PFRA gathers data for annual attrition and retention survey
Howard Lake | 10 March 2010 | News
The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA) is now collecting data for its annual Donor Attrition and Retention Survey. Charities have until the end of March to return their completed forms to the PFRA.
Ten charities have committed to be part of the survey for the next five years, including Amnesty International, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Dogs Trust, EveryChild, and Quarriers.
However, any charity involved in street or door face-to-face fundraising can take part on a year-by-year basis without committing further. Nor do they have to be members of PFRA.
The Donor Attrition and Retention Survey (DARS) has been run annually by the PFRA since 2008 and has established an attrition/retention benchmark for street and door F2F fundraising, based on analysis of more than 250,000 donors, dating back to 2004.
It has confirmed that around 50% of people cancel their direct debits within the first year. However, the 2009 edition of the survey showed that attrition for 2008/09, the first full year of the recession, was predicted to peak at around 56%.
Morag Fleming, head of fundraising at Quarriers and co-organiser of DARS along with Future Fundraising’s Rupert Tappin, said: “Everyone is extremely keen to see whether this trend will continue or whether retention rates will fall back. My gut feeling is that we’ll see a return to pre-recession levels.”
The results of the 2010 DARS will be released at a special seminar hosted by PFRA in June.
Those interested in taking part should contact PFRA Chief Executive Mick Aldridge.
www.pfra.org.uk
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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.