Charities in Scotland will not have to use the Fundraising Preference Service even when calling people based in England and Wales, according to a statement released this week.
The FPS is a system which will allow donors to opt out of all charity communications from large charities in England and Wales. It is likely to launch next year and will be administered by the Fundraising Regulator, the new regulator set up to regulate fundraising in England and Wales.
Charity regulation in Scotland is devolved, and a working group led by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations decided that the remit of the Fundraising Regulator would not extend to Scotland.
Now the Scottish Fundraising Implementation Group – responsible for carrying out the working group’s decisions – has issued a statement which formally confirms that, as expected, the FPS will not apply to Scottish charities, even if they call donors in England and Wales.
“In the Scottish Fundraising Working Group’s consultation on a new system of fundraising regulation in Scotland in the Spring of 2016, there was generally support for the stated aims of the FPS,” the statement said. “However, charities in Scotland were not convinced that it offered anything over the current legal requirements.
“The UK Information Commissioner noted that the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament was ‘not persuaded of the case for a new Fundraising Preference Service, concluding it would duplicate the function of the existing Telephone Preference Service and add limitations to the activity of charities that do not exist for any other sector.’
The Scottish Fundraising Implementation Group is therefore recommending to charities in Scotland that they do not need to screen against the FPS.”
The move leaves large gaps in FPS coverage. Smaller fundraising charities in England have also been told they will not need to check their campaigns against the FPS. Questions have also been raised about whether charities have the necessary technology to comply with the FPS.
Ten complaints
The working group also said it had so far received ten complaints about Scottish fundraising. Two have been forwarded to OSCR, the Scottish charity regulator.
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