Has sharp practice seen us fall out of love with charities?

EVER wondered what would happen if you didn’t tick that little box asking for your details not be shared with other parties?

In Samuel Rae’s case, it resulted in him being bombarded with phone calls and letters asking for money. In all, the former Army colonel was contacted by charities 731 times.

His details were also traded on 200 occasions and ultimately ended up in the hands of scam companies who fleeced him out of £35,000.

The fundraising tactics employed by charities came under serious scrutiny in 2015 after the death of 92-year-old Olive Cooke.

One of Britain’s longest-serving poppy sellers, she killed herself after complaining she had been plagued by requests for donations from charity fundraisers – more than 200 letters in one month alone.

Now MPs on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee have heard that some charities have made it impossible for donors to block further communication from them or other charities.

Vulnerable and elderly people were seen as “fair targets” by some organisations, and information sold by some charities ended up in the hands of scammers.

The upshot is that the charitable sector was today told it has one last opportunity to clean up its act or lose the right to self-regulation.

However, campaigner Marilyn Baldwin – who helped to highlight Samuel Rae’s case – believes the damage has already been done.

She says she has lost count of the number of people who have told her they have cancelled their direct debits to charitable organisations because of the dubious methods some – or the sub-contractors they employ – use to raise money.

Marilyn set up Think Jessica after her elderly mother’s details were put on what criminals call a “suckers list”. She received more than 30,000 scam letters in five years. Among them were hundreds of begging letters from legitimate charities who were also circulating her details in the same way as the scammers.

The nationwide charity now sends out hundreds of thousands of pieces of educational material every year via thinkjessica.com, advising people not to get into any discussions with strangers over the phone.

“The charities don’t deserve another chance and shouldn’t be allowed to target older people,” she told The Yorkshire Post. “One lady in Yorkshire told us how her mother was living in near poverty because she was too embarrassed to stop any of her five direct debits to charites.

“She was unaware until she witnessed phone calls to her mother from one of these charities trying to make her increase her donations. Her daughter has now cancelled all donations and written to some of the charities involved. So far she hasn’t heard back.”

She believes older people are targeted for their pensions and savings, while often they are talked into donating because they are lonely and enjoy the interaction with the person on the other end of the phone.

“Charities need to look at the bigger picture,” she says. “Apart from the fact that many old people don’t stand a chance against a professional ‘persuader’ and will cave in even if they can’t afford to sign up as a donor, what’s to stop scammers posing as legitimate charities and gleaning information they can use or sell on?”

The Government’s response to the scandals was to set up a review which recommended a new regulator of fundraising. But the new body will still be based on self-regulation – meaning charities themselves develop and enforce rules of behaviour.

So what are the chances of that changing? Pretty slim, according to Peter Maple, a former director of charity fundraising who now teaches charity management.

“If the Government pass laws they will then have to fund the regulator,” he says, “and they don’t want to do that.”