Private detectives required

YOU'LL SPOT IN THE PAPERS TODAY the launch of the Fundraising Standard Board's "Fundraising Promise". Represented on charity adverts by the FSB tick (below), the Promise says it guarantees that charities won't treat you badly when you choose to give - and if they do, there's an official complaints procedure.

Fine, but we're finding it hard to get excited. The Promise is a voluntary scheme (in fact a reaction to government pressure), so far only about 200 charities - out of the 5000+ that count - have signed up. And you, the public, will have to police it.

What's more, the standards it guarantees have been watered down over the last few months to make them palatable to more charities, and the end result doesn't strike us as especially high. The 193 pages of detail are unhelpfully tucked away on the Institute of Fundraising website, and in language written for lawyers. And the sanctions they threaten are piffling; if a charity believed it could make an extra £20,000 out of a fundraising scheme that breaks a rule or two, it would probably risk the ultimate sanction of losing its membership.

Add to this the fact that adjudications over complaints are currently made by a board of charity and marketing types rather than people like you and me and it's clear that the Promise falls somewhat short of its, er, promise.

The most positive aspect of the Promise is that it shows that some charities do have professional fundraising standards - which most of the public don't know - and that it's deemed important enough to spend serious cash advertising the fact.

It's just a shame that the not-inconsiderable job of policing the Promise (meaning digesting and applying those codes of fundraising practise) now falls to us, the public. No-one else is going to do it for us. So if we don't complain, it won't mean a thing.