Prospecting to be fully integrated into PFRA levy and allocations procedures

12 January 2011

• Charities to pay per site per day
• Prospecting activity to be diarised alongside street fundraising
• Change to the way fundraising sites are allocated in London

The practice of 'prospecting' –collection on the street of contact details of potential donors, who can then be asked to give at a later date – became fully incorporated into PFRA's self-regulatory regime this month [January 2011].

Prospecting is covered by the Institute of Fundraising's Face-to-Face Activity Code of Fundraising Practice, having been incorporated into the code in its December 2009 revision. This brought prospecting within the regulatory remit of the PFRA.

PFRA's charity members pay a levy to the PFRA of 75p for each new donor they recruit through street or doorstep F2F. The levy provides the resources for PFRA to fulfil its regulatory functions, such as running a mystery shopping programme, dealing with complaints about F2F fundraising and negotiating access with local authorities.

However, because no donors are actually recruited on the street, prospecting has fallen outside of PFRA's normal levy procedures. And since no levy is charged, access for prospecting activity has not been part of the PFRA's diary system.

But on Monday January 10, prospecting became fully incorporated into PFRA's site allocation processes throughout the UK and charities will now need to 'bid' for prospecting sites in the same way that they bid for street fundraising sites.

PFRA members have also agreed to pay a fixed levy of £6.75 per site per day for each site that is used for prospecting. The fee is based on how many donors a team of fundraisers would have been likely to sign up had it been operating in that site, rather than the number of contacts made or the number of donors recruited during follow-up contacts. As with the per donor levy, charities will pay the prospecting levy, not agencies.

Michael Naidu, PFRA's acting chair, says: “To potential donors on the street, and of course to local authority licensing officers and town centre managers, prospectors are indistinguishable from street fundraisers. As this is undoubtedly a form of fundraising – because the street contact is followed up with a telephone call or other communication asking them to become regular donors – it is important that prospecting is fully integrated into the mainstream of self-regulation of F2F fundraising. I am pleased that this is now the case.”

PFRA has also made a change to the way it allocates fundraising sites in London, which has allowed prospecting to be incorporated into the allocation process. PFRA's London Site Management (LSM) system lists 133 delineated fundraising sites throughout the capital. Until now, charities have made bids for access to these sites based on the number or donors they wanted to recruit.

Following a trial period during the last quarter of 2010, charities now make bids based on 'recruiter days' – the number of fundraisers multiplied by the number of days they will be on the street.

For example if a charity expects to use 20 fundraisers or prospectors working five days a week and five fundraisers or prospectors working two days a week, then over a standard four-week period, they would need to make a bid for an allocation of (20 x 5 x 4) + (5 x 2 x 4) = 440 recruiter days.

But as allocations were previously based on the number of expected donors, and prospectors did not recruit donors on the street, prospecting could not be part of the LSM allocation procedure. That has now changed.

The rest of the allocation process for the LSM remains unchanged, as do PFRA's diaries for sites outside of London, for which prospectors will continue to request sites in the same way as charities do for street fundraising. Full details of the allocation processes can be found on PFRA's website at:

www.pfra.org.uk/control_and_regulation/how_the_pfra_regulates_f2f/site_allocations/diaries

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