The recent death of 92-year-old Olive Cooke has thrown the spotlight on fundraisers. David Ainsworth says that more must be done by charities and regulators to assuage the public's concerns.

The death of 92-year-old poppy seller Olive Cooke was a tragedy. It’s doubtful whether it was really directly caused by charity fundraisers, as some newspapers have claimed. But it seems likely that the charities which sent her hundreds of begging letters must have played a significant contributory part.

The sector has to sit up and take notice about this. The case of Olive Cooke has shown the national mood, and it’s pretty ugly. There are a lot of people out there calling for something to be done about the behaviour of fundraisers.

Even David Cameron has got in on the act, and said he hopes the FRSB will look at “whether any more could have been done to prevent this”. If the Prime Minister is saying that we need stricter fundraising regulation, it might be time for charities to take notice. He can make it happen pretty quickly.

Something has been done, obviously. The IoF, FRSB and PFRA have launched a review. Individual charities involved have taken it very seriously.

So far there has been action, but not much contrition. Much of the sector has instantly taken a defensive tone. There have been a lot of people out there who have said that rules already exist to protect people, and they just have to be ask to be taken off the lists.

Nobody is actually saying it, but you get the feeling that among many fundraisers, there’s a feeling that the end justifies the means. Good causes need money, and you have to get it, and if a few feet get trodden on the way, well, that’s unfortunate but it’s not the end of the world. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

This would be reasonable if the case of Olive Cooke was an isolated one, but it isn’t. Complaints about the behaviour of fundraisers are endemic in our society. There’s a lot of disgruntlement out there, with people feeling hounded and attacked.

I remember working in an office in Hammersmith, where literally every time you went out into the street, a fundraiser accosted you. It was unpleasant and irritating, and it made me like fundraisers less.

There is something to the public's complaints, and it must be addressed.

(I suspect that people will read this and respond that complaints to the FRSB remain very low; I’m not sure that’s a success story. It doesn’t suggest to me that people aren’t unhappy, just that they don’t know where to go.)

And the protections for those who feel hassled aren't that great. It’s pretty disingenuous to say that people who feel pressured and leaned on by charities simply need to let the charity know. It’s not enough to harass and worry people and say that you’ll stop if they ask you - especially if they're frail and vulnerable individuals. The onus is on you not to harass them in the first place.

Nor is it even true that just writing a letter will work. We know all too well that there are plenty of iffy fundraisers out there, who push the edge of the rules. We’ve heard fundraisers say that “no cold calling” signs don’t apply to them, heard fundraising bosses say it’s okay to call people who are on a “no call” list to see if they really meant it. We’ve all had the guilt-inducing enclosures – the 12p, the umbrella, the blanket.

And once you’re on one of the warm donor lists, which are sold again and again at £130 per 1,000 names, it doesn’t matter how many charities you write to, asking to be taken off their mailing lists. Because a new letter will come through the door from someone else.

I don’t mean to say that defensiveness is universal in the sector. There has been a lot of positive reaction from the sector, without a doubt. And the truth is, it’s a difficult balance, being a fundraiser. I wouldn’t fancy trying to get it right. You have to ask, but you can’t ask too often, and too aggressively. It’s hard for individual fundraisers, with difficult targets, to hold themselves back. Nor is the sector able to work as one.

But I think the sector has got it wrong just now. There’s too much aggression, too much competition.

It’s not something any individual charity can solve. This is a particularly difficult case, because no one charity which wrote to Olive Cooke did anything especially wrong. It was the combination of them all which caused the difficulties.

We can't expect the individual charities to back away and let others take their donors, so the response has to come collectively. The balance has tilted too far the wrong way, and charities must work together to bring it back.

There are two potentially unpleasant outcomes for charities if they get this balance wrong: one is a loss of trust from the public, and the other is the dead hand of government falling on their works.

The issue of the loss of trust has been debated endlessly. It takes an enormous amount for the public to change their ingrained attitudes, and the word charity is so powerful that scandals such as this blow away quickly, leaving the sector's reputation almost intact.

It will take an incredible amount of harassment and hassle before the public really start to hate charities. Although it's not impossible.

The other issue is more immediately problematic. If David Cameron hears of another couple of horror stories about fundraisers, and decides it’s a good way to win a few brownie points with the public, all he has to do is institute provisions which are already in the Charities Act, and replace the FRSB and PFRA with a statutory regulator, with a mandate for crackdown and reform. That would really set the cat among the pigeons.