One of the former directors of defunct fundraising agency GoGen has criticised four major charities for trying to shift blame away from themselves after a damning Fundraising Standards Board report this week.

In a comment made on Civil Society News’ story, Bob Metrebian said that the suggestion that the British Red Cross, Macmillan, NSPCC and Oxfam were unaware of the way in which GoGen was raising funds on their behalf was “frankly absurd”.

Metrebian said: “I am truly horrified to read some of the comments from our former charity clients. The suggestion that they were not completely aware of exactly how calls were made to their supporters is frankly absurd.”

He said that comments made by the British Red Cross were “particularly galling” given the long relationship between GoGen and the charity, which spanned over a decade. He also said that representatives from charity clients were constantly monitoring the activities of the agency and therefore had no excuse to say they didn’t know what was going on.  

“In any given day at our call centres we would have on average two clients listening to a random selection of calls for several hours as well as observing staff. It is particularly galling to hear British Red Cross, with whom we had worked for over ten years, imply that somehow the way in which we worked was a surprise to them.

“I fully understand that now that GoGen is no more it is easiest for all to place the industry's failings at its door but let's be honest here, I lost my job as did all of my friends and colleagues for what were occasional lapses in process.

“I have not heard of too many directors of fundraising at any of the charities implicated losing theirs for driving this whole process in the first place. Should I be surprised? Not really.”

A spokeswoman for the British Red Cross, said: “We were hugely disappointed to learn last year of the behaviour of GoGen agency staff. 

"It was completely unacceptable and we suspended, not only our work with them, but all of our telephone fundraising whilst we conducted a full review of our standards and procedures.

"Since then we have further strengthened our practices to put in place extensive measures to monitor any agencies we work with. This includes unannounced drop ins, mystery shopping and a whistleblowing procedure for agency workers to raise any concerns directly with us.”

Metrebian and fellow director Giuseppe Iantosca both lost their jobs when the agency folded on 23 July 2015. In total 485 fundraisers were made redundant across the agency’s offices in London, Nottingham, Bedford and Bristol.  

At the time Iantosca said that media scrutiny driven by the Daily Mail expose had made it “impossible” for GoGen to retain charity clients.