IoF urges minister to set up ‘GDPR hotline’

The Institute of Fundraising has written to digital minister Matthew Hancock asking him to give as much support on the issue to charities as to businesses and other organisations

The Institute of Fundraising has called on the government to provide a “GDPR hotline” to help charities prepare for its implementation next year.

The membership body has written to Matthew Hancock, the digital minister, calling on him to ensure that charities receive the same level of support as businesses and other organisations to prepare for the General Data Protection Regulation, more stringent data-protection rules that come into force in May.

The IoF said it also wanted Hancock to provide a GDPR hotline for charities from six months before the legislation comes into force and a targeted scheme to help charities upgrade their database systems.

It called on the government to raise awareness of the changes among smaller charities and to work with sector bodies to offer more data-protection training.

The IoF penned the letter after a survey, carried out by the IoF and published today, found that nearly half of charities felt they lacked the internal expertise needed to prepare for the introduction of the GDPR.

Of the 332 charities that responded to the survey, 72 per cent said they felt there was a lack of clear guidance available on the GDPR, and 48 per cent said they did not feel they had the level of internal skills and expertise they needed to prepare properly.

The IoF survey found that the problem was particularly acute for small and medium-sized charities, with 49.5 per cent of small charities and 58 per cent of medium-sized organisations saying they lacked expertise, compared with 29 per cent of large charities.

And 33 per cent of small charities said they had not done anything to review data protection or prepare for the GDPR, compared with 3 per cent of medium-sized charities.

All of the larger charities polled said they had begun preparing, but almost no charities of any size said they believed they were ready for the introduction of the GDPR.

Peter Lewis, chief executive of the IoF, said: “A large majority of charities are working to prepare for data protection changes, but there is a clear need for much more support, especially for smaller organisations.

“It is really important that sector bodies, regulators and the government all step up to help raise awareness of the changes and to ensure there is support in place to help charities through this transition.”

He said the IoF would be developing support materials and webinars in the months to come, but a wider approach was needed across the sector.

Mandy Johnson, chief executive of the Small Charities Coalition, said the results did not surprise her.

“The GDPR is a complex regulation and there has not been enough support to help hard-working volunteers and charity workers to understand exactly what they need to do,” she said. “The SCC is working to change that.”

Vicky Browning, chief executive of the charity leaders body Acevo, said the findings reflected concerns Acevo was hearing from its members about a lack of resources and in-house skills to tackle the GDPR.

“Members from larger charities tell us they’re having to divert significant funds to deal with the challenge, but this isn’t an option for smaller organisations,” she said. “The sector is crying out for clearer guidance.”

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport was unable to respond in time for Third Sector’s deadline on Friday morning.

Source link

Stonewall urges action from passive LGBT allies as hate crime surges

Stonewall has launched its first brand campaign in 10 years to reignite the fight for LGBT equality, as new research reveals that hate crime against LGBT people has risen by nearly 80 per cent in the past five years.

The charity’s three-year initiative centres on a new slogan, “Come out for LGBT”, aimed at moving passive supporters of equality into action.

The campaign comes as a poll conducted by YouGov has found that hate crime against the LGBT community is on the rise, despite more legal rights being granted around the world. One in five LGBT people in Britain said they experienced a hate crime or incident because of their sexual orientation in the past 12 months. The number of LGBT people experiencing hate crime has increased by 78 per cent in the past five years, from 9 per cent in 2013 to 16 per cent in 2017.

Ruth Hunt, the chief executive of Stonewall, said the prevalence of hate crime found by the research had surprised her. Yet there was a “huge degree of complacency” among people who stayed on the sidelines rather than showing concrete support for LGBT people, she added.

“We often encounter the idea that the fight is done now,” she said. “But there are still significant portions of society that are homophobic.”

The agency Mr President created the campaign for Stonewall, which will include a film running online and in cinemas, bus and print adverts, and social posts from influencers such as the TV presenter Sue Perkins and the vocalist Ghostpoet. Adverts feature supporters standing alongside LGBT people, such as a senior brigadier general with a gay man in his troop, with straplines including “Come out marching”, “Come out playing” and “Come out sharing”.

Merchandise such as buttons and Oyster card cases will be sold to encourage people to become visible allies, and Stonewall will also have resources on its website with suggestions for taking action.

Stonewall has run a “Get over it!” campaign since 2007 to tackle bullying. “Come out for LGBT” would not replace that initiative but would widen the charity’s message to a broader audience, Hunt said.

The new campaign reflected the direction in which Stonewall was moving, Hunt said: “Previously we were focused on securing rights for individuals. Now, although that’s still a priority, it’s about making sure we build alliances and encourage people to stand with each other.”

