JAHS Posted July 9, 2022 Posted July 9, 2022 Charities ‘using Covid as excuse to bombard people with emails’ Regulator accuses charities of contacting people even after they have been asked to stop Charities are bombarding people with fundraising letters and emails even after they have been asked to stop, the Fundraising Regulator has said. In a blog post, the body said that it was writing to organisations that were ignoring feedback and warned that they may be breaching fundraising regulations and data protection law. The regulator made the intervention after a review of the Fundraising Preference Service (FPS), which allows users to opt out of communication from charities that are registered with the Charity Commissions in England and Wales or Northern Ireland. The FPS was set up after the death of Olive Cooke in 2015. Friends of the 92-year-old from Bristol said she was "overwhelmed" by requests from charities for donations before she died. At the time, the Fundraising Standards Board acknowledged that fundraising may have been "one of a number of factors that is said to have caused her some distress in recent months". Subodh Patel, FPS manager at the Fundraising Regulator, wrote: "We found a number of charities which are already set up on the FPS charity portal but are not acting on requests to stop direct marketing communications." He said that some organisations were not even logging in to the portal and could be breaching industry codes and data protection laws. The regulator accepted that Covid may have caused some problems at charities but warned that it could no longer be used as an excuse. Mr Patel said: "The reason many charities are not logging in to act on their requests is partially linked to the pandemic. Every day I speak to organisations, and I've found that as staff were furloughed and roles changed, handover of FPS compliance may not have been carried out appropriately. "Now that much of this upheaval has ended, making sure you are accessing FPS requests when needed should be a priority. "We are starting to write to the charities that we have found are no longer logging into the FPS charity portal to let them know that they need to act so they are FPS compliant." The regulator has previously named 12 charities that had not responded to opt-out requests, including the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints, Sistah Space and Meningitis Help. Charities are given 28 days to respond to an opt-out request before they are considered to be in breach of the fundraising code. If a charity ignores reminders to act on an FPS request, the regulator will name and shame them. ________________________________________________________________________________________ I guess some church authority should log in and respond to them. So in UK terms what does the word "shame" mean? 1
LoudmouthMormon Posted July 9, 2022 Posted July 9, 2022 (edited) 36 minutes ago, JAHS said: The regulator has previously named 12 charities that had not responded to opt-out requests, including the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints, Sistah Space and Meningitis Help. Huh. So, when talking about a member's churchofjesuschrist.org account, the email address is under the control of the member. I'm guessing one of two things is going on here: 1. The Young Women president (or whoever), sent out an email to all YW and their parents (or whoever), through the church's "send a message" function, reminding everyone about the upcoming service project (or whatever). Some angry wanna-be ex member replied saying "stop sending me email", and the YW president (or whoever) ignored it, because they have no control over the member's email address. 2. Enterprisingly annoying elder whoever (or sister whoever) used his/her directory access to grab everyone's email address, and is off peddling his real-estate company (or doTerra nonsense). If it's the first thing, the member should go remove their own dang email address, that they voluntarily gave the church at one time, and have total control over. If it's the second thing, yeah, screw that guy (or sister) - I hope they get publicly shamed by name, and the news goes international, so everyone can appropriately think ill of that annoying person misusing church resources. About once every 5 years or so, someone in my stake does that, and it annoys the heck out of me. Edited July 9, 2022 by LoudmouthMormon 1
Calm Posted July 9, 2022 Posted July 9, 2022 (edited) The second is unlikely given it is specifically fundraising requests being complained about, though a person could still use the directory to solicit funds for a charity in the same way they would try and attract business for their company. Someone posted a cleaning service (discounted, not free, to first so many customers) on our ward website. I am thinking we don’t currently have a moderator or there is worry about offending the person who did it as it never got taken down. Edited July 9, 2022 by Calm
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