IoF updates Telephone Code of Practice
Howard Lake | 26 April 2010 | News
Charities must understand the difference between marketing and administrative telephone calls, according to the Institute of Fundraising’s updated Telephone Fundraising Code of Practice.
Administrative calls must not be made with the specific purpose of soliciting a donation or sale and marketing calls should not be made under the guise of administration. However, supporters marketing preferences can be verified during a genuine administrative call.
If a donor has supplied their telephone number as part of the details they are happy for the fundraising organisation to hold, it would be reasonable to assume the donor would not object being called unless they have indicated otherwise.
Chief executive of the Fundraising Standards Board, Alistair McLean said: “The large majority of telephone fundraising is conducted to a very high standard and public complaints constitute less than 0.1% of the volume of activity in this area. And yet it remains the second most common source of complaints.”
Natalie Bailey, client services director at NTT Fundraising said the code was “still open to quite a lot of interpretation” over the relationship between the charity and donor, but that the update would not make a great deal of difference to the way agencies currently act. “We already abide by the regulations,” she said. “As long as agencies and charities are speaking to donors in the right way it is a good thing and clarifying the process and best practice can only help.”
www.institute-of-fundraising.org.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.