Fundraising Review: Is the charity sector guilty as charged?
It’s been hard to miss the tsunami of criticisms that charities have faced about who and how they ask for money over the last few months. Major stories have run repeatedly in the tabloid and mainstream press as well as broadcast media. The upshot was Sir Stuart Etherington, CEO of NCVO was asked by the Government to undertake a review of the current system of fundraising regulation.
The report has now been published and is available here.
The main recommendations put forward by Sir Stuart include:
- Establishing a new Fundraising Regulator, responsible for regulating all types of public fundraising by UK-based organisations, whether charities, not-for-profits or companies. In the review, this regulator is estimated to cost between £2m and £2.5m.
- This would be funded by a levy on fundraising expenditure, paid by organisations reporting an annual fundraising expenditure of £100,000 or more. There are roughly 2000 charities that fall into this category.
- The regulator would have stronger sanctions to ‘name and shame’ fundraising organisations that broke the rules, and potentially to ban them from fundraising activities.
- As a result of this change, responsibility for the Code of Fundraising Practice would move from the Institute of Fundraising (IoF) to the Fundraising Regulator. The Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB) would also be closed down.
- The report also calls for a merger between the Institute of Fundraising and the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA).
- A new Fundraising Preference Service would be created, which individuals could register with if they do not wish to be contacted for fundraising purposes.
DSC wants to hear your views. Do you think this is the right way forward? Tell us what you think
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