Charity marketers may be left wondering what all the fuss was about over the Fundraising Preference Service after the latest figures reveal that just 3,700 individuals have signed up to the service in the first four months.
The figure, which works out at just over 230 people a week, was released by Fundraising Regulator chief executive Stephen Dunmore at the Westminster Social Policy Forum keynote seminar in London.
He said that over 8,000 suppressions have been requests for contact across all the available channels – direct mail, telephone, email and SMS – but that only a relatively small number of people had been using the FPS to make “multiple suppressions of multiple charities”.
The FPS, first recommended in the Etherington Review of fundraising self-regulation published in September 2015, went live at the beginning of July sparking predictions of a sector meltdown. One survey by nfpSynergy suggested that up to 30 million people could sign up to the scheme.
At the time, nfpSynergy co-founder Joe Saxton said that the impact of the FPS on giving could be “devastating”.
He added: “If these figures are right then a large majority of the giving public could sign up to FPS and cut them off from fundraising communications. If 30 million people sign up to the FPS, the costs of the service will be very high and the impact on giving devastating.”
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