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Face-to-face: the next act1

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 29 Aug 2012

Roll up, roll up, for the next act of the fascinating spectacle that is face-to-face fundraising. By Tania Mason.

Face-to-face fundraising walks a tightrope; it always has and it probably always will.  As the PFRA’s new CEO, Sally de la Bedoyere, aptly puts it: it has to balance the rights of charities to ask for support with the rights of individuals not to feel unduly pressured into giving away their hard-earned money.

It’s still a relatively young fundraising technique, and it’s had to fight to get a seat at the table – even within the sector itself. Under the leadership of Mick Aldridge, the PFRA built a reputation as something of a pitbull – as one insider said recently, “he only had one mode and that was attack”. But that’s because that was what was needed at the time – the crusade against chugging by the right-wing media had taken hold and the lily-livered fundraising charities, despite cashing in by the bucketload on the street, always found something else to do whenever the Daily Mail or Telegraph journalists came a-calling.  It was left to Mick and his team to try to defend the technique – a situation that was a source of constant frustration for him.

But now there is a glimmer of hope that things might be changing. Since the infamous Newsnight debacle
of a couple of years ago, the PFRA has been working hard to convince its members that they do need to step up to the plate when chugging is challenged, and Sally de la Bedoyere is confident that in future, they will. As a former managing director of the Evening Standard, she understands intimately how the media works and that the portrayal of street fundraising is driven by the personal likes and dislikes of editors rather than any dispassionate analysis of the facts.  But crucially, she also understands that while the PFRA can work its socks off managing site agreements, improving compliance and generally driving up standards, all of that won’t be nearly as effective as the director of fundraising at a household-name cancer charity standing up on Newsnight and explaining from the heart that that annoying chugger outside Victoria Station has just helped to save the life of six-year-old leukaemia patient Rosie from Ealing.

Sally de la Bedoyere has plenty of relevant experience, clearly relishes a challenge and doesn’t seem the type to suffer fools. She also has a mature, intelligent approach to chuggers: “I’ve never donated to one but I’ve had plenty of conversations with them. Some days I have the time to stop and ask them about their charity, others days I’m too busy and so I smile and say no thanks and walk past.  And I think that’s what the public should do too.”

She’s a shrewd operator and after just three weeks in the job she can talk about the often-complex issues as if she’s been there three years. She confidently compartmentalises the challenges raised by Lord Hodgson in his report and has plans in place to address each of them. And she refuses to engage in any public jostling for position with the other fundraising umbrella bodies, while also firmly declaring that she only expects the PFRA’s role to grow.

For avid spectators of this particular tightrope act, it just got even more interesting.

• Click here to read Tania Mason's interview with Sally, the first she has given to the sector media.

Directory: Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA)