Charities face £25k fines for pestering

Fundraisers must change their ways to win back trust of public, warns regulator chief

CHARITIES that pester donors for cash face being fined up to £25,000 under new rules introduced this week as the head of the new watchdog warns organisations they must “restore their reputations”.

A new Fundraising Preference Service, being launched on Thursday, allows members of the public to demand that charities stop sending fundraising messages by phone, text or email.

If charities ignore the warning from the regulator they will be reported to the information watchdog, which has the power to fine them tens of thousands of pounds.

Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, Lord Grade of Yarmouth, the chairman of the Fundraising Regulator, says the new system is required because too many charities are behaving like “laggards” and failing to change their fundraising practices.

Lord Grade, a former chairman of both the BBC and ITV, said faith in charities had been “sorely tested” by the scandal involving Olive Cooke, a 92-year-old fundraiser who took her own life after she was bombarded with begging letters from charities.

The peer warns that “there is a long way to go. Too many charities are proving to be laggards”. He writes: “The slow rebuilding of trust between charities and the public could yet all be undone by another wave of high-profile cases of bad behaviour.

“The extraordinary and long-term generosity of the British public needs to be sustained. It cannot be taken for granted.

“It is up to the charities themselves to restore and preserve their reputations. We cannot do it for them.”

Lord Grade urges members of the public to contact the new service to force charities to improve.

Charities reported by members of the public will be issued with suppression orders giving them 28 days to stop unsolicited marketing messages.

If the practice continues, the charities can be reported to the Information Commissioner, which can issue them with fines under the Data Protection Act 1998, running into tens of thousands of pounds.

The scheme was set up after a review of charity fundraising tactics, ordered by the Cabinet Office following the death of Mrs Cooke, who was thought to be Britain’s longest-serving poppy seller.

Mrs Cooke, from Bristol, fell to her death in the Avon Gorge in Bristol in May 2015. An inquest concluded she had taken her own life, after suffering from depression and breast cancer.

Her death shone a spotlight on charity fundraising after it emerged that she received almost 270 charity begging letters a month, as well as regular phone calls from voluntary organisations.

A later investigation by a national newspaper exposed tactics employed

by cold-calling agencies acting on behalf of charities.

The new service “will enable you to block direct marketing communications from particular charities,” Lord Grade says.

“In practice, this will mean that you will be able to go online or pick up a phone and name charities from which you no longer want to receive post, phone, text or email marketing communications.”

He adds: “This is not a ‘silver bullet’ that will instantly rebuild the relationship between the charitable sector and the public. That can only be achieved when charities change their behaviour.”

It makes sense for charities to act now because new data protection rules that are introduced next year will force charities to gain clear consent to market to their donors and other supporters, Lord Grade says.

Earlier this year, William Shawcross, the chairman of the Charity Commission, warned that public trust had fallen because of “malpractices” and told the sector to up its game.

That came weeks after the Information Commissioner found that the RSPCA and British Heart Foundation secretly screened millions of their donors so they could target them for more money. The charities were fined £25,000 and £18,000 respectively.

In 2014 charities were told to publish details of their senior executives’ pay after an investigation by The Daily Telegraph found it had soared. Some charities that worked in disaster areas were running bonus schemes for staff, while others paid their executives far more than the Prime Minister.