The Fundraising Regulator has announced that it will be distributing leaflets in doctor’s surgeries as part of its first Fundraising Preference Service public engagement campaign.
The regulator announced this morning that 76,000 leaflets promoting the FPS have been distributed to doctor’s surgeries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as part of its first ever public engagement campaign.
The campaign will run from today until August and the regulator said it would form “part of the efforts to ensure that people who want more control over the communications they receive from charities, particularly those in vulnerable circumstance or their families, are aware of how to use the Fundraising Preference Service to deal with unwanted communications from charities”.
Stephen Dunmore, chief executive of the Fundraising Regulator, said: “We are excited to announce our first public campaign to promote the Fundraising Preference Service. This is a really important initiative to make sure that those who need our service have all the tools in place to manage communications from charities.
“We are looking forward to working with GP surgeries across the UK over the course of the next few months to promote the Fundraising Preference Service.”
A spokeswoman for the regulator said the leaflets cost £5,500 to design and print, and a further £12,000 to distribute.
She said: "The number of people who have signed up to the FPS in the last year shows that it is being used as intended: as a last resort for stopping communications from specific charities.
"This campaign specifically is about ensuring that the most vulnerable across the UK are aware of our service – which is why we are targeting GP surgeries.”
Over 6,000 people signed up to FPS
The public engagement leaflets include information about how the FPS works, and contact details for the Fundraising Regulator. They also say that “over 5,000 people have already used the service to prevent one or more charities from getting in touch with them by phone, mail, email or text”.
Civil Society News understands however that some 6,806 individuals have registered some 16,500 suppressions of charities on the FPS since it launched.
The FPS was officially launched on 6 July 2017, a year after the Fundraising Regulator itself was officially launched.
According to the last set of full accounts published with Companies House, the Fundraising Regulator spent £228,000 on setting up the FPS up to the year ending 31 March 2017. The regulator had originally set aside some £1.2m for the FPS in its first budget.
A spokesman for the Fundraising Regulator said that, based on the number of suppressions, the FPS cost £41.43 per-suppression including set up costs or £100.79 per-individual user including set-up costs.
Editor's note (31/05): This story has been updated to amend the figures of the cost of the Fundraising Preference Service. The original piece erroneously reported that it had cost as much as £3,200 per-individual user.
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