Hugh Radojev examines how charities and fundraising agencies have been affected by the Information Commissioner’s Office directives on the Telephone Preference Service.
In the middle of August, at the height of the ‘summer of discontent’, the Information Commissioner’s Office forced the hand of the Institute of Fundraising. Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, “specifically requested” that the IoF change its Code of Fundraising Practice to effectively ban fundraisers from calling any number registered with the Telephone Preference Service.
The IoF for its part complied with the request, but voiced its concerns for fundraising charities, saying that the changes were “unduly restricting the ability of charities to maintain relationships with their supporters”.
Sources within the fundraising sector also voiced their worries at the time, saying that the percentage of donors registered to the TPS on any given campaign database could be as a high as 70 or 75 per cent.
Three months or so down the line and these sorts of numbers are now beginning to be reported. For one senior fundraiser at a medium-sized charity who asked not to be named, TPS registered donors on his organisation’s latest campaign accounted for about 40 per cent of the database.
“We’ve already lost the ability to call 40 per cent of our database and we’re lucky. We’re hearing of others who’ve lost 70 per cent.”
Small charities, agencies in crossfire
While every fundraising charity has been affected by a fall in contactable donors due to tightening TPS, it is the medium and smaller charities that have been most adversely affected by a resulting drop in income says the fundraiser.
“It has hit small charities worst. If you’re a small charity with 6,000 donors it will cost no less than if you’re a big one with 200,000 donors.
“The problems were caused by big charities that based their strategies on high volume, and the regulations were introduced because of what they’ve done. But they’re the ones who will be least affected.”
“The problems were caused by big charities that based their strategies on high volume, and the regulations were introduced because of what they’ve done. But they’re the ones who will be least affected.”
It is not just fundraising charities that have begun to feel the impact of TPS regulation on their income streams.
Although the collapse of GoGen and R Fundraising within days of one another in late July didn’t quite prove to be the beginning of a chain reaction of telephone fundraising agencies closing predicted by some, it has continued to have an effect across the sector.
When the media heat was well and truly on telephone fundraising agencies, a number of their biggest clients stepped back from the practice. As recently as October 21, in a hearing at the PACAC inquiry into fundraising practices, the chairs of Oxfam and the NSPCC said they had both “ended their relationship” with telephone fundraising.
For Jane Cunningham, director of Personal Telephone Fundraising, the fact that charities are seeing reductions in their lists means that it is going to become harder for telephone fundraising agencies to turn a profit.
“We think the majority of our clients will see their lists reduced by 65 per cent or more due to TPS. We have one client who’s lost just 50 per cent of their list, but they’re the only one.”
Cunningham conceded that the company has been forced to make some redundancies, but did not specify how many.
Fundraising Preference Service
For fundraisers and agencies already taking a hit on TPS, the proposed Fundraising Preference Service now looms on the horizon.
Envisaged in the Etherington Review as a “reset button for all fundraising communications” for a weary public, the Fundraising Preference Service has remained the focal point of rage for many in the fundraising industry. The fact that, a month or so after the review was published, nobody really knows how the FPS will work in practice, or how it will sit alongside existing regulation has done little to assuage criticism.
Details at press time are still sketchy. A spokesman from NCVO says that Fundraising Preference Service would functionally “look like a website” and would “once again reconnect charities with their supporters”.
A working group has also been established after a meeting between author of the review Sir Stuart Etherington, Civil Society Minister Rob Wilson and representatives of the Charity Commission and the wider fundraising sector. All this to precede the eagerly awaited fundraising summit, which is rumoured to be taking place at the end of this month.
