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Direct Mail Charities

Regulator tells charities to stop bullying donors for money

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By Cameron Clarke | Editor

August 1, 2015 | 2 min read

Charities have been warned by their regulator that they will face criminal sanctions if they continue to bully the public for money.

In an interview with the Times, the Charity Commission chairman William Shawcross said his organisation would be willing to regulate street “chuggers”, door-to-door visits, call centres and direct mail appeals if the charities failed to crackdown on abuses.

Charities' conduct has been under the spotlight since the suicide of the 92-year-old Bristol pensioner Olive Cooke, whose generosity was abused by charities sending her 267 letters in a month and calling regularly for more donations.

“We all thought that was horrible,” Shawcross told the Times. “I don’t know whether the charities were guilty or culpable, but they were certainly responsible."

Later in the interview, he said: "The plethora of stories of people being deluged by mailings and harassed by endless telephone calls on behalf of charities is intolerable.”

Earlier this month David Cameron promised new laws to crack down on the "unacceptable conduct" of some charity fundraisers. "They must act properly in future," the prime minister said.

The Direct Marketing Association told The Drum in May that charities' "excessive" communication was "not the right approach".

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