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A third of FRSB members still not reporting complaint numbers

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 20 May 2009

More than a third of Fundraising Standards Board members are still failing to submit their complaints figures to the regulator, according to its annual review which shows direct mail dominates known grievances.

Only 59 per cent of FRSB members submitted annual returns to the organisation last year despite all promising to do so when signing up. The figure is an improvement on the previous year when just a third participated.

Chief executive Alistair McLean describes the returns level as “really good”, but said he is “very keen” to see returns level rise “substantially - to around 60 to 70 per cent”. He plans to raise the issue with the FRSB’s new members advisory forum.

“Obviously the greater the level of returns and the greater the accuracy of the returns, the more meaningful our statistics will be for our members,” he said.

Of the 26,349 complaints that were registered with the FRSB, 20 required mediation and one, relating to a Unicef campaign insert, required an adjudication – the second in the organisation’s two-year history.

The complainant accused the charity’s ‘Child Immunisation Card’ campaign material of including “wildly exaggerated claims”. The FRSB ruled parts of the leaflet could be construed as “exaggeration” but there was no intent to mislead. Unicef maintained the advert was neither exaggerated nor misleading but has since changed its content.

The annual review also reveals direct mail accounted for nearly three quarters of all complaints, up from 31 per cent in 2007, although McLean says comparing the results from the two years was like “comparing apples and pears” given the increase in membership numbers. Membership in the relevant time period rose from around 500 to 871.

Although direct mail accounted for more than 19,500 of the total complaints the FRSB has actually recorded, complaints represented only 0.04 per cent of direct mail sent.

“The sheer volume of direct mail communication and the lack of complaints is a wonderful story,” said McLean.

Telemarketing caused the second highest number of reported complaints, at 2,772, but again only represented less than 1 per cent of call volume.

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