FRSB to target £1 million plus charities
Howard Lake | 21 March 2014 | News
The Fundraising Standards Board is to redouble efforts to recruit charities with voluntary incomes greater than £1 million. The move has been announced in the organisation’s annual report, which includes it as one of three “refined” goals for the next three to five years.
The other two goals – which reflect the priorities emphasised by the government in its response to two enquiries into the Charities Act by Lord Hodgson and the Public Administration Select Committee – are:
- Build public awareness that fundraising is regulated
- Develop the next phases of the audit programme to ensure members’ compliance.
Writing in the annual report, which was published this week, Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society said:
“I would also urge any £1m+ fundraising charities that haven’t yet made the commitment to do so now, and join the rest of the charity sector in using the tick logo to give the public confidence in their charity’s fundraising.”
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Membership of the FRSB now stands at 1,440 charities, of which 366 have voluntary incomes between £1 million and £10 million and a further 83 have voluntary incomes greater than £10 million. One fifth of the 225 charities that joined the FRSB last year had voluntary incomes greater than £1 million.
Number of £1+ charities
Alistair McLean, FRSB’s chief executive says in the annual report that FRSB has “identified a core target group of organisations” to recruit into membership. But speaking to UK Fundraising, McLean said a first step would be to assess the size of the potential market.
The Charity Commission lists 5,323 charities with voluntary incomes between £1 million and £10 million and a further 981 above £10 million.
“A lot of these charities are grant making trusts and foundations who don’t do any fundraising,”
McLean said.
“While there is great merit in trusts and foundations signing up to the FRSB, we need to convince those charities [that do a lot of voluntary fundraising] that ought to be members but aren’t.”
And a list of the top 1,000 charities ranked by donations produced by CAF in 2012 contained many organisations that would do little fundraising from the public, but rely on statutory, endowment, corporate or grant income, including NHS trusts, foundations, colleges and arts organisations.
“We have a job of work to do to ascertain how big our market share is, but perhaps it is greater than we think,”
McLean said.
However, the FRSB’s CEO said there would be no membership drive or advertising campaign. Instead the FRSB would be seeking to persuade charities into membership by continually raising awareness of how fundraising is regulated.
“I think for some charities, FRSB membership is not on their radar and I absolutely think that having FRSB membership included on the Charity Commission register will help in that respect,”
he said.
McLean also said that new “refined goal” of raising public awareness would come through more charities using the tick logo and joint initiative with the Charity Commission and other regulatory bodies.
“It’s not about promoting the work of the FRSB, it about ensuring the public know that the sector is regulated and who to approach when things go wrong.”
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.