The Institute of Fundraising is launching a consultation on a new accreditation programme for public fundraising, which will close in January of next year.
The IoF made its announcement today, and said that the accreditation programme is being designed to “build greater confidence in public fundraising” with the aim of helping to “drive consistently high standards across the charity sector”.
A spokesman from the IoF said that the consultation period opens today and will close at the end of January 2017. He said that the programme will likely cover street, door-to-door and telephone fundraising and will likely begin from April next year.
Both charties and professional fundraising agencies will be able to apply for accreditation, civilsociety.co.uk understands.
Peter Hills-Jones, director of compliance at the IoF, said that the proposed programme would “be the next step to drive up fundraising standards even further, and help to maintain public confidence and support for the vital causes our members work on”.
Accreditation process and assessment to ‘focus on the three Ps’
The IoF said that the accrediations and assessment process would “cover a wide range of topics and focus on the three Ps: people, policies and processes”.
“Firstly, the process will aim to ensure that the policies in place are accurate and up to date, such as data protection, protecting vulnerable people and complaints handling. In addition, there will be training observations to establish the quality of training processes and the checks that are in place to help ensure fundraising is carried out to a high standard.”
The IoF said that the programme will be “a member-led initiative” and it expects that “all fundraising organisations who aspire to high professional standards will support and join the programme”.
Fundraising Regulator and Charity Commission response
Both the Fundraising Regulator and the Charity Commission said that the proposed accreditation programme would help drive fundraising standards up.
Stephen Dunmore, interim chief executive of the Fundraising Regulator, said: “Accreditation is an important tool in reinforcing good practice, establishing performance benchmarks to help organisations and individual fundraisers understand where their compliance strengths and weaknesses lie.
“We welcome the IoF’s announcement today as a sign that its members are taking ownership of their own compliance journey to meet the practical requirements of the Code of Fundraising Practice.”
Sarah Atkinson, director of policy and communications at the Charity Commission, said: “Donors and the public care about the way that charities raise funds. A robust accreditation system for fundraising organisations could help ensure that fundraising meets the standards that are expected. This a positive initiative and we would encourage charities to take part and respond.”
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