Institute of Fundraising to host face-to-face fundraising summit
Howard Lake | 12 July 2012 | News
The Institute of Fundraising will this month host a summit of charities who use face-to-face fundraising. The event is being called “to discuss a growing debate about this important income generation technique”.
It has been called following recent media coverage of the method, such as the Sunday Telegraph’s investigation into the practices of fundraising company Tag Campaigns.
Peter Lewis, Chief Executive of the Institute, said: “Recently the media has highlighted cases where potential donors have been approached by fundraisers who seemingly fail to meet the exacting standards that we insist on. This has led to a wider debate about the value of face-to-face fundraising as a technique at all.
“It is vital for fundraisers to maintain the public’s trust and confidence. Now would seem to be a good time to take a step back, review the public’s experience of face-to face fundraising, its financial importance to the sector, and whether there are steps that we should be taking as the sector, or as the Institute, to ensure high standards are complied with and the public’s trust and confidence is maintained.”
The Face-to-face fundraising summit will take place in London on 23 July and will be by invitation only to selected charity directors of fundraising.
At the announcement of the event, there were no plans to invite the face-to-face self-regulatory body the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA) or the Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB). An Institute spokesperson explained: “We have decided to limit the summit to include only Directors of fundraising who are members of the IoF so there can be full and frank discussions in an “in house” atmosphere. After the Summit we will be looking at what actions we need to take and fully involve the wider fundraising community.”
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.