Charities Regulator's Fundraising Guidelines

The regulator is very clear in these guidelines that “Charity trustees have overall responsibility and accountability for their charity and this includes fundraising activities of the charity”

This means that if you are on the broad of a charity you need to have full oversight of the fundraising activities your organization is undertaking.

“Trustees should ensure that all key people within their charity who are involved in fundraising implement the approaches and practices set out in these Guidelines”.

Pleading ignorance if something goes wrong is not an acceptable line of defense for trustees when it comes to your fundraising activity anymore.

Equally, management and those working in fundraising within a charity need to ensure that their trustees take on their responsibilities to oversee fundraising. The guidelines are there to be read for those who need to manage fundraising within your organization bot upwards and downwards.

Charities Institute Ireland have an excellent resource on implementing the guidelines which you can access here: www.charitiesinstituteireland.ie/implementation-resource-materials

They also have excellent guidelines to ensure people at fundraising level are doing the best they can to follow best practice fundraising and have a series of guideline booklets for:

Cash Collections | Digital Fundraising | Payroll Giving | Working with Children | Charity Shops | Events | Telemarketing Fundraising | Direct Recruitment | Lotteries | Volunteers

That can be accessed here www.charitiesinstituteireland.ie/the-cii-codes

The Wheel provides training to its members that introduces the guidelines to organisations and brings them through what they need to do. It’s introductory level so suitable for trustees, staff, fundraisers or anyone new to the guidelines or to fundraising. The Wheel provide training regularly within its calendar www.wheel.ie/training or you can contact The Wheel directly to deliver the training on site to your group, or groups locally. The Wheel has facilitated many of these sessions through SICAP and PPN training networks around the country.

The Charities Regulator regularly publishes Guidance Documents in easy to read formats. Some of particular note include: 1) Internal Financial Controls; and 2) the responsibilities of Charity Trustees, 3) Guidance Note for Registered Charities on Fundraising through Clothing label Collections and Clothing Bank Collections, 4) Guidance on Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing for Charities and 5) Overview of the proposed Charity Financial Accounting Regulations and SORP.

If you and your board / management committee have not yet downloaded and read them, then we urge you to do so now through the Charities Regulator website: www.charityregulator.ie.