6.Fundraising involving children
It is important to take particular care when involving children in fundraising, whether as fundraisers or as donors. This section includes standards on minimum age restrictions that apply when fundraising, and standards to protect children and their data.
6.1.Responsibilities relating to fundraising involving children
In this section, ‘you’ means a charitable institution or third-party fundraiser.
There are some activities which children and young people cannot carry out. The age restriction depends on the activity and where it is carried out. These activities include:
- street and house-to-house collections;
- lotteries or raffles; and
- events involving alcohol.
You must keep to any relevant age limits set by law when organising fundraising activities.
You must make sure that your staff understand their responsibilities and what they must do in relation to activity organisers, the children taking part, and the parents or guardians of those children.
You must give the children or young people taking part, and their parents or guardians, guidance on how to carry out fundraising safely and legally.
You must not give children under 16 overall responsibility for handling money or responsibility for counting collected money.
You must use the Disclosure and Barring Service (in England and Wales), Disclosure Scotland (in Scotland) and Access NI (in Northern Ireland) to carry out checks on any adults working with children, if the law says you must do this.
You must only contact children on school premises if you have the approval of the head teacher or a member of the school’s staff chosen by the head teacher, and you must follow any procedures you have agreed with them.
You must get permission before taking or publishing photographs of children. If the child is over 13 years old they can give this permission themselves. If they are under 13, you must get permission from their parent or guardian.
Further requirements for England and Wales
You must not allow anyone under the age of 16 to carry out house-to-house collections, unless the collection is taking place in the City of London, in which case, you must not allow anyone under the age of 18 to take part. You must not allow anyone under 16 to carry out street collections, except in London where, if you have special permission, you can use street collectors aged 14 or over.
Further requirements for Scotland
If a street collection qualifies as a public charitable collection, you must not allow children under 14 to take part, and must not allow children under 16 to carry out house-to-house collections.
Further requirements for Northern Ireland
You must not allow anyone under the age of 16 to carry out street collections or house-to-house collections. The exception to this is if a house-to-house collection is taking place across Northern Ireland and you are a youth organisation which the Department for Communities has approved for carrying out the collection under an exemption order, in which case you can have collectors aged 12 and over.
For more standards on processing data, see section 3 Processing personal data (information).
6.2.Children and data protection
In this section, ‘you’ means a charitable institution or third-party fundraiser.
The law does not set a minimum age for when a child can give an organisation consent to process their data. However, as a guide for developing your policies on consent, you should consider that Article 8 of the GDPR says that a child must be at least 13 years old to give consent for an organisation to process their personal data in order to provide ‘information society services’ (in other words, a service a person asks an organisation to provide electronically, at a distance, in exchange for a fee).
For more standards on processing data, see section 3 Processing personal data (information).
If you rely on consent as the lawful basis for processing a child’s data, you must get their parent’s or guardian’s consent for this until the child is able to give informed consent themselves.
You must not share any data you collect from anyone aged under 14 without consent from their parent or guardian, unless you have to do so by law (for example, during a police investigation).