Fundraising complaint rates are static, but some methods show disproportionate increase in complaints
Howard Lake | 9 June 2014 | News
The net proportion of complaints made by members of the public has remained static over the last financial year, latest figures from the Fundraising Standards Board show.
Although complaints made to the FRSB’s 1,203 members rose by 44 per cent to 48,432, the volume of fundraising rose by 51 per cent. This means that the proportion of complaints to volume is 0.00026 per cent compared to a complaint rate of 0.00024 per cent in 2012/13.
Some highlights of the FRSB Complaints Report 2014
Complaint rates for many of the different methods of fundraising methods are more or less proportionate to the volume increase in those methods. However, there are a few exceptions.
Complaints by different methods of fundraising
Fig 1. Complaints by fundraising type. Fi2. Use of fundraising type v/s proportion of charities reporting complaints. Source: FRSB 2014
By far the biggest proportionate rise is in SMS fundraising, where complaints have increased from by more than 1,100 per cent from 26 to 287, while the volume of the method has gone up by around 300 per cent.
Complaints about outdoor fundraising events almost doubled (87.4 per cent rise) while the number of registered participants has hardly changed at 1.56 million (although two charities were responsible for two thirds of the complaints generated). Similarly complaints about doorstep face-to-face fundraising increased by 26.8 per cent even though the number of doors knocked by doorstep fundraiser hardly changed from last year’s 43.6 million (a 1.5 per cent increase to 44.3 million).
Clothing collections saw a near tripling of complaints, up to 5,699 from 1,910, while volume fell by around 60 per cent. However, this has been attributed to one particular campaign run by a charity.
According to FRSB’s figures – contained in its annual Complaints Report – the number of cash collections held by charities fell by 70.4 per cent to 233,720 collections, yet the number of complaints about this type of fundraising rose by 54 per cent from 109 to 168. FRSB says there has been a “steady pattern of growth” in complaints about cash collections.
By contrast, complaints about street face-to-face fundraising – which received wisdom says generate most public hostility – fell by 10 per cent to 739 complaints although volume (this method’s the lowest number ever) against a fall in solicitations of 13 per cent. There has also been a proportionate drop in the number of complaints about email fundraising.
As usual, addressed direct mail, telephone fundraising and doorstep F2F occupy the top three slots as most complained about methods.
Other findings include:
• Those charities made almost 20 billion donor contacts, (the total reach through fundraising advertisements, direct mail, telephone fundraising, email marketing, face-to-face asks etc)
• On average, the largest UK charities reported 515 complaints, while the smallest than one
• There was a 13 per cent annual increase in the number of charities reporting their complaints to the FRSB, a 51 per cent increase in fundraising activity and a 44 per cent rise in the number of complaints.
• More than half (55 per cent) of complaints were incurred by less than 2 per cent of reporting charities
• 5,834 complaints were logged by newly reporting charities
• 59 per cent of respondents reported no complaints for 2013
• 18 complaints required formal intervention and were escalated to Stage 2 of the FRSB complaints process in 2013. The majority of these complaints related to allegations of poor fundraiser behaviour
Average number of asks needed to generate a complaint for the top ten most complained about methods of fundraising (only those methods where volume is measured by number of solicitations
Telephone fundraising 923
Doorstep face-to-face 1,395
Major donor 1,596
Addressed direct mail 2,837
Trust/foundations 4,520
SMS fundraising 4,919
Email fundraising 7,969
Clothing collections 18,972
Street face-to-face 26,008
Un-addressed direct mail 83,102
• The full report, containing more details on the type of complaint received for each method, can be downloaded from www.frsb.org.uk/complaints
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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.