The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association has accused online shopping portal easyfundraising.org.uk of taking a “cheap shot at face-to-face” in order to promote its own service.

Yesterday Easy Fundraising issued a press release highlighting the results of an online survey it carried out on peoples’ attitudes to face-to-face.

It claimed that 60 per cent of the 1,000-plus respondents said chuggers actually put them off supporting the charity they represented, and more than two in five had stopped supporting a charity because of concerns over its aggressive fundraising methods.

The release was picked up by the Mirror, who published a short story headlined High street charity ‘chuggers’ put people off donating.

PFRA chief executive Mick Aldridge pointed out that Easy Fundraising’s research was not carried out by a professional research agency amongst a representative sample of the population, but was a SurveyMonkey survey filled in by self-selecting members of the public.

He also said the questions were “loaded with inherent bias that were almost certain to elicit these results”.

“We are disappointed that once again, one type of fundraising has attempted to promote itself by taking a cheap shot at face-to-face,” he said. “This is despite the fact it is one of the most successful methods of donor recruitment ever which, for the last ten years, has delivered an average 600,000-plus new donors and contributes around £120m to charity annually.”

Gary Thompson, managing director of Easy Fundraising, responded: “We can understand why the PFRA is annoyed that bad practice has again been highlighted, but this is an issue that clearly generates incredibly strong feeling among the public. 

"If the PFRA has a genuine problem with our research methodology – which questioned over 1,000 members of the public – we would be delighted to carry out another survey in six months time, in partnership with the PFRA, to see if it finds people have changed their minds."