New ‘more proportionate’ approach to Fundraising Preference Service compliance announced
Melanie May | 11 April 2024 | News
The Fundraising Regular is to change how it reports on Fundraising Preference Service compliance, to be ‘more proportionate’, it has announced.
At the moment, the regulator publishes a list on its website of charities that are in breach of section 3.2.5 of the Code of Fundraising Practice, because they have not logged on to the FPS charity portal to access requests to stop direct marketing communications.
In a blog on the Regulator’s site by Daisy Houghton, its Head of Communications and Corporate Services, says that after reviewing how breaches of the code in relation to FPS are handled alongside decisions on breaches of the code managed through its casework processes, the Regulator has recognised that its casework processes allow for a more nuanced approach than was being applied to the FPS breaches.
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As a result, the board has agreed that going forward, it will take a more proportionate approach to publicly naming charities for code breaches in relation to the FPS.
From this month onwards charities will not be named on the Regulator’s website until there are at least three uncollected suppressions from the public (previously a charity could be named with only one uncollected suppression).
In addition, it will be including the names of charities that have accessed the charity portal in the past to collect suppressions, but then fail to collect more than three suppressions within the required time period later on.
Houghton adds:
“It is worth noting that we are only changing the point at which we would publicly name a charity as in breach of the code and we will continue to make the same efforts to get charities to collect their suppressions in the first place as we always have.
“We expect charities to collect their suppressions in a timely way to respect the public’s wishes. And as with all our processes, we will continue to monitor and review as we go forward so that we can ensure public protection, accountability, and excellence in fundraising today and in the future.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.