The UK has voted to leave the EU. So what effect could this have on the lifespan of the new Fundraising Preference Service?
The impact of the UK’s departure from the EU was a tantalising dimension presented by Sir Stuart Etherington, architect of the new system of fundraising regulation, to charity leaders at a conference held on 3 June 2016 at Skinners’ Hall in London.
In a typically convivial mood but suggestive of the complexity of rehauling fundraising regulation, Sir Stuart began by advising delegates to the Association of Charitable Organisations “if a Government minister calls you at the start of the summer asking you to conduct an inquiry, tell him you’ve booked a holiday and will be uncontactable for several weeks…”
Sir Stuart went on to say that, in the event that the UK voted to leave the EU, he did not know whether that meant that the European General Regulation on Data Protection, a major reform of data protection law that is expected to apply to most types of fundraising, would apply, be suspended or phased out.
What are the EU data directives and the Fundraising Preference Service?
The proposed EU data directives are extensive and are expected to be introduced in 2017 – so, even though the public has voted out, the UK will only stop being an EU member after they have been introduced and therefore will likely adopt them in some way. (Whether the UK retains these regulations when it does leave the EU is of course another question!)
But putting Brexit to one side for a moment, what Sir Stuart’s aside revealed was a lack of situational awareness and regulatory logic that is hampering the new regulator, and specifically its biggest tool, the Fundraising Preference Service.
What is proposed now is a hybrid Telephone Preference Service and Mail Preference Service fitted out to filter 21st century fundraising. Yet it is hard to conceive of a riskier IT project and a customer-base (around 5,000 large charities) less suited to handling it.
It is a self-confessed duplicate to existing services, and as we said in the last edition of Now, New and Next, the EU regulations represent strong alternative medicine to the Fundraising Preference Service, most notably, data users will need to ensure:
- explicit consent is given for the collection, storage and processing of personal data
- an individual has the right ‘to object to profiling’
- an individual has the right ‘to be forgotten’
These duties are also spelled out in the original Etherington Review. But having greeted these “welcome steps in the light of long- standing concerns about fundraising tactics and behaviours” and recommended time for adjustment, Etherington still insisted a new regulator build its own instrument, the Fundraising Preference Service – imposed even before the EU’s changes come in to effect.
What is happening on consultation?
The Fundraising Preference Service Working Group, under George Kidd, the Chief Commissioner at the Direct Marketing Commission, has begun consulting on implementation. An NCVO discussion paper for the Fundraising Preference Service working group establishes that whilst all charities are expected to fall within the Fundraising Preference Service remit, it is charities with a turnover above £1m that will be expected to check datasets against Fundraising Preference Service resets for fundraising campaigns.
So imagine this…during the EU referendum campaign the online voter registration system crashed on deadline day, so what on earth will happen in November 2016 when 5,000 charities try to get their Christmas mailouts approved at once…
What is likely to emerge?
But back to Brexit, we now have two possibilities: If the UK opts (at least) to remain a member of the Single Market, the Fundraising Regulator could still navigate the complexity, expense and technical barriers to deliver the Fundraising Preference Service in 2016/17 – only to be superseded by the higher demands of the EU data directive later in 2017. Alternatively, given the leave vote, the UK could choose to mothball the EU data directive for all UK companies, which would secure the primacy of the Fundraising Regulator. Bizarrely this would mean direct mail, mobile SMS and online communications from charities are more strictly regulated than any by commercial marketers. And perversely, unaddressed mail will not have additional regulations, which opens up the prospect of a rise in junk mail through our letter boxes. What do the major arts organisations and charities think?
With so much up in the air, who would invest in such a system?
Arts Council England has expressed multiple reservations about the proposal’s capacity to offer protection for the public without adversely affecting arts organisations and particularly smaller ones. It has sought opportunities to discuss its concerns in detail to the working group hosted by NCVO. 38 large charities are understood to have committed to begin funding the new regulator.
Other charities, with no such constitutional get-out clause, have queried value-for-money and the propriety of paying £300 per diem to the Fundraising Regulator’s board members. Indeed, Disaster Emergency Committee members have lobbied for an exemption from the whole scheme for its fundraising mobilisation on officially declared emergencies. Like EU withdrawal, the Fundraising Regulator was presented as an irreversible long term decision but Sir Stuart seems to suggest that its central plank, the Fundraising Preference Service, could be ephemeral. Surely that’s crazy considering the high costs and the disruption caused – and not just to summer holiday plans… for the arts this is likely to be a long haul.
