ICO under pressure to clarify telephone fundraising rules

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 8 Dec 2009

The Information Commissioner’s Office is to come under pressure to clarify rules on telephone fundraising following a summit in late November.

A coalition of charity bodies will ask the ICO to clear up confusion over whether charities are permitted to call existing supporters even if the supporter is registered with the Telephone Preference Service, what permissions charities need to be able to call individuals and to clarify the distinction between administrative and marketing calls.

Confusion over whether charities are telephone fundraising within the law prompted the Fundraising Standards Board chairman Colin Lloyd to call a meeting of umbrella bodies for last Friday, 27 November.

The meeting, attended by the FRSB, PFRA, Institute of Fundraising, Direct Marketing Association, and telemarketing agencies Relationship Marketing and Pell and Bales, and others, also called on the Institute of Fundraising to clarify the definition of a ‘warm relationship’ in its own Telephone Fundraising Code.

The Institute and FRSB are now putting together a submission to the ICO asking for clarification on the contentious aspects within the Data Protection Good Practice Note and the administrative/marketing call distinction within the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003.

Lloyd said that the standards of telephone fundraising have improved, but that further development is being hampered by the lack of clarity within the regulations. “This extra step is essential if we are to ensure that fundraisers can be 100 per cent clear about what constitutes best practice in telephone fundraising in order to adhere to the same high standards,” he said.

The organisations involved in the summit plan to host a sector event once they have obtained clarity on the rules.

Directory: Direct Marketing Association | Fundraising Standards Board | Institute of Fundraising | Relationship Marketing | The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA)

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