The Fundraising Standards Board has recruited Professor Adrian Sargeant to analyse its complaints returns this year, as it expands the survey to include questions about legacy fundraising and house-to-house clothing collections.

This year is the first that the FRSB has handed analysis of the data to a consultant. It hopes that Sargeant’s research expertise will deliver better analysis of trends emerging from the annual survey, now in its fourth year.

The compulsory survey has opened today and will close on 7 March.  All members of the FRSB that joined before July 2010 are required to complete the annual complaints return.

The new questions on legacy fundraising will seek to discover if particular methods and channels offend people more than others and whether the administration of legacy pledges is an area of major concern.

New questions on house-to-house clothing collections aim to gather responses that will be relevant to the future regulation of the new Code of Practice on such collections, to be unveiled by the Institute of Fundraising this year.

Last year, direct mail attracted the highest number of complaints, at three for every 100,000 donors contacted.

Adrian Sargeant (pictured), professor of fundraising at Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis and professor of fundraising and non-profit marketing at Bristol Business School, said: “Only when we understand the areas where we’re weak can we begin to develop our professional practice and improve public confidence as a consequence.”