PFRA celebrates 10 years of regulating face-to-face fundraising
Howard Lake | 28 May 2010 | Blogs
The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, the self-regulatory body for face-to-face (F2F) fundraising, is 10 years old this year. It plans to mark the 10th anniversary of the meeting that gave rise to its formation at a celebratory drinks reception next month.
The reception will take place on 22 June at the International Coffee Organisation conference centre in London’s West End, following the association’s 2010 annual general meeting.
The idea for the PFRA was discussed at a meeting convened by charity consultant Stephen Lee in July 2000, just a few weeks after the first code of practice on F2F fundraising had been unveiled at the National Convention of the Institute of Fundraising – or Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers, as it was then called.
Stephen Lee recalls: “Much of this meeting – and a number of subsequent meetings – resembled a poker game in a somewhat lawless saloon. But gradually, as trust and confidence among the participants grew, commercial self-interest gave way to the common pursuit of the creation of an effective self-regulating body”. The first board meeting of the new organisation took place at the ICFM National Convention a year later.
“There were a lot of people who thought that face-to-face was going to destroy itself by swamping the streets,” said PFRA Chief Executive Mick Aldridge, who was at that first meeting representing the now-defunct agency Push. Even though some of the trade press and some fundraisers were sceptical, Aldridge asserts: “we’re still here and we’ve proved that practitioner-driven self-regulation works.”
The PFRA’s AGM will feature the the publication of its 2009/10 Annual Report which includes the number of donors recruited by face-to-face in the last financial year. This will then be followed by the presentation of the full results of the 2010 Donor Attrition and Retention Survey by the survey’s founders Rupert Tappin of Future Fundraising and Morag Fleming of Scottish social care charity Quarriers.
The DARS presentation (from 15.30 – 17.00) is open to all, not just PFRA members, but on a first-come-first-served basis. Contact Ian MacQuillin if you would like to attend.
www.pfra.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.