This article first appeared on Third Sector’s sister publication, Campaign.

Source link

Think tank urges wide-ranging review of charity tax reliefs

New Philanthropy Capital wants ministers to examine what happens to the £4bn of charity tax breaks the sector gets each year

The think tank New Philanthropy Capital has called for a wide-ranging review of charity tax reliefs to make them work better for the voluntary sector.

NPC has today urged the government to examine where the near £4bn generated each year in charitable tax relief and the extra resources it generates goes in the charity sector and whether it can be improved upon.

The think tank said any review should be revenue-neutral and not used to cut financial support to the sector.

The charity sector received about £4bn in tax reliefs in the 2016/17 financial year, with Gift Aid and business rates relief accounting for £1.28bn and £1.87bn respectively.

VAT reliefs are worth £400m to the charity sector and stamp duty land tax reliefs are worth approximately £220m, according to figures provided by NPC.

Individual people also get charitable tax reliefs, with inheritance tax reliefs worth £840m in 2016/17 and the higher-rate relief on Gift Aid worth £520m.

Other charitable reliefs include payroll giving, social investment tax relief and gifts of shares and property.

Dan Corry, chief executive of NPC, said: “As politicians return to Westminster, they need to look at how they can best use resources to support a strong and thriving civil society. We think that a review of the £4bn or so of tax breaks currently on offer is an important part of this process.

“NPC spends a lot of time urging individual charities to look hard at the way they allocate their resources to see if they maximise impact. It is only right that government should do the same.”

The call comes after NPC wrote an open letter to the political parties before the general election that set out the case for strengthening the charity sector, including moving the Office for Civil Society to a “cross-cutting department” such as the Cabinet Office.

Source link

Name and shame non-payers of fundraising levy, Sir Stuart Etherington urges

The chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations says the Fundraising Regulator should make charities that have not yet paid the levy explain themselves

Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, has called on the Fundraising Regulator to make public the names of charities that fail to pay its levy.

Speaking at a reception in London this morning to mark the launch of the Fundraising Preference Service and the first anniversary of the Fundraising Regulator, Etherington said charities that did not pay the levy should be made to explain themselves.

All charities that spend more than £100,000 a year on fundraising have been asked to pay the levy to fund the regulator, totalling almost 2,000 charities.

Stephen Dunmore, chief executive of the regulator, said today that 370 charities had either refused outright to pay the levy or simply not responded to “four or five” letters requesting payment.

The levy is voluntary, but Etherington said that ensuring the regulator was properly funded was crucial to sustaining self regulation – which, in turn, he said, was vital to maintaining the independence of the voluntary sector.

He said he was aware that the regulator’s board had decided to publish the names of those charities that had paid the levy.

“That is a very honourable way of approaching things, but my advice is to publish the names of those that have not paid the levy,” he said. “Name and shame. Put it out there and let them explain why they do not support the notion of self-regulation.”

Martyn Lewis, former chair of the NCVO and current chair of the Commission on the Donor Experience, agreed with him, saying it was a terrific idea.

Etherington led the review of fundraising in 2015 that led to the establishment of the regulator and the Fundraising Preference Service, which will allow people to block communications by phone, text, email or post from specific charities.

In his review, Etherington called for the FPS to be a “big red button” that people could activate to stop all communications from all charities altogether.

But he said he believed the more “subtle” form the FPS had taken was outstanding and better than his initial suggestion.

During the same event, Suzanne McCarthy, chair of the Fundraising Regulator’s standards committee, said the regulator would be conducting a “root-and-branch review” of the Code of Fundraising Practice in 2018.

Latest headlines

Responsibility for the code passed from the Institute of Fundraising to the regulator when it was established last year.

Although the regulator has proposed changes to the code and consulted on them, it has previously said it did not believe the time was right for a complete overhaul.

McCarthy said the regulator wanted to make the code “user-friendly, comprehensible and easy to work” to ensure that it was accessible to small charities.

The regulator has also today published a review of its first year of operation, which says that it received 713 complaints over the course of the year.

The review says it has 30 investigations under way or completed, has closed 621 cases and published its first adjudication, on the agency Neet Feet, in November.

The review says the regulator had an income to the end of March of £1,545,000, about £886,000 of which had come from levy contributions and £639,000 from start-up contributions made by the largest fundraising charities.

The regulator spent £1.3m over the same period, including £247,000 on the set-up of the FPS, it said.

