More details have emerged about what a collaboration between the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association and the Fundraising Standards Board will mean for collating face-to-face fundraising complaints.

The two bodies are working together to develop a system which will give fundraisers a fuller, more accurate picture of the level of public complaints about the fundraising mechanism.

The idea that is being worked on would see PFRA encourage its members to funnel complaints data through themselves into the FRSB. FRSB chief executive Alistair McLean said that just under a third of agencies signed up to the PFRA are not currently members of the FRSB, and that the FRSB was keen to get the non-member data fed into its annual complaints report.

“Mick [Aldridge] has confirmed to me that the PFRA have every confidence in the FRSB’s underlying complaints figures, the issue was that not all PFRA members were FRSB members and therefore it was reasonable for us to assume that not all complaints would be getting captured and reported by the FRSB in our annual report.

"He and I have both recognised this and have since met to see if we could ensure more accurate reporting,” McLean said.

“There was no plan or commitment to run anything parallel to the work of the FRSB as quite clearly that would be confusing and unhelpful.

"I should of course make it clear that as a consequence of not being members of the FRSB, neither their complaints nor their activity are recorded for our annual report, so in reality, we are reporting accurately, we just don’t have the full picture. This is something that the PFRA are keen to assist us in achieving.“

McLean said there can be difficulty in assessing complaints accurately because it is still undefined what an ‘engagement’ is in terms of face-to-face fundraising, and because of possible issues of agencies and charities reporting the same complaint twice.  However, he said he was “sure there was not any double-counting” in the latest complaint data released by the FRSB.

He said he had faith that the collaboration would bear fruit: “I’ll be very optimistic that we’ll have an even more accurate record of the complaints received by suppliers in next year’s report.”

McLean also had words of praise for the PFRA. “I think the PFRA have done a great job with site management, working with Trading Standards and developing real awareness at the coalface of face-to-face,” he said.