After twenty minutes of mainly closed doors, 10-year-old Marre knows enough. This is of course not the case with collecting. So she drags her mother Eva Nagtzaam onto the terrace in Breukelen, where half-full wine glasses offer hope that there is something to be gained for the two collectors.
For the third year in a row, Nagtzaam, who works in education, raises money for KWF together with her children. This year it will be done without a collection box: the largest charity in the Netherlands (130.9 million euros in private donations last year) is the first to ban him. Instead, 80,000 volunteers are going door-to-door this week with a red sign with a QR code and the KWF slogan: ‘Against cancer, for life’.
The new style barcode has become an integral part of everyday life. You can place your order on the terrace and the QR code is on the market as a replacement for cash. The personal QR code on Nagtzaam’s board, with which she can see how many people have transferred, brings the donor to a KWF transfer screen with 5 euros as standard. Not everyone in Breukelen realizes that this amount can be adjusted.
Log in again
Due to the need to keep a distance, KWF already experimented with digital collection during corona time. Last year’s trial in 24 cities turned out to be a success. In Rotterdam, 36 thousand euros were raised, 15 thousand euros more than in the previous year. The QR code also makes short work of the old excuse that someone has no change in the house.
During the collection week, ‘100 percent QR’ is the motto this year. Although it turns out that it takes some getting used to, Marre and her mother in Breukelen also notice. Hardly anyone on the terraces in the old town can resist the questioning look of the cheerful girl on inline skates with the pink laces. Only the telephones, and otherwise the mobile internet, do not work.
‘Should I take a picture of it?’ says a blond woman in large sunglasses. “You should keep your phone further away,” her partner gestures, a little less patient than the two collectors. An older man in a brightly colored polo shirt tells Nagtzaam and her daughter about his frustration with the ING app. “I keep having to log in again.”
Nagtzaam, as district head, has six collectors under him, who each go through about eighty front doors. Her neighbor Monique, who went out on their own street earlier in the afternoon, sets the bar high: she collected 102 euros with the QR code. Nagtzaam’s own collection is a lot more difficult.
‘It is also allowed to say no’, she says at a house where a marital dispute develops about whether or not to donate. Further on, an elderly gentleman in a blue blouse is just about to tackle the weeds in his front yard. He knows what to do when Nagtzaam explains that he has to take ‘some kind of photo’ of the QR code. Unfortunately, his device with extra large keys does not have a camera.
“It’s for the fight against cancer,” he calls through the front door to his wife. She offers a solution with her mobile. ‘Shall we just do 2 euros again?’
Veteran Ellen de Clerck – who started as a collector as a teenager in 1974 – is curious how easily older donors can say goodbye to the collection box. Whoever says collect in Cuijk, says De Clerck. ‘When it comes September, people say: don’t talk to Ellen, otherwise she will ask if you want to collect.’ Cancer has become an integral part of her life: her mother and sister died from it, she herself got kidney and subsequently uterine cancer. “It’s a shit disease, and I’ll say it nicely.”
Nostalgia
De Clerck (65) will miss the sound of a full bus – the jingling change can sometimes convince hesitant donors. “It’s nostalgia after all.” But at the end of a collection week she will never have the buses of all her collectors at her home again, each with an average of 200 euros in it. Collectors no longer run the risk on the street without change. In addition, depositing at banks is becoming more and more expensive, says KWF.
The collection box has been overtaken by modern times, just like the telephone booth and the emergency telephone along the highway. You shouldn’t be too sentimental about that, says philanthropy professor Theo Schuyt (VU). “We don’t use a carrier pigeon anymore either.” The most important thing, according to him, is that the collection remains essentially the same: personal contact for a good cause, be it cancer, Ukraine or the church. “And it still stands rock solid.”
In Breukelen, Nagtzaam and her daughter make personal contact with everyone. “I already donated yesterday, but chicks like you steal my heart,” a man says to Marre. She has now decided that collecting is the fastest if people can also pull out their wallets, although her mother continues to try with the QR code.
‘You can do it with your phone and give loose money,’ Marre tells the terrace visitors. The entire QR strategy of KWF is in tatters, but notes are showing up everywhere. After an hour of collecting, Nagtzaam transfers the collected cash (45 euros) to KWF – exactly as much as they collected this evening via the QR code.