Charities that bully donors could face fundraising ban

Charities should be banned from fundraising if they harass or bully donors, a government commission report has concluded.

The House of Lords review, set up in response to concerns over aggressive fundraising methods, proposes setting up a new register that will allow people to opt out of all contact from charities.

"We seem to have found ourselves in a position where charities didn't think hard enough about what it was like to be on the receiving end," says Sir Stuart Etherington, who led the review.

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The chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations says the current self-regulatory system "really doesn't have the clout or the sanctions" to prevent bad practice, the BBC reports.

The review proposes replacing the Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB) with a tough new regulator, funded by a levy on charities that spend more than £100,000 on fundraising a year.

However, the regulator says that "a revamped FRSB, properly resourced, would be the most viable and cost-effective way of moving forward".

The report also recommends that fundraising move above and beyond mere regulation and compliance, "from simply just doing things right to also doing the right thing."

Charities that breach the rules will be named and shamed and could be banned from specific methods of fundraising until the problem is resolved, the review suggests.

It says it is clear that charities and those working within them have the best intentions, but "unfortunately, good intentions are not always enough to avoid bad outcomes."

The review was set up in the wake of the death of 92-year old Olive Cooke, one of Britain's oldest poppy sellers who committed suicide. An inquest into her death found she was persistently harassed by charities and received 267 charity letters in just one month.