How to put off charity cold callers, by Lord Grade

THE man charged with cracking down on dodgy fundraising practices exposed by the Daily Mail yesterday revealed his own robust tactic for dealing with unwanted approaches.

Lord Grade, a former chairman of the BBC and ITV, said he tells charity collectors who knock on his front door to ‘b***** off.’

He said his response to receiving unsolicited text messages from cold calling fundraisers was to tell them he was a top lawyer who would sue them if they didn’t leave him alone. ‘I can’t tell you how many phone calls or texts I get,’ he said.

‘I always send them a text back saying, “I am a leading QC at the Criminal Bar and I am putting you on notice. Please accept this text as a letter before action. I mean to pursue this case to the High Court if necessary”.’ He added: ‘I’ve never had a repeated text.’ The 73-year- old peer, who is leading the new independent Fundraising Regulator, said he does give money to charity, but never in response to doorstep cold-callers.

‘I get very cross if people knock on my door at eight, nine at night when I’ve just got home from work,’ he told the Sunday Times. ‘Charity? B***** off! Don’t come knocking on my door — you’re not invited. It drives me crazy.’

The new regulator was set up after the Mail exposed how rogue operators used immoral techniques on vulnerable victims, including dementia patients.

Paid for by a levy on charities, it will have the power to ban them from seeking donations while they are under investigation. Failure to comply will lead to a referral to the Charity Commission and punishments. Its introduction comes as research shows public confidence in charities had hit a ten-year low.

Lord Grade said he had been on the boards of ‘a million charities’, and some had turned a blind eye to the unscrupulous methods used by fundraisers – falsely believing their worthy objectives justified the means.

‘When things are going well, you don’t ask the question and when things are going badly ... all you care about is getting the money in,’ he added.

He praised the media for exposing poor practices in some charities but said he was confident the lessons would now be heeded , as ‘all charities rely on the goodwill of the British public’. However he admitted the new regulator was ‘ completely underresourced given the size of the sector’.