PFRA relies on media for complaint news 1

Fundraising | 12 Aug 2009

The organisation which regulates face-to-face fundraising relies on the media to discover serious complaints about the technique as charities do not routinely report them.

In the most recent case, the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA) only discovered an investigation had been launched by York trading standards officers about British Red Cross canvasser's allegedly ordering householders to hand out bank details after reading about it in the local press.

Several people are understood to have contacted the police as a result of the fundraiser's behaviour, and York council confirmed it received one formal complaint. As a result the trading standards team was notified, but the regulatory body – of which the British Red Cross is a member – was not notified.

A spokesman for the PFRA told Charity News Alert the organisation checks news websites for such stories. He said: “We're constantly monitoring the news media for references about door-to-door fundraising and contacted the British Red Cross as soon as we thought this story might have wider implications. For the time being we are satisfied they have dealt with this internally."

The Red Cross apologised to the residents involved and said the fundraiser concerned had been removed from their campaign.

A spokeswoman said: “We are very sorry to hear about one resident’s experience last week. The fundraiser, who is working on our behalf from an agency, will be removed from the Red Cross campaign immediately, and may also face contract termination pending a full investigation into the complaint.”

No-one from the charity was available to comment on the reporting practices.

Directory: British Red Cross | The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA)

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Ian MacQuillin
Communications and engagement manager
Public Fundraising Regulatory Association
5 Aug 2009

This issue in York was resolved between the parties concerned well before it was ever reported in the local newspaper.

The PFRA does not routinely become involved with complaints made directly to a charity or professional fundraising organisation where those complaints are resolved between the complainant and charity/PFO, as was the case here in York. We would not therefore expect to be notified in real time by any charity or PFO member of any ongoing complaint.

We would only become involved if the complaint could not be resolved and one or other party escalated it to the PFRA.

In such cases we have a thorough and transparent complaint handling process for complaints that are made directly to the PFRA by members of the public or local authorities about the actions of PFRA members.

As we do not require PFRA members to notify us of resolved complaints, we certainly do not have to ‘rely’ on media monitoring to supplement that information.

Most of our members, representing the vast bulk of D2D/F2F activity, are members of the FRSB and so they report their complaints directly to the FRSB through that organisaion’s established processes. This information is collated by the FRSB at the end of the reporting year and shared with the PFRA.

We do however monitor the media for all sorts of emerging stories about F2F/D2D fundraising so that we can respond to any issues if necessary, as we did with this case in York.

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