Commercial Participators and Professional Fundraisers - useful new guidance from the Fundraising Regulator

 Last week the Fundraising Regulator published two new pieces of guidance, one on commercial participators and one on professional fundraisers.

The guidance comes after consultation responses indicated that charities found these complex areas of legislation hard to apply to modern fundraising scenarios.

The basic rules for both of these can be summarised neatly as:

• Due diligence
• Written agreement
• Monitoring

The guidance goes into really useful detail about what constitutes a professional fundraiser and commercial participator and how the agreements should be structured.

One note of interest is that for the first time it is made clear that events participators, who raise sponsorship to join in a challenge event such as a hike, are not commercial participators.

In such a complex area that has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, these sets of guidance is a welcome source of clarity and certainty.