Now charities dodge ban on begging letters to the elderly
CHARITIES are dodging a ban on sending begging letters to elderly people by posting unaddressed mail, the Fundraising Regulator admitted last night.
The regulator’s chairman said that while the chances of elderly people being overwhelmed by the letters was ‘getting slimmer’, it was powerless to stop charities circumventing the ban.
The regulator was set up following the death of a 92-year-old grandmother, who jumped to her death after being hounded by charities for donations. Olive Cooke, from Bristol, killed herself in May 2015 after being bombarded by more than 270 letters a month.
Charities sent out 243 million anonymised begging letters in 2013, but a Fundraising Preference Service hotline set up earlier this year allowed people to remove their names and addresses from charity databases.
However, chief executive Stephen Dunmore admitted there was nothing to stop charities from paying Royal Mail to deliver unaddressed mail to their homes begging for money.
He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘If it is addressed to an individual, the Fundraising Preference Service will stop it; if it is just mail that comes through, then there is no one stopping it because the Post Office has to deliver it.’
The regulator’s chairman, Lord Grade of Yarmouth, also set out plans to stop charities sending unsolicited free pens, badges and Christmas cards to raise money.
Lord Grade said he had initially found it a little odd that ‘anybody is complaining about getting a free gift’, but now agreed with the con- cerns. He said: ‘ They are saying, “why are they spending this money, that could go to the charity” – which actually is a really smart public response. So we are learning from the public.’ Lord Grade, 74, also claimed there was a ‘lack of transparency’ among fundraising platforms such as JustGiving.
He also said he was ‘staggered’ that 100 charities ‘of quite some size’ had refused to respond to requests for payment. Charities spending more than £100,000 a year on fundraising are meant to pay a levy ranging from £150 to £15,000.
A spokesman for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, which represents charities, said: ‘Charities need to be able to get in touch with people in order to attract new supporters, and writing to addresses in a specific area is an efficient way for them to do that.
‘Unfortunately, Royal Mail don’t exclude specific addresses when they’re delivering to an area – they either deliver to all the homes or none.’
The Charity Futures think-tank added: ‘No charity intends to upset anyone through direct mailing, but if they were to stop, then less money will be raised and charities’ vital work will suffer.’