New rules and fines introduced for face-to-face fundraising
Howard Lake | 21 August 2012 | News
The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA) has this week introduced a new best practice regime for street fundraisers. The new rules are accompanied by penalty points and fines for fundraising organisations that break the rules.
The rules have been introduced following a year-long field trial and review process, after the Institute of Fundraising had asked the PFRA to provide extra ./guidance to the Institute’s code of practice on face-to-face fundraising. They are published in the PFRA Rule Book (Street F2F).
The new rules provide more detailed ./guidance. For instance, while the code of practice says only that fundraisers must never “deliberately confuse or obstruct the public”, the Rule Book defines obstruction as: “Any deliberate action that causes a person to involuntarily stop or suddenly change
direction in order to get past the fundraiser and continue their journey.”
The rules carry penalty points of 20, 50 or 100 points, and apply to fundraising organisations whether they are agencies or charities running in-house teams. When a fundraising organisation’s points total exceeds 1,000 points, that total is converted to a monetary fine on the basis of £1 per point. Further breaches are invoiced, at £1 per point each month.
Sally de la Bedoyere, chief executive of the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, said: “For a form of fundraising that is so regularly in the limelight, it is vitally important that fundraisers work to the highest possible standards in order to maintain the confidence of the public, media, and central and local government.
“These new rules complement the Institute of Fundraising’s code of practice on face- to-face fundraising, which sets the benchmarks for best practice across all forms of fundraising. This is a prime example of how sector bodies can co-operate to drive up standards and improve compliance with the codes.”
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.