Why UK Fundraising is not reporting Charity Aid’s anti-F2F campaign
Howard Lake | 8 September 2014 | Blogs
UK Fundraising has decided not to report details of the anti-face-to-face campaign run by Charity Aid.
Charity Aid’s claims have been picked up and reported on uncritically by regional and local media. Some other charity sector publications have chosen to cover the Charity Aid ‘research’, and our refusal to give this ‘campaign’ publicity implies no criticism of their decisions.
Indeed, I’d recommended you read this blog by Third Sector’s fundraising reporter Susannah Birkwood.
We’ve covered the issue of face-to-face from the early days of the mid-1990s, and have no issue in sharing research that is critical of the fundraising method, or indeed any other fundraising method.
You can see the comments section on past coverage of face-to-face news items that show we let highly critical comments appear.
But after nearly 20 years, the level of debate on this site for professional fundraisers has to rise above notions along the lines of “I personally don’t like this fundraising method at all” or “I reckon it is damaging charities”. It needs to be based on evidence.
Indeed a similar call was made in a blog post on this site by Ian MacQuillin of Plymouth University’s fundraising think tank, Rogare, (and formerly a Head of Communications at the PFRA) in which he called for a higher standard of debate around street fundraising.
So, in an effort to raise the standard of debate on a professional fundraising site and forum, we are choosing not to share Charity Aid’s claims.
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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.