I have written a lot recently about the issue of charities and marketing, and especially as I have another post on the boil concerning the same issues, I had intended to keep my head down for a few weeks and talk about something else (or even, as a friend suggested to me today, nothing at all).
However, I have a short update before the next onslaught. A lot has been made about the idea that after the death of Olive Cooke, the Information Commissioner suddenly woke up to the problem of charity marketing, and in the opinion of one charity journalist “moved the goalposts” by requiring charities to change their approach to the TPS in particular, and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations in general. It is to this topic that I intend to return.
Nevertheless, the Information Commissioner, Chris Graham, told the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in October that his office had in fact written to 8 major charities, drawing their attention to issues related to PECR and marketing. At least one charity chief executive (Mark Wood of the NSPCC) denied that his charity was among them, but he has now been obliged to reveal that the NSPCC was in fact one of the eight.
At the time, I made an FOI request to the ICO, asking for a copy of the letter and the names of the eight charities. I was intending to sit on the response for another purpose, but the information is clearly destined for the public domain anyway.
The eight charities were: Barnardos, the British Heart Foundation, British Red Cross, Christian Aid, Great Ormond St, Macmillan Cancer, the NSPCC, and Oxfam.
The letter is very straightforward – it does not refer to specific complaints, as complaints were being funnelled towards the Fundraising Standards Board at the time (the same FRSB which now faces abolition). However, the letter clearly draws each charity’s attention to the Information Commissioner’s guidance on Direct Marketing. That guidance is clear, robust, and written in plain English, with none of the hesitancy or fence-sitting that ICO guidance sometimes demonstrates. It is very strong on the need for clear, unambiguous consent. It is explicit that charity’s promotion activities are direct marketing. And one paragraph leaps out at me:
“Organisations can make live unsolicited marketing calls, but must not call any number registered with the TPS unless the subscriber (ie the person who gets the telephone bill) has specifically told them that they do not object to their calls. In effect, TPS registration acts as a general opt-out of receiving any marketing calls”
If the charities contacted by the Commissioner acted responsibly, they would have immediately sought out the guidance to which the ICO letter referred. It would be remarkable if they did not. If they did, and then did not recognise that the full force of the law did indeed apply to them, it is hard to imagine how. Mr Wood has put his head above the parapet. Oxfam denied receiving the letter when in front of the Committee (my FOI response confirms that they did). It would be good to hear from the others.