Glasgow City Council and PFRA agree controls for face to face fundraising
Howard Lake | 6 March 2012 | News
The volume and location of face-to-face fundraising in Glasgow city centre and suburbs is to be controlled following an agreement between Glasgow City Council and the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA). The new rules, the first full site agreement to be implemented in Scotland, will come into force on 30 April 2012.
The agreement is designed to guarantee fundraising at a level that is comparable to similarly-sized English city centres such as Manchester. It will also relieve pressure on the city centre by opening up fundraising activity in outer Glasgow. It means that fundraising will take place in Glasgow from Wednesday to Saturday inclusive.
In the city centre
From 30 April teams of up to five fundraisers will be allowed to visit six different sites around the city centre. Each site can be visited only twice a week alternating between Wednesdays/Fridays and Thursdays/Saturdays.
Buchanan Street, Argyle Street and Sauchiehall Street have two sites each.
This gives a total of what PFRA calls “60 fundraiser-days capacity” each week: 6 sites x 5 fundraisers x 2 days = 60 fundraiser-days per week.
In outer Glasgow
The agreement also covers seven new sites outside the city centre, including Parkead, Govan, Partick and Dennistoun.
Teams of five fundraisers will be permitted to operate on these sites for no more than three days a week. This gives an extra 105 days a week fundraising capacity.
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Taking the pressure off the centre
Dr Toby Ganley, PFRA’s head of policy, said: “It was fairly clear that there was a bit too much fundraising in central Glasgow. The new sites will take the pressure off the centre, while maintaining the balance between charities’ duty to fundraise and the rights of the public not to be put under undue pressure to give.
Councillor Gordon Matheson, leader of Glasgow City Council, said: “The issue of street-fundraisers is a source of annoyance to many shoppers and visitors to Glasgow. However we recognised that charities have the legal right to fundraise on our streets, but we must ensure that people working, living and visiting Glasgow are not inconvenienced by this practice.
“Glasgow City Council has now pro-actively tackled this situation and we believe this new voluntary agreement will go along way to helping solve the issues raised by the public about street fundraisers. We look forward to working with PRFA to implement, monitor and review this new arrangement to ensure its success.”
PFRA currently has 41 other voluntary agreements with councils and a further 17 in various stages of negotiation.
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.