Emergency and development charity Concern Worldwide (Concern) is bypassing agencies by employing face-to-face fundraisers directly.

Traditionally, the services of the on-street canvassers have been leased to charities by one of five big companies – Push Consultancy, Gift Fundraising, Dialog Group, Caring Together and Fruitful Fundraising UK.

These firms raise funds on behalf of charities, receiving between £40 and £60 for each donor who signs up to monthly direct debits.

But Concern is now abandoning this model and recruiting its fundraisers directly, so that 100% of every donation goes to the charity. Each fundraiser is paid a flat rate of £8 an hour.

This method has been so successful that a number of other charities, which Concern declined to name, have contacted the organisation for advice and assistance on setting up their own in-house fundraising teams.

Justin White, the general manager of Direct Dialogue, Concern’s in-house fundraising department, said: “We don’t use an agency to employ fundraisers. All our fundraisers are recruited in-house. We felt that this type of recruitment was the most cost-effective way of generating regular donations.

“By having an in-house operation, we discovered we got far better quality recruits who were committed to our organisation. We found that we could rely on our staff to get our message across to the public. We also noticed that we had better attrition rates.”

Face-to-face fundraising has grown in popularity over the past five years. According to the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, the industry’s self-regulatory body, 690,000 people signed up to charitable causes using this method in 2002, pledging an estimated £240m over the next five years.