The Institute of Fundraising is investigating possibilities of a new regime for public collections following Lord Hodgson’s calls for reform in his Charities Act Review.
As part of his review of the Charities Act 2006, Lord Hodgson made a number of recommendations regarding public collections, including the abolition of National Exemption Orders – which enable some charities to run door-to-door collections without specific licences – that national guidelines or model regulations be established, and that a single group work to license collections. More broadly Hodgson said: "There should be a single standards-setter, a single investigator/adjudicator, and others involved as necessary in space allocation."
Hodgson also suggested a select committee would be set up to look at the issue, which covers everything from cash and direct debit collections, to clothing collections and prospecting.
Many fundraisers have been keen to watch how Hodgson’s recommendations on public collections develop in practice, as collections are an essential part of many charities’ fundraising mix. The term ‘public collections’ encompasses a broad church of fundraising activity covering all collections made house-to-house, on the street or in public. It covers everything from Poppy Appeal bucket-rattlers to agency-run door-to-door clothing collections.
After recently going to its own member charities for contributions to help fund the work to review the recommendations and propose a workable system, the Institute is now going “full steam ahead” with an initial meeting planned for early September.
The project will see the Institute outline the present situation, develop broad support for the principles of a framework (which it will feed in to the Public Administration Select Committee in September), commission an impact assessment of different models and scenarios then take a proposal to government in time for the debate on the Charities Act Review. It will then hone the proposals and develop an evidence base should government start a formal consultation process.
"The recommendations that Hodgson has made are quite different from parts of the Charities Act, I think that probably surprised us,” said Lewis.
He said that the Institute’s member charities have been very generous in contributing to the work, but that the interests of those organisations which have donated will not be given additional sway in the process. The proposal to abolish National Exemption Orders attracted controversy, particularly from the British Red Cross director of fundraising whose charity holds one such certificate.
“We have to try to design a public collections scheme that will work for every charity, whatever its size, and works for local authorities,” said Lewis. The Institute has already had preliminary meetings with the Local Government Association.
“We’re bringing the sector and sector bodies together to think about what a regime would be, and we’ll be engaging with various bits of the local government world to work out what a workable scheme would be.”
The Institute is keen to engage with other stakeholders in developing its report, including the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, the Charity Retail Association, Fundraising Standards Board and "key charities".
“We’re the natural body to lead it because it’s a very complicated piece of work, and other bodies need to be involved whether it’s the PFRA or CRA. Often our members are members of all those other organisations.”
Lewis said it will be a big piece of work, adding that the Charity Commission failed to do anything since the 2006 Act, estimating that a single system for public collections would cost £4m to set up and £1.5m annually to run.