Source link

Give charities a clear voice in policy-making, CAF urges the government

In a paper published today, the Charities Aid Foundation says the sector is key to delivering social cohesion

The government should commission charities to improve community cohesion and give them a clear voice in policy-making, according to the Charities Aid Foundation.

In a paper published before the Queen’s Speech this morning, called Strong and Stable For the Many Not the Few, CAF makes a raft of suggestions including a bigger role for charities in their local communities.

“What has become clear is that action needs to be taken to unite people, to strengthen communities and to make sure that everyone feels they have a stake in society,” the paper says.

“Charities are core to delivering this, using their unique expertise and influence to heal divisions and strengthen society.

“National trends remain important, but much of this essential work has to be done on the ground at grass-roots level – the kind of level where charities are already operating.”

It also calls on the government to repeal or exempt charities from the lobbying act, or at least implement in full the recommendations made by the Conservative peer Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts in his review of the act.

Hodgson said the scope of the act should be reduced to include only activity intended to influence how people vote.

The CAF paper says the government should “enshrine the principle of charity advocacy in statutory law”.

Other suggestions include amending the Companies Act 2006 to improve transparency around corporate giving and requiring each government department to promote payroll giving to its employees.

It also calls for more government support for volunteering and says charities should be given a bigger role in shaping devolution deals.

Sir John Low, chief executive of CAF, called for charities to be given a big role in decisions made during this parliament.

“Government and politicians come and go, but charities are the constant glue that binds communities together,” he said.

“During this time of seismic change, charities are needed now more than ever to bring the country back together and help secure Britain’s place in the world.

“This Brexit parliament must use the unique expertise of charities to help rebuild communities, tackle social injustice and give a voice to those who may otherwise lack one.”

Source link

‘Get a backbone’ during the election, Bubb urges charity leaders

The former leader of Acevo, Sir Stephen Bubb, has criticised the sector for allowing itself to be silenced on the issues by the lobbying act

Charities have failed to speak out against the Conservatives’ manifesto plans for social care because they are afraid of falling foul of the lobbying act, according to Sir Stephen Bubb.

Bubb, director of the think tank Charity Futures, said the lobbying act was gagging charities, but he also criticised charities for allowing themselves to be silenced by it and called on sector leaders to “get a backbone”.

The Conservative Party has been criticised for the social care proposals in its manifesto, such as the inclusion of the value of elderly people’s homes when estimating how much they should contribute to their own care. But Bubb said not enough of this criticism had come from charities.

“The social care proposals strike at the heart of what charities do and they should be up in arms about them, but it hasn’t happened,” said Bubb, who was until last year head of the charity leaders body Acevo.

“It is two problems: there is the problem of the so-called ‘gagging act’, but also the general climate of hostility towards charities means there is a lot of self-censorship,” he said.

“Charities that once would have spoken out are keeping quiet and doing a disservice to their beneficiaries. They need to get a bit of a grip.”

The Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 introduced caps on the amounts that organisations – including charities – can spend on campaigning on issues that could be perceived as party political in the run-up to elections.

Both Labour and the Scottish National Party have pledged in their general election manifestos to repeal the parts of the act that relate to charity campaigning.

“Many charity leaders do feel that if they do speak out there will be some form of comeback on them,” Bubb said. But this response was “simply not good enough”, he added.

“The deafening silence from charities in the last few months has been extraordinary, and the bottom line is that we are letting our beneficiaries down,” he said. “Particularly the health and social care sector: it needs sorting and charities should be at the forefront of demanding action and answers.

“It is not enough to hunker down and keep their heads below the parapet. Some sector leaders need to get a backbone: that’s what they’re being paid for.”

Responding to Bubb’s comments, Steve Clapperton, campaigns manager at the Charities Aid Foundation, said the idea that some charities had felt unable to speak out on behalf of their beneficiaries during the general election campaign was “extremely concerning”.

He said: “CAF has consistently warned that the lobbying act might deter charities from fulfilling their important role in our democracy.

“Concern is building among charities and politicians, including some MPs who initially supported the act, who have noted the absence of charities in policy debates where they would normally represent expert views on behalf of their often marginalised beneficiaries.”

He said it was “legitimate and vital that charities were able to positively influence political parties’ policies and called on all parties to come together after the election and commit to repealing the lobbying act.

Elizabeth Chamberlain, head of policy and public services at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, said: “Charities can, and should, campaign in the run-up to an election.

“The need to maintain their neutrality becomes greater when an election is called, but it doesn’t mean that charities lose their right – and duty – to speak up on behalf of their beneficiaries and about their cause.”

But she echoed Bubb’s concerns about self-censorship, which she said was the biggest threat to charities’ right to campaign.

Source link