Applicable to all SSAFA Employees and Volunteers
Effective from 1 November 2025
SSAFA is a member of the Fundraising Regulator and therefore is required to comply with the principles and rules that the Code of Fundraising Practice sets out for all fundraising activities for charitable, philanthropic or benevolent purposes in the UK.
The Code aims to:
- promote consistent, high standards of fundraising
- explain what is expected from charitable institutions, their governing bodies and fundraisers
- explain what the Fundraising Regulator will consider when investigating complaints
- provide information for charitable institutions to help them assess their fundraising activity and deal with any issues they identify; and
- develop a culture of honesty, openness and respect between fundraisers and the public.https://www.fundraisingregulator.org.uk/code
Through application of the code, we aim to make sure that SSAFA meets the following values.
- Legal: Our fundraising must meet the requirements of the law.
- Open: Our fundraisers must be clear about their processes and willing to explain them when necessary.
- Honest: Our fundraisers must act with integrity and must not mislead people when asking for donations.
- Respectful: Our fundraisers must respect the people and places they interact with.
1. Principles-Based Approach
In line with the updated Code, SSAFA adopts a principles-based approach to fundraising. Our fundraising activities must: -
- Reflect positively on the voluntary sector,
- Respect donor rights,
- Uphold transparency, accountability, and professionalism.
- Our fundraisers must end interactions when requested; and
- Conduct due diligence proportionate to the donation’s size and nature.
2. Fundraiser Protection
SSAFA will undertake reasonable steps to protect its fundraisers from harm and harassment. This includes providing appropriate training so that activities are licensed as required and compliant with the Code, ensuring safe working conditions, and responding promptly to any incidents that arise.
3. Monitoring and Due Diligence
SSAFA monitors its fundraising partners and conducts due diligence where appropriate before accepting unsolicited large donations greater than £5k. This includes verifying the identity of donors, ensuring compliance with ethical standards, and maintaining records of fundraising activities and decisions taken in respect of those activities.
4. Emerging Fundraising Methods
SSAFA is reviewing its guidance for emerging fundraising methods such as online gaming, social media fundraising, and cashless donations. In the meantime, we will strive to ensure we comply with legal and ethical standards and protect donor data and privacy for these fundraising methods.
5. Existing Compliant Practices
- How we use personal data
- We do process personal data fairly and lawfully.
- We do remind donors that they can stop receiving communications from us at any time; we will cease to contact a donor if they ask us to.
- We do ensure our donor data is kept up to date.
- We do not sell our supporters’ data to other charities or share it with them in any way.
- We do have policies for data protection, donation acceptance and refusal, fundraising and managing complaints.
Telephone fundraising
- We do not engage in cold calling.
- We do call supporters from time to time who are already on our database.
- We always check phone numbers obtained for fundraising purposes (e.g., mailing lists) against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and will not call anyone who is registered.
- We always have a service level agreement (SLA) in place with any agency we work with to help us fundraise.
- We ensure the calls they make are recorded and monitored for training and quality purposes and any complaints are dealt with swiftly.
Face-to-face fundraising
- We do not engage in unlicensed street fundraising or house-to-house collections. We do, however, engage professional fundraising organisations on our behalf to conduct licensed and regulated ‘private site’ face to face fundraising for acquiring new cash and regular giving supporters.
- We do undertake street collections with the support of volunteer collectors, but we ensure they are properly briefed and have the relevant permissions and licences.