. But the work itself is extremely daunting. You are supposed to call people who signed petitions or donated in the past, which is borderline cold calling as some, naturally, don't understand nor care that much about the causes enough to have a 10 minute conversation with you(as expected from managers). Basically on every call, you are supposed to make friends with whoever you are reaching out to using the same script(which gets extremely repetitive in a week or two), twist their arms into not hanging up if they are busy(managers expect you to push people to talk to you even if they are working/driving/eating or whatever it might be if it's not of extreme importance), then if they say no once you ask them to donate(which they MUST do over the phone exclusively and it MUST be a MONTHLY subscription, else you basically don't get credited for them donating), you are supposed to distract them with another topic and then ask to donate again three times in a row(so if a person says no I don't want to donate because I'm broke/scared to donate over the phone/unemployed, you are supposed to persuade and ask them again twice or thrice, as if you fail to meet your quotas and don't do that you'll get fired in a few weeks unless you start meeting the quota again). You can imagine with people feel extremely uncomfortable with you asking them to donate multiple times when they already told you no. If you don't get any donations because people don't want to donate it is pinned on you personally and you are told that others are doing good and if you will continue failing to meet quota you will be fired. Quotas are definitely reachable if you are good, but if you feel like you can't do the abovementioned colicitating ritual comfortably I wouldn't advise trying this out. Also be ready that in any situation, you are going to be succesful on like 2-3 calls a day out of dozens of calls, so 90% of people will turn you down no matter how hard you try so you should be able to take tolerating wasting 10 minutes of holding a conversation and getting a no many many many many times a day, and if that affects how charming you are no one is ever going to donate. 90% of people donate not because they support the cause but because they really liked you, so the key to the job is actually befriending people and if you can't always be pationate about that getting many rejections in a day you will fail.

Public outreach was an amazing place to work at. The company has inspired me to go back to school and to continue perusing my passion for social change. The one part I love most about the company is that everyone begins at the same level - the beginning. 

Even though there are tons of opportunities for advancement, the one thing I would say that needs toil be improved upon is not making assumptions before listening to what needs to be said. But I always understood that hard decisions need to be made when there are very strict timelines and changes are being made to the position. 

A typical day at work would always begin with a conversation. I loved to get to know each individual I worked with so that if there is a problem, I knew that they always felt comfortable talking to be about it. Because it was such a high paced environment, if one of my employees was having a rough day (regardless of something happening at home or at work) it would affect their performance, so I try to help by offering my advice or support. 
         We would then pitch people to try and get people to speak to us about a specific social problem, such as animal cruelty, and then we would try to inspire/encourage them to get involved. Because it was performance based, I found that many of my employees got a little discouraged, and so did I at times. But the fact that it was performance based, and such a fasted pace environment thats what I loved about it. Public outreach stands by their standards of ethical business practice, with no commission, and fully explaining the donor registration form, which I completely admired and respected. The reason why I loved the performance based position because even though I was the fundraising manager, I held the title "number 1 Fundraiser in Canada", and I loved watching myself succeeding and performing with excellence. 

The hardest part of my job was letting people go or watching people get frustrated when they are trying to do well, but are not pulling in the numbers. I loved watching people succeed, it was hard to see my staff get so upset when they are trying their best.

In theory this sounds like a great opportunity: get paid to work for a noble cause. In practice it's a boiler-plate operation that is predicated on your ability to secure not donations per se (most people will give) but monthly donations - which is an exponentially harder task for which this company is paid handsomely. You've got about 8 hours to extract about six void cheques for monthly donations or you're gone (i.e., if you're not successful right out of the gate they'll cut you loose). If you're young and beautiful with a borderline sociopathic ability to bully people without them knowing it (and taking satisfaction therein), you'll do alright. Being lucky also helps (it's a numbers game). But you must love growling dogs and have a Machiavellian instinct for The Kill. If you can speak quickly and in soothing tones while batting your eyelashes and preying on the reluctance of the landed gentry to shatter the idealism of youth, then go for it! Pretty girls are especially successful at obtaining void cheques from older men. And I don't think we need to ask why. There is lots of academic research on success factors. If you are not young and beautiful with a borderline sociopathic instinct for The Kill, look elsewhere. When people give void cheques to strangers at their door they are doing it for their own reasons which have ( all caveats aside) nothing to do with the noble cause of supporting worthy charities. They are entering into an exchange relationship with the "rapper". They are either buying into the idealism of youth, or seeking to avoid embarrassing themselves in the eyes of a pretty girl by appearing financially un-fit. 'Nuff said. Great working with younger people, although their lack of discipline is rather shocking. It's also rather disturbing encountering some very rude people who seem to take enormous narcissistic pride in being immune to the suffering around the globe. You learn a lot about human nature on this job, and much of it is very unflattering. Only wolves in sheep's clothing need apply. Work for the actual cause if you want to help; these companies are only interested in hiring people who can hit the ground running, and succeed where - let's face it - most people fail [hence the perennial advertisements]. It's not a job, it's a pole dance with a clip board. Next up?

I've done this type of work in the past and did consistently well at it *but* at PO you're not given a chance to show your performance over a longer period of time - if you don't meet quotas within the first month you're gone. 

I was told I was doing well then during my final week I wasn't meeting my targets and was told I'd be let go by end of week if I didn't get my #s up. I appreciate the warning, but most of these targets aren't realistic. One time donations don't count towards your goal either which is asinine. 
The workplace culture is fake positivity and very competitive. Sometimes the paid boardgames are fun breaks, but other times they're more stressful than the job itself. During briefings you're often made to perform in front of a group. They're trying to make these "fun" exercises to cover up how awful their culture really is. They often say "be a human!" while not allowing you to really be human. 
I saw people who'd been there for several months get put back on probation. It's an inhumane way to run a company! Appreciate the employees who come into work on time everyday and enjoy their job. Jobs with high turnover rates aren't ethical. I've worked in fundraising jobs where people actually performed better when there were no targets. Having very high daily goals hinders performance more than you may realize. These types of organizations are run even worse than a corporation - at least at most corporations you get 3 months to prove yourself. 
Training was actually decent and I appreciated knowing the official process of a phone call for charities, but in practice I did worse using their method which is more about manipulating people than simply telling them about the cause and asking them to donate. I saw several people do 3 rounds of asking & still get a "no" most of the time. 
These also aren't warm leads, but cool leads (these people haven't donated before but signed petitions).
If you must work here, see it as a temp job while you keep looking for other jobs. It is not worth the stress or humiliation to work at a place that doesn't value you. They have their core group already and will use you for some donations before firing you. 

When I started at PO I had a great time and I had a great team to work with early on that was very supportive and motivating of each other. There are plenty of hard days but because of the support of the team that became my friends it was all made easier and your day is only made easier by the work and dedication of the team with your with. The more supportive they are, the better your shift will be. 

However management is very watchful and if you do not maintain good numbers you're given a few chances until they let you go. However when they decide to do this is always at the worst times it seems, and does not help to motivate people positively at work at all on top of the bad treatment you will receive daily from people at the door. It is the support of the team that gets you through.

However PO has a very high turnover rate because of this so people are constantly getting hired and getting fired. Most just leave before they are fired though. After the summer my entire team left whom all became my friends and I lost the support I had at work. Adjusting to a new team gets very hard and I find that many take this job far too seriously to become overly competitive and are biased with how they treat a new person to the team if you are not already a part of it. Door-to-door was very hard and once it gets to be about 8:00 people may start yelling at you that it is too late at night and you many feel bad. It is up to you to may your own way back home from a neighborhood you're in and it can be very unsafe.

I went on for as long as I could but it is very hard work. This review is meant to help show the gritty reality of what it is actually like to work at PO. It can be a lot of fun if this is your thing and you're fully committed, but if you care about how other people think about you or how you feel in general in relation to others, then it is going to be very hard for you. I will say that.

If you apply for this job then I sincerely hope you have a better time then I did toward the end.

The company only cares about the bottom line. Listen to the way the management talks about the charities and you'll realize that they don't care. To them, the charitiable causes are just talking points. They really don't care about the programs or the goals of the organizations. They only want monthly donations which help them cozy up to the charities and increase the company's cash flow. Even if someone wants to give $100 one time, they will tell you to reject this money. 

Management at this company is terrible. Here are things you can expect and many of your co-workers will tell you about. These are not isolated incidents. 

1. Not paying you the hours you've worked or the hourly rate. I was paid for training wage of $15/hr despite having been hired two weeks prior. Many of your co-workers will tell you to keep track of your hours and many of them have random hours docked despite being on time and working the entire block of time. The longer you work here, the more money that won't reach your hand. 

2. Work locations will change last minute. Many of the workers are commuters and it takes them an hour or two to get to work. Yet management is too lazy to update the work location often until two-three hours before the shift starts. You will be half way to one end of town only to realize the new location is on the opposite end.

3. You work the same area over and over. Every single location they operate in has already been done over and over again. Many of these neighbourhoods have been tapped dry. These people get canvassed sometimes several times a week. You might even work an area where your co-workers were yesterday. 

4. They force you to work 3 days a week, no less. Even when there's 10 people working a small neighbourhood area, which reduces the success of the group overall, you still have to work 3 days week. If you're looking for a non-burdensome part time, look elsewhere.

5. They don't care about worker safety. The winter in Canada gets really cold. But Public Outreach won't provide hand warmers, feet warmers, extra gloves or hats. These are basic things which an employer is legally obligated to ensure to an employee working in the cold.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Fundraiser 105 salaries reported	$21.09 per hour
Agent de recouvrement 15 salaries reported	$19.13 per hour
Commissioner 21 salaries reported	$22.57 per hour
Chargé de la collecte de fonds 2 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour
Shift leader 5 salaries reported	$23.80 per hour

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