Charities have long been an established part of life, carrying out everything from hospice care to cancer research to caring for orphaned children to seeking responsible treatment of animals etc.

In Britain there are well over 200,000 registered charities and estimated to be a lot more that aren’t registered as they are too small.

Charities have a good name and do a good job but in recent years in the UK, many large charities became too focussed on collecting money and using unscrupulous methods to do so.

From reports of chuggers (the charity collectors in the street who stop you and wont let go till you’ve signed up) to the ones that trade names of donors so they can each cold call more people, to those using boiler room tactics on cold calling. Some people have reported getting hundreds of such calls per week and being frightened to leave their phone connected.

There is now the Fundraising Preference Service.

You can register online at https://public.fundraisingpreference.org.uk/

Or call 0300 303 3517. You register yourself (or another person) so as to not be bothered by the charities you elect to block.

You need to supply your name and address and pick which charities to block.  That’s all there is to it.

You can register someone else on the service and they will be sent a message informing them of the registration. This is so that carers and family members and neighbours can register people unable to do so themselves.

Most of the charities have learned to behave better following the bad publicity but this will hopefully make them more responsible as well and stop a lot of the unnecessary bothering of people that still goes on.

In its first days, the FRP was receiving 114 requests per hour so you can see this service is very much needed.

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