Representatives from the British Red Cross and face-to-face agency Home Fundraising voiced their cynicism about the annual attrition monitoring data presented at yesterday's PFRA AGM which showed a spike in 'no-shows'.

Fundraisers from both the agency and the largest charity user of face-to-face both queried conclusions that Future Fundraising’s Rupert Tappin drew from the Donor Acquisition and Retention Survey (Dars) at the meeting yesterday.

In his report, Tappin said that just as last year, there has been a jump in no-shows (people that pledge to donate but never do) for both street and doorstep fundraising – from 23 per cent in 2010 to 27 per cent in 2011 for the former, and 20 per cent to 23 per cent in 2011 for the latter. 

Home Fundraising’s Dominic Will questioned whether Tappin could make assumptions without looking at different communications that are in place for different organisations.

“You’re making very broad-brush industry assumptions,” Will challenged, saying that there are so many variables among the participant charities and agencies that any conclusions drawn needed to be put more into context.

Tappin responded by saying that “everything that comes out of my mouth is hypothesis”. He revealed that another report is being planned that will focus on communications data. “We can bring attrition down in the longer term, potentially, with increased comms,” he insisted.

Will also proposed whether having “essentially an agent of the PFRA” making the Dars report was a conflict of interest – which was denied both by Tappin and PFRA chair Paul Stallard. Will then told civilsociety.co.uk that there is a mismatch between the recent information released by the Fundraising Standards Board and the figures from the PFRA