Let’s start a debate about regulating telephone fundraising differently to telesales
Howard Lake | 8 June 2009 | Blogs
There are probably some fundraisers who will be a bit annoyed with my colleague Hugh McCaw today.
Hugh – ceo of my company Relationship Marketing – has just published a white paper that re-examines how telephone fundraising is regulated by the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).
As you’ll probably know, fundraising is treated exactly the same as commercial telesales by the TPS because if you tick the box on the TPS website to opt-out of receiving cold calls, then that covers commercial telesales and charity fundraising.
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Hugh argues that this needs to be reconsidered.
So I can already hear all the toys hitting the ground as they are thrown out of the consumer protection pram.
Some people in this sector and I expect a lot more outside of it will simply say that, of course fundraising phone calls are part of sales and marketing. Without even reading Hugh’s arguments, they’ll no doubt be slating this as an attempt by ‘telephone chuggers’ to get round consumer protection regulation and pester people in their own homes – you can get a taster of this kind of thinking in the online comments to this Third Sector news item.
Hugh’s arguments though really are worth looking at.
There are broadly three types of cold calls targeted at members of the public on an organised basis. These are telesales, fundraising and market research.
The TPS lets you opt out of two of these – telesales and fundraising. But you can’t opt out of receiving market research calls from MORI or Harris or BMRB. Market research calls are exempt because, so the Information Commissioner’s Office tells us, they are not “sales” calls.
Well, neither are fundraising calls.
In a sales call, someone calls you, the consumer, and tries to persuade you to buy something. If you agree, you enter into a binding contract. You give the company money and they send you the product of service you’ve just bought. The only people involved in this are the seller and the customer.
Fundraising – all fundraising, not just on the telephone – is not like that. A fundraiser calls a member of the public to ask them to give some money to help someone else. There are three people involved – donor, fundraiser, beneficiary. There is no binding financial contract and the donor doesn’t get a product or service in return for their gift. There’s no ‘sale’.
In fundraising, there is no sale, so fundraising is not a sales call.
If the TPS’s reason for treating market research differently to commercial cold calls is because one is sales and one is not, then at least we should be thinking about whether fundraising should be given a different system too.
That’s why Hugh has written this white paper. We both think this is something that we as fundraisers should at least talk about. We’re not suggesting how the TPS should regulate charities (opt-out, opt-in or exemption). But we do think fundraising should not be treated the same as telesales.
This sector is far too timid and worried about trying to change the status quo if we think it’s wrong for us. We’re worried about what other people might think and so we end up apologising for what we do.
But we know from discussing this issue with out clients and other fundraisers that there is a lot of support for moves to get telephone fundraising treated differently.
Hugh wants to use his white paper to start a debate. We don’t know what the outcome of this debate will be and we’re not sure yet how best to take if forward. That’s why we want fundraisers to read the white paper and let us know what they want think and how they think we should proceed.
We really want to uncover the genuine thoughts of fundraisers on this subject and steer clear of the knee-jerk mud sling that you often get when you suggest changing something.
Please let us have your thoughts by email us at
tp*@re*******************.uk
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.