The Institute of Fundraising has said it will not hand over the Code of Fundraising Practice to the new Fundraising Regulator until it has fundraising experts within its governance structure, and has also expressed concerns about a “single reset button” Fundraising Preference Service.
Speaking today at the Westminster Social Policy Forum in London, Peter Lewis, chief executive of the IoF (pictured), said it is appropriate for the new regulator to set the Code but that the IoF will not hand over responsibility until the Fundraising Regulator has fundraising experts at committee level and on its staff team.
"We will give the Code to the new regulator when we are confident that it has fundraising expertise within it both at governance level and staff team," he said. "One of the problems with the current system is that the regulator didn't have enough expertise."
Until this year the Code of Fundraising Practice has been set entirely by senior members of the fundraising profession, who sit on the IoF’s Standards Committee. The IoF has now changed the committee’s structure so it has eight non-fundraisers and seven fundraisers on the committee.
Stephen Dunmore, interim chief executive of the new Fundraising Regulator, has previously said that ownership of the Code is necessary for his organisation to function effectively.
"For us to be up and running we need ownership of the Code," he said, in an interview to be published shortly.
He said discussions with the IoF to take over the code had been "constructive", and that the board of the new regulator is expected to be announced “within the next few weeks”.
'Single reset button' the wrong option
Daniel Fluskey, head of policy at the IoF, yesterday expressed concerns about the Fundraising Preference Service, a system which will be run by the new Fundraising Regulator, and aims to allow individuals to opt out of all communications from charities.
He said that there is still not much detail around the FPS, which the new regulator will introduce, but he is not convinced that a straightforward reset button is appropriate.
He was speaking at the Inside Government 'Effectively Regulating the Voluntary Sector' conference yesterday.
“The main thing from my perspective is to show that we have solved how we respond to anyone who is vulnerable,” he said.
He said that “single reset button is not going to solve that problem for vulnerable people” because if they donate again, charities will not know who they are and will assume that they want to engage.
However Fluskey also urged fundraisers to get behind the new regulatory system. He said the recent report by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee shows “that scrutiny and public attention on fundraising is here to stay” and it is “important that we get all this right”.
Fluskey said it was necessary for the Code to transfer to the new Fundraising Regulator because “fundraising has to be cleaner than clean in the new system” and “if it was seen that fundraisers get to write their own rules” the sector will “always be open to criticism”.
He said it was important to demonstrate to “politicians, media and public that we are taking this seriously” and that the IoF is “fully prepared to play our part”.
But he added that “it is important that fundraisers play an important role in the new regulatory system” and “we can’t go from one extreme to the other - we can’t have regulation by opinion poll”.
New fundraising regulator will come down strong
Paul Stallard, chair of the PFRA, also spoke at the conference. He said that the new fundraising regulator will be coming down hard on poor fundraising practices. He said that its interim chief executive Stephen Dunmore and its chair Lord Grade have a “massive challenge” ahead of them.
“If I were either of them, I promise you I would not be a pussy cat. They are going to be heard, seen, felt, and listened to. I imagine that is a brief from the Cabinet Office, from the minister, because of what has gone on. So we as a sector have to get our act together and get our house in order to match the sanctions and attitudes of a new regulator. Because we simply don’t know what they are going to do.”
Other sectors ‘can learn from legacies’
Chris Millward, chief executive of the Institute of Legacy Management, told the conference that other fundraising departments can learn from legacy fundraisers when it comes to building better relationships with donors.
He said that while it had been a “difficult year” for the sector there had been little criticism of legacy fundraising.
He suggested that this could be because “legacy fundraising is rooted more deeply on a supporter-based approach” and is usually a decision that people have come to “based on something that has touched them in their lifetime”.
Millward said legacy fundraising cannot be driven by return on investment measures in the same way as direct mail and telephone fundraising and takes a “softer, more human approach”.
He said that it is important for there to buy-in to the method from the board and senior management, and that without it “I have seen it fail”.
Additional reporting by Alice Sharman
