Thanks for the comment Adrian. The full research will be published shortly. But I agree with your point about trust. It's a very broad term. Perhaps asking donors whether they trusted charities to treat them with respect might be a better question? Sadly because of the aggressive behaviour of (comparatively few) charities, donors are growing wary of giving to new organisations. In our research on mobile giving for example, we found donors initially loved the idea of giving via their mobile phone as it appeared to offer a means to control the relationship by allowing them to remain semi-anonymous. Sadly the heavy use of follow up calls proved them wrong. It significantly damaged both the technique along with general attitudes to giving. More recently, I've heard charities are now promising new donors – at the point of recruitment – that they will not call them to upgrade for a number of years as a means to counter this ill-feeling. Donors may well broadly trust charities, but if we extend that to trust us to raise money with respect, then we may well be disappointed by what we find. The approach of an individual charity justifying behaviour by pointing to a bottom line can't really be defended any longer. We are too interconnected now to continue acting without thought for other charities in the sector. The more I think about what's happened, the more I am reminded of what happened in the recent sub-prime disaster. I'm not sure if you've read the work of Gillian Tett who is US managing Editor of the FT, but initially trained as a Social Anthropogist. In her review of the crash she put it quite simply... “One of the reasons we got into the mess we are in is because they were all so busy looking at their own little bit that they totally failed to understand how it interacted with the rest of society.” That seems to sum up what happened to us. Keep up the great work.

Hi Simone. It was perhaps one of my best ever days as a fundraiser. It's a shame that we'll never know what Tony would have topped it with (which he would).

Thanks for your comment Ian. As funders of Rogare, you know I agree with much of what you say. However, there is great use of the phone and appalling use of the phone. I'm currently engaged in trying to find out why I received a call on behalf of charities that fits neatly in to the absolutely appalling category and I'm struggling to get any information to help me. As a result I am about to embark on a formal process to get a recording of the call and associated details). There's also great face-to-face and there is appalling face-to-face. It's the same for direct mail, use of data and any other area of fundraising you might care to mention. As a sector, rather than saying that the regulators or newspaper are out to get us, I think we need to recognise that some fundraising has fallen below standards that we should expect of ourselves. However much I agree with the need for a formal foundation for a set of professional ethics, I think there are some practices that can and should be stopped now. If we, as fundraisers, had questioned these practices when we saw them (which we failed to do) we would not have faced this review. But it has happened and we have to live with it. I am hopeful that in planning for the future, more charities will think of the needs of donors as well as beneficiaries - which is no bad thing (at least to my mind). And we should also remember that this is still self-regulation where we have the ability to influence what happens next. That should be our focus now. We have a chance to create a charitable sector that is the envy of the world. I find that very exciting.