Complaints - a goldmine of feedback
Negative feedback about any aspect of a charity’s operations is an opportunity to engage with supporters and improve processes as a result.
Joss Saunders talks about how feedback mechanisms and the power of complaints are viewed as ‘free consultancy’ by Oxfam (see Caritas, issue 39, February 2011, page 7).
The Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB) has recently published its annual report, Confident About Fundraising which analyses the latest fundraising complaints figures.
Key findings included:
- Of the 3.9 billion donor contacts, 18,442 were complaints.
- The top 50 charities by voluntary income account for 66 per cent of all complaints and 91 per cent of fundraising income.
- The top three fundraising activities by volume are: TV advertising, online advertising and press advertising.
- Addressed direct mail generated the highest number of complaints (9,462), equating to only 0.006 per cent of the reported volume of 146 million.
- Data protection generated 1,200 complaints and ‘poor data’ resulted in around 2,000 further complaints.
- Street fundraising incurred the highest proportion of complaints (485) against the volume of activity at 0.17 per cent.
The FRSB advises charities to:
- make it easy for someone to give feedback and ensure the complaints procedure is accessible and straightforward;
- treat every complainant as an individual;
- make sure they get all the facts from the complainant and understand what sort of response is expected; and
- to take their time over each response.
For more on fundraising standards, see pages 9 and 10 of the Caritas Suppliers Guide 2011
Author: Clarissa Dann
Clarissa Dann was the editor of Caritas as well as an HR and management online service,he People Bulletin until July 2011.
She is now the editor of the specialist trade finance magazine, Trade and Forfaiting Review which can be viewed at www.tfreview.com but does write on charity finance and investment from time to time.
Clarissa has a background in legal and professional publishing, as well as business journalism and holds an MBA from
There are no comments on this article. Be the first to comment.