FRSB invites charities and agencies to send in annual complaint return form
Howard Lake | 10 January 2012 | News
The Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB) is asking its member charities and fundraising agencies to complete and send in their annual complaint return form. This document summarises all their fundraising activity and any complaints received during 2011, and its submission is a core obligation of membership.
Alistair McLean, Chief Executive of the FRSB, said: “Although we currently have a very high submission rate for complaint returns at 80%, we are determined to see that return level rise still further, enabling us to monitor both fundraising volumes and complaint levels as accurately as possible.”
As part of this process, for the first time, from June 2012 the FRSB’s website www.givewithconfidence.org.uk will clearly show whether each member has filed its return.
Photo: Alistair McLean, CEO of the FRSB by FRSB on flickr.com
McLean explained the move, saying:“By publicly acknowledging those members that have completed their returns we believe that we are giving others an extra spur to action ensuring greater transparency to the public.”
He added that the form has been redesigned to be even easier to complete and that FRSB staff were on hand to help members complete their returns.
The FRSB now has over 1,370 members signed up to self-regulation, so it is expecting to report both greater fundraising volumes and complaints than in previous years.
Three core fundraising areas will be explored in detail by the FRSB; telephone fundraising, direct mail and data protection.
As in 2011, fundraising academic Professor Adrian Sargeant will provide an analysis of complaint trends which will be published within the FRSB’s Annual Report in June 2012.
The deadline for members to submit the annual return is 16 March 2012.
The 2011 FRSB Annual report revealed that 18,442 complaints had been received by charities during 2010, with direct mail (addressed and unaddressed) accounting for 53% of all complaints, and with street fundraising attracting the highest proportion of complaints against volume of activity at 0.17%.
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.