Major U.K. Charities to Meet on Future of Street Fundraising
July 23, 2012 | Read Time: 1 minute
Development directors for some 30 leading British nonprofit groups are set to hold a summit on face-to-face solicitations in the wake of media coverage of the practice and calls for greater regulation, reports The Telegraph.
The Institute of Fundraising, a professional organization, will host the meeting, which was prompted in part by a Sunday Telegraph article last month that detailed how so-called “charity muggers,” or “chuggers,” were schooled by one commercial fundraising firm on using aggressive and misleading tactics to secure donations.
In addition, a recently released, government-commissioned report on Britain’s charity sector called for giving local governments greater authority to regulate “chugging.”
Media attention on the issue “has led to a wider debate about the value of face-to-face fundraising as a technique at all,” said Peter Lewis, the institute’s chief executive. He said charities want to “take a step back” and review the importance of street fundraising, which produces more than $200-million a year in revenue for U.K. groups.
