Fundraising Standards Board begins survey into number of fundraising complaints
Howard Lake | 12 January 2010 | News
How many complaints do the public make about direct mail and telephone fundraising? The Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB) is trying to find out. It is issuing its annual call for members to complete their complaints return summarising fundraising complaints received during 2009.
Member charities are being asked to submit their complaints return by 8 March 2010.
The figures submitted for 2008 revealed that one complaint was received for every 20,000 fundraising contacts, which the FRSB considered “a relatively low level”.
However, complaints about direct mail made up 74.4% of total complaints reported to the FRSB and telephone fundraising was the second highest area with a complaint level of 10.5%. For this reason, the FRSB is this year asking member charities to include more detail about the nature of complaints in these two areas.
Alistair McLean, Chief Executive of the Fundraising Standards Board, said: “This year, we have decided to dig a little deeper in order to get a better steer from members as to what aspects of direct mail and telephone fundraising are yielding those complaints.
“A key part of the FRSB’s remit is not only to collate such information, but to feed it back to the relevant regulatory and professional bodies such as the Institute of Fundraising who issues ./guidance for fundraisers”.
The annual return requests information about the type of fundraising activity conducted, volume levels and complaints received by each member charity. The results are then consolidated and individual returns kept anonymous.
www.frsb.org.uk
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.