Fraudsters target charities with invoices for the Fundraising Preference Service

The Fundraising Regulator has warned charities to be wary of any email that demands payment for the FPS, which is already covered by the voluntary levy paid by hundreds of charities

Fraudsters are sending charities invoices that demand payment for the Fundraising Preference Service, the Fundraising Regulator has warned.

The regulator alerted organisations to the scam today and urged those affected to get in touch.

“A number of charities have been invoiced fraudulently, although we do not believe that any have paid money,” a spokesman for the regulator said.

He said the spoof messages came from an email address not registered to the regulator’s @fundraisingregulator.org.uk domain and contained a link to an external website.

The regulator had alerted the national fraud centre Action Fraud to the phishing attempt, the spokesman said, and was raising it with sector bodies including the Charity Commission, the Institute of Fundraising and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The regulator has asked charities that spend more than £100,000 a year on fundraising to pay a voluntary levy to cover the Fundraising Regulator’s costs, which includes the operation of the FPS.

The regulator started the FPS this year to allow people to block post, telephone, email or text communications from named charities.

The amount that charities have been asked to pay by the regulator for the levy varies according to how much each organisation spends on generating voluntary income.

The spokesman added: “The Fundraising Regulator will never issue an invoice for the FPS, since it is funded by our levy. If you know or you believe you have received one of these fraudulent FPS emails and have concerns, or if you have any questions, please get in contact with us on 0300 999 3407 or at [email protected].

“We would also like to ensure that those organisations that fall within the scope of the fundraising levy do not assume the invoices we are currently sending for year two are in any way associated with this fraudulent scheme.”

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Digital round-up: Manchester bees tattoo appeal exceeds its fundraising target

Plus: Date for #GivingTuesday 2017 announced, OLIO adds donation feature to food-sharing app and the UNHCR launches #TheExtraMile

The Manchester Tattoo Appeal, set up in response to the Manchester Arena bombing last month, has exceeded its £500,000 target, making its JustGiving page the fifth-largest crowdfunding page on the site. Tattoo parlours across the UK pledged their time and resources to tattoo as many Manchester bees as possible as symbols of support, with those being tattooed (an estimated 10,000) donating money to the appeal to help victims of the terror attack. More than £4.7m has now been raised from various JustGiving fundraising campaigns set up in the wake of the bombing, including the Red Cross’s We Love Manchester Emergency Fund page, which has raised £1.6m alone.

#GivingTuesday is to return for a fourth year in 2017, with the date confirmed as 28 November. Speaking at the launch of the event this week, Sir John Low, the chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation, which oversees and coordinates the day, said #GivingTuesday had become “one of the biggest days of charitable giving in the UK” and was a day for “doing good stuff”. He said that research commissioned by CAF after last year’s day found that 6.4 million people said they had heard of #GivingTuesday and 4.5 million had taken part. More than one in three people who were aware of #GivingTuesday said they would do something for charity in future as a result of the event.

The local food-sharing app OLIO has launched a new donations feature to incentivise its users to share more of their surplus food as well as raise money for causes. OLIO is a free app that connects people with local shops and cafés so that surplus food can be shared and not just thrown away. Users share photographs of their items on OLIO for others to collect. The new donation feature mean users can add food and other household items to the app and request donations to charities of their choice, with OLIO charity partners Feedback and FareShare the initial beneficiaries. OLIO co-founder Saasha Celestial-One said: “By teaming up with Feedback and FareShare, we are now making it even more meaningful for our users to share their spare food and work to tackle the problem of food waste at scale.”

The UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, launched a new fundraising event to coincide with World Refugee Day this week. #TheExtraMile is a virtual marathon challenge, with participants invited to cover 27 miles over a month, logging their distances through the UNHCR’s fundraising platform partner, GivePenny. It hopes to raise £50,000, which it says will be “enough to give more than 300 refugee families a home away from home”.

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