Be honest about fundraising, or suffer an eternity of debate about self-regulation says Celina Ribeiro. 

Lots of fundraising figures were released last month. Fundraising volumes. Fundraising complaints. Face-to-face sign-ups. Attrition in face-to-face.

And yet, developing a real picture of how much fundraising is going on, and how well it is being done, is still not easy.

The Fundraising Standards Board says fundraising volume is up across the board, with whopping rises in areas like door-to-door and email fundraising. Complaints in these areas have outpaced even the volume rise.

However, working from the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association’s figures, the actual number of donors recruited via doorstep – not to mention street – fundraising has fallen.

So are we then facing a situation where there’s more fundraising, which is less effective and increasingly irksome to the public?

In truth, it’s hard to know. Only 32 of the PFRA’s members actually bother reporting in to its annual attrition survey, and while the FRSB gets the vast majority of its membership submitting data on fundraising volumes and complaints, a suspicious 67 per cent say they get no complaints whatsoever.

Face-to-face fundraising is the only fundraising type which even attempts to monitor and share its sign-ups and attrition, and for this it must be commended. However, it is in face-to-face fundraising where it is also the most necessary and possible, given the existence of the PFRA and the amount of public disquiet about the mechanism.

This cacophony of confusing data on the state of fundraising, despite being a deliberate attempt to provide clarity and calm, has done little to sate political demands for fundraising self-regulation to… well, exactly what the politicians repeatedly criticising fundraising self-regulation want is still unclear. But the message has been received: something needs to happen. After repeated calls from government for self-regulation to be reinforced the Institute of Fundraising has now worked £20,000 out of the Cabinet Office to review how the whole system works.

Charities need to engage in this process. It is not enough to leave self-regulation to those three bodies engaged in fundraising self-regulation. It is not enough to say ‘complaints are low’, and not be honest and transparent about your own charity’s complaint levels. It is not enough to deride and bemoan figures on face-to-face attrition levels, but not share your own data – across other fundraising types, too.

This is important. This is not about preventing government from sweeping in and introducing statutory regulation. This is about creating a sustainable charity sector which can go on solving the problems which it was set up to address. This is not about protecting turf. Fundraising will be needed for as long as charities will be needed – which is to say, forever. Fundraisers of today need to make sure they are caring for the fundraisers of tomorrow or face the fact that fundraising – and donors – will get much harder.

Let’s hope the review into self-regulation will look beyond the self-regulators. And let’s hope charities speak up and speak clearly. This issue goes much wider than three organisations.