Only one of the top 50 fundraising charities has rejected the Fundraising Regulator’s request for start-up funding, according to Lord Grade.

Speaking at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Charities and Volunteering at Westminster this morning, Lord Grade, chair of the Fundraising Regulator (pictured), said that only one of the top 50 charities approached by the new regulator for funding has outright rejected its request for start-up funding.

“We recently wrote to the top 50 charities by voluntary fundraising expenditure asking them to provide financial support for our set-up costs over the next few months,” said Lord Grade. “I have been very pleased by the positive responses so far. Only one charity has chosen, very publicly, to reject our request.”

Lord Grade didn’t name the charity. RNIB's chief executive Lesley-Anne Alexander, told Civil Society News in February that she would not pay £15,000 without an explanation from the body as to where the charity’s money would be going.

Lord Hodgson, who was also present at the APPG, said that refusal to help with the set-up of the regulator, and the content of what was said by Lord Grade and other speakers, meant that “little has changed in the last four years” since he conducted his review into charitable fundraising.

“Ninety per cent of what has been said here, no matter how impressively worded, sounds like the sort of thing I was hearing four years ago. "When I hear that one of the largest charities doesn't want to pay £15,000 to set up Lord Grade's organisation, I think ‘what planet are those people on?’

"Have they not read about Olive Cooke and all the other situations and problems?"

Lesley-Anne Alexander has been approached by Civil Society News for a comment.

Fundraising Regulator to hold first board meeting this morning

Lord Grade also announced that the Fundraising Regulator would be holding its first board meeting this morning, despite the fact that it is still waiting to appoint two board members with “fundraising expertise.”

He said the regulator was still in the process of appointing the last two members of the board, who would be from a fundraising background. Grade also announced that the Fundraising Regulator has also set up “both an adjudication committee and a standards committee” as it works towards being “open for business in the early summer.”