The Fundraising Standard’s Board’s recommendations to strengthen fundraising self-regulation could cost the British Red Cross £2m per year, its fundraising director Mark Astarita said yesterday.
But Astarita, a former chair of the Institute of Fundraising, also told Civil Society News that the FRSB did not go far enough in other areas, including its recommendations around safeguarding vulnerable people and selling data.
On Tuesday the FRSB put forward recommendations on eight issues to strengthen self-regulation, which have been put to the Institute of Fundraising Standards Committee.
The recommendations come in the interim report of the FRSB investigation into the death of Olive Cooke, a 92-year-old whose apparent suicide led the Daily Mail to say she had been "hounded to death" by fundraisers.
Astarita said: “At first glance we see the likely implications of the FRSB’s recommendations as costing us at least £2m a year, in addition to reducing the size of our regular giving programme.”
He said that a proposal to limit the frequency of contact with donors would reduce the effectiveness of emergency appeals.
“The suggestions around frequency would pose us with some difficult decisions," he said. "For instance, for our recent Nepal appeal we sent 10 emails to our loyal supporters, each one of which raised significant funds for Nepal each time we asked – would the suggested changes to frequency restrict us from raising money for our next emergency appeal?
“Should we have stopped at three or five?" he said. "Had we just emailed before Nepal would we not be able to email anyone? How can I possibly know when an emergency might strike or the best day to email or the day when a donor might get paid, especially in the frantic activity surrounding emergencies.”
Astarita queried the FRSB's proposal that organisations "must make it clear at the first point of contact that data must be shared".
"I am also a little disappointed that recommendations around charities selling and sharing data were not stronger," he said.
He said he hoped the proposals "would have addressed better the main issues of concern around volumes to certain groups".
He said that high-volume fundraising "may work and work really rather well for many charities but maybe it’s time to be able to say 'your data is safe with us'."
He also said he was surprised that the FRSB had not received more complaints.
“Given the recent very high profile attention on the way fundraising is conducted by almost every newspaper and TV news station, I am somewhat surprised by the low number of complaints the FRSB has received (384).
“All complaints are important and vital but I had rather hoped for more given the publicity. A complaints-led self-regulatory system relies on complaints from which we learn and drive up standards. At the British Red Cross, we receive on average 3,000 one-off donations a day and 20,000 Direct Debits daily.”
