Joint Committee on the Draft Charities Bill

Joint Committee on the Draft Charities Bill Written Evidence

DCH 271 Charity Link submission

CHARITY LINK SUBMISSION

DRAFT CHARITIES BILL: Public Collections

Charity Link (CL) is a Professional Fundraising Organisation in its tenth year of securing committed gifts for a large number of wide-ranging charity clients. CL specialises in two types of fundraising: payroll giving and door-to-door activity.

Our submission points are as follows:-

1. Overview

In recent years we have seen many of our charity clients embracing face-to-face fundraising, dedicating increasing resources into this income stream. This move has been a direct result of their return on investment. Indeed, we have seen a move away from other methods of fundraising as F2F proves to be increasingly cost-effective.

2. Implementation

CL believes strongly in the objectives behind the draft legislation however has some concerns over the implementation as at the moment we feel there is a lack of clarity and detail.

3. PFRA Submission

CL would like it noted that we wholeheartedly support the submission made by the PFRA (Public Fundraising Regulatory Association).

4. Guidance Notes

CL are concerned that the Guidance Notes could be open to individual interpretation and therefore strongly recommend these are made statutory.

5. Payment Methods

The draft bill mentions only collections made by direct debit. It does not cover other methods of payment such as standing orders or credit cards. In order to incorporate all methods we suggest the wording is amended to 'regular payment'.

6. Notification Period to Local Authorities

The draft bill requires a minimum of one month's notification be given to Local Authorities for house to house collections. The burden to Local Authorities has been significantly decreased by "removing the assessment of capacity from collections undertaken house to house". Surely this removes the need for such a lengthy notification period. We would like to point out that this would have a significant impact on planning fundraising activity and recruitment and training of fundraisers. We therefore would like to suggest this be reduced to a notification period of one week.

7. Disclosure Statement

We agree there should be transparency on all levels and a disclosure statement, whether verbal or written should exist. However, CL feels whilst there is a need to distinguish between volunteers and paid fundraisers, there is absolutely no need to detail individual fundraiser's remuneration packages. Indeed, we feel this is discriminatory as we are not aware of any other method of fundraising where this is obligatory.