Pros
The free accommodation. My accommodation was fantastic and I was lucky enough to be in a house with Sky & Broadband. The fund-raising itself is very ethical in the sense that it is not pushy and all of the fundraising costs are covered by gift aid over the course of an average donation. If you are good at door to door fund-raising you can make a lot of money from it! There are also opportunities to go abroad with the company if you rank in their top 10 fund raisers for the month.
Cons
Throughout the entire application and interview stage I was thinking that there must be a catch as it all sounded too good to be true.. and yes there are a few things that aren't made clear to you until you actually start the job. Firstly it is advertised as 35 hours a week - 7 hours a day across 5 days right? Nope. Hours are actually worked out based on how many doors you knock on... 30 doors knocked = 1 hours pay. An average day entails meeting downstairs at 10.30 for training before leaving the house at 11.30 and not getting back till 9.00-9.30ish. You can't be paid for more than 35 hours a week either. Secondly I was explicitly told that weekends would be my own to do with as I wish... this is only true if you get 15 sign ups (people to agree to a direct debit donation) by Friday. If you don't get them you have to work Saturday & Sunday as well.. it is not uncommon to work 14+ days in a row. Thirdly there is a lot of job in-security, you are only as good as your last week of work.. You have to get 15 sign ups totalling £1050 in donations every week. If you do not manage to hit this target for 2 consecutive weeks then you will be asked to leave the company. If you do get through the interview stage you will be told to attend a training day and bring £100 to see you through to your first pay day, I would advise bringing more than that as there are expenses.. e.g. you do have to pay for your own petrol which is £10 a week, and the first pay day could potentially be 8 weeks away! Not everyone was as lucky with the accommodation as I was. Some of the other accommodations have shared bedrooms (which would be a definite deal breaker for me) There is no guarantee as to where you will be placed, so it is really pot luck whether you get a nice accommodation or not! Staff turnover in this job is huge. There is the opportunity to be a company driver and you get paid an extra £25 - £50 more each week (depending on how many sign ups you get) - I would strongly advise waiting a week or two before taking this responsibility on. As it does mean you have to run people around and work even longer hours than you already are (particularly if you are in the middle of nowhere and people need picking up/dropping off from train stations or taking to the supermarket). In my opinion it wasn't worth the extra weekly money.