Auditing the agencies that fundraise on your behalf is crucial to gaining a full understanding of whether they comply with your policies, and those of our regulators. Working with the agency is key to this and will provide far greater confidence in the work that they do on your behalf. St John Ambulance audits both their face to face and telephone agency regularly, meaning that the recent updates on the code of practice could be well planned, changes can be communicated across both the agencies management structure, and the charities. This process should not be one that people fear, it is to reassure all that the charity and agencies were compliant with data law, and Fundraising Regulations. Once the new policies are established and understood, it makes working together far easier, and at St John has led to the implementation of a safeguarding processes that supported the agencies recruitment process. A digital training and recruitment portal was designed so that all new candidates applying for the role log-in and take a Safeguarding the Vulnerable module, which ends with a test. Those scoring less than 80% are then unsuccessful in progressing to an interview. This has offered assurance across the Trustee Board at St John Ambulance that the allegations the agency faced in 2015, that they were targeting the vulnerable, were unfounded.

Black listing those that don't do a good job has often been brought up in discussions between agencies, in-house teams, and regulatory bodies. References are not often supportive in terms of a fundraiser's conduct whilst they have been in work at a previous agency and legally this is not able to given by the previous employer when you seek them. There are possible ways in which we can safeguard the face to face industry, and those are illustrated in the 'Putting the principles and actions into practice section' below.