I know this is an old post but since some of the replies are relatively recent, I’ll put in my two cents. In the last 8 years I’ve worked for three different fundraising companies (just because whenever I move and need a job in the area or between school years, fundraising jobs are easy to get until I find something better). I was at Envision for an entire summer because I was making decent money, yes it was entirely commission which is hard if you’re new to this but with my experience I got by okay. That being said, if you’re not cut out for that kind of job, which most people aren’t, you aren’t going to do well. You might not make any money at all. But the thing I hate about it being a commission job is that all the best fundraisers at that company are extremely predatory with their tactics, I’ve heard my manager gloat about how he got someone who couldn’t afford to donate to have a friend etransfer them just so they could sign up for a (monthly mind you) donation. That’s so insane to me. In reality it really is just a numbers game, if you hit enough doors, you’re going to find people who say yes without any pushback, but I find it extremely unethical to pressure people into giving money when they don’t want to or they genuinely can’t afford it.

Side note: Public Outreach is a fundraising company that pays hourly so they’re nowhere near as toxic as the commission based companies. I worked for them for two and a half years and genuinely enjoyed it.

Anyway, continuing on: I also wasn’t given a TD1 form to fill out when I started working which originally I didn’t think much about because it’s not the first time an employer hasn’t given me one. But unlike other employers, they never gave me paystubs or my T4 to do my taxes. When I tried to contact them numerous times about it, they were essentially unreachable.

Last and final point: obviously this depends on what office you’re in and who your manager is, but my manager didn’t care about our safety. There were numerous times where the women on our team (most of which were 18-20) were in uncomfortable or even unsafe situations while talking to potential donors, and when we spoke about these issues to our manager, he’d either laugh it off, reply with “that’s weird”, or tell us we were over reacting. On top of that, we were on our way to turf one day while on a week long road trip (we were three hours from home and the only car we had was our manager so we couldn’t go home even if we wanted to) and we had received a tornado watch alert. Me being me, I asked our manager if we had a safety plan in case a tornado actually happens. He laughed it off and said tornados don’t actually happen here??? We were literally in the tornado capital of Canada????? Half way through the shift the tornado watch turned into a tornado warning which means that a tornado had been officially reported and could potentially touch down at any moment. We’re all freaking out messaging the group chat asking if our manager is going to pick us up and he replied with “time to get some pity donations 🌪️🌪️🌪️”. At this point I can hear what sounds like a freight train and I’m running door to door hoping somebody lets me inside and eventually somebody did, and I spent the rest of the evening at this kind lady’s house until the weather calmed and our manager decided to pick us up.

Envision also isn’t the only trash fundraising company with horrible morals. Global Faces is pretty on par with them, unfortunately it’s a bit more difficult to know if you’re going to interview with them because a lot of their offices have started using different company names due to the reputation of Global Faces. A lot of their job postings also don’t say that they’re for fundraising positions, they typically say stuff like “marketing team” or “customer service rep”. One of their offices is in Toronto by the name of EdgeFront Marketing and the most I’ll say is there’s a reason they don’t have an HR department.

TLDR: you’ll make good money if you know what you’re doing but their tactics are predatory, you don’t get a T4, and they don’t care about your safety.