- Fundraising Governance
The main bodies governing fundraising compliance in England are:
The Charity Commission for England and Wales: the non-ministerial government department that regulates registered charities and maintains the Central Register of Charities.
The Fundraising Regulator: the independent, non-statutory body that regulates fundraising across the charitable sector in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Regulator sets and promotes the standards for fundraising and deals with complaints.
- Key Guidance
The Charity Commission provides guidance to help trustees comply with their legal obligations relating to fundraising – CC20 Charity fundraising: a guide to trustee duties:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charities-and-fundraising-cc20
The standards for fundraising are set out by the Fundraising Regulator in the Code of Fundraising Practice. The Code includes standards that reflect the law, but it is not designed to be a legal handbook:
https://www.fundraisingregulator.org.uk/code
These two documents are essential reading for Trustees. They will form part of the induction process for all new trustees.
- Policies
In line with Code of Fundraising Practice recommendations, the Committee proposes that Council formally adopt the following fundraising policies (appendices 1-4):
- Gift Acceptance Policy
- Donor Recognition Policy
- Fundraising Complaints Policy (External)
- Fundraising Complaints Policy (Internal)
- Reporting
To comply with charity law, we need to include the following information on fundraising in our annual reporting:
- our approach to fundraising, and whether we have used a commercial participator;
- details of any voluntary regulatory fundraising schemes or standards which we or anyone fundraising on our behalf has agreed to
- details of any circumstances where we have failed to keep to a scheme or standard;
- whether, and if so and how, we monitored fundraising activities carried out on our behalf;
- how many complaints we/anyone on our behalf has received about fundraising; and
- what we have done to protect vulnerable people and others from unreasonable intrusion on their privacy, unreasonably persistent approaches or undue pressure to give.
- Due Diligence
The Code of Fundraising Practice states that charities: “must carry out due diligence, appropriate for the size and nature of the donation, on both the financial and reputational dealings of possible partners before accepting their donations.”
A potential risk to the organisation is the acceptance of donations or sponsorship from individuals or companies whose practices may harm our reputation. The value of a donation may not always be worth the cost in terms of a potential loss of trust and confidence, reputational damage or a conflict with our ethics and values.
To mitigate this risk, we have created a corporate engagement assessment form (appendix 5). This document will be completed prior to accepting new donations or sponsorship.
- Monitoring
There are legal requirements to keep certain records for a specific number of years –donation letters/gift restrictions, Gift Aid statements etc. The monitoring requirements for fundraising are predominantly covered by our existing financial processes, however we will also need to keep a record of any complaints made about our fundraising activities.
There is no defined period for donor information retention, but good practice dictates that we should consider keeping relevant information for three to five years (with an exception being legacy documentation, which we will retain for longer). We have written a process for fundraising documentation into our GDPR data log. The Head of Development will review the retention of fundraising data annually.
- GDPR
The Society’s Privacy Statement has been updated, so that it includes fundraising explicitly. Where fundraising communications are sent using legitimate interest as the basis for contact, we will consider our responsibilities in relation to the privacy rights of data subjects beforehand. This consideration will be documented.
Appendices – for approval:
- Gift Acceptance Policy
- Donor Recognition Policy
- Fundraising Complaints Policy (External)
- Fundraising Complaints Policy (Internal)
- Corporate Engagement Assessment Form