It’s not going to go away. It’s time to join the Fundraising Standards Board and show that self-regulation works, says Celina Ribeiro.
The Fundraising Standards Board has 1,500 members.
When it launched in 2007, it aimed to have 4,000 to 5,000 members signed up by June 2010. In September 2008, it revised down this aim, to 2,000 members by mid-2010.
Three years on from that deadline, the FRSB is still well behind its target. And the government knows it. The government regularly cites the low sign-up rate among fundraising charities as a problem.
And yet, the government continues to endorse the FRSB and the current system of self-regulation. In its response last month to the Charities Act 2006 Review, government said the current system will remain in place – albeit with a review in the next four years.
There are various reasons why charities don’t sign up to the FRSB. Cost is one. A perception of its inefficacy is another. And while public awareness levels of the FRSB tick remain extremely low, there is little pulling charities to join.
Except that, this is it. This is what you’ve got, fundraisers. It will not roll over and fade away, starved of oxygen by non-member charities. It is part of the structure around fundraising, and you can choose to be part of it or not.
In its response to the reviews of the Charities Act, the government said that other organisations, including the Charity Commission, should push FRSB membership and that there should be an expectation that any charity with annual income over £1m is a member. At current levels of take-up, that expectation rings hollow.
Even if your fundraising is perfect, even if you’ve never had a complaint, let alone one that would require third-party intervention, signing up to the FRSB is likely a good way of spending donors money, because it is one of the things you can do as a charity which works to sustain the future for fundraising as a whole.
The FRSB does need to sell itself as relevant and important, but charities cannot wait for a crisis in fundraising to legitimise their membership of the self-regulatory body. Think of it like insurance. It seems like a total waste of money while you're safe, but you’re damn happy you have it when you’re burgled.
