A church charity has been found to have breached the code of fundraising practice twice after a complaint was made over the charity’s campaign to fund a new building.
A complaint was initially made to the Fundraising Regulator about Immaanuveel – a Christian charity primarily serving London’s Tamil-speaking community – in August 2023.
The complainant was concerned that the charity’s fundraising campaign to purchase a new church building was not sufficiently transparent about the price of the building.
They argued that the campaign should have been stopped and the money returned to donors when the purchase was unsuccessful, and claimed that the charity had not responded to their complaint.
While the regulator found two breaches of its code by the charity, it uncovered no significant issues with the fundraising campaign itself.
Two code breaches found
Upon investigating, the Fundraising Regulator found that Immaanuveel had started a fundraising campaign to purchase a new church building in 2019, but had been unsuccessful in its attempts to purchase the desired building in 2020.
The charity stopped its fundraising campaign but did not take down the campaign page on the online fundraising platform.
However, the charity placed the money raised into a separate bank account and has since used the funds to buy a new building.
After concluding its investigation, the regulator said that there were no “significant issues found with the fundraising campaign” and therefore no breaches of the code in regard to the conditions attached to any donations from the campaign.
However, it did find that the charity “did not include information about what would happen should the campaign fail within the fundraising material”, which it considered to be a breach of the code.
The regulator also considered the charity to have breached the code as it did not have a complaints policy in place at the time of the regulator’s investigation.
It also did not have a policy about what it considered an unfounded or potentially reputationally harmful complaint.
The regulator added that the charity provided it with a response to the concerns when asked.
Charity asked to review decision
The regulator recommended to the charity that it review its fundraising policies and procedures and inform potential donors in writing what will happen to their donations should a campaign be unsuccessful, which the charity has now done.
It also told the charity to ensure that all campaign information is consistent and that it should create a standard text to add to any future fundraising campaigns.
The regulator said that following its final decision, Immaanuveel asked for the regulator’s external reviewer to consider the regulator’s decision.
However, the external reviewer found that the reasons for this request did not meet the criteria for review.
Immaanuveel has been approached for comment.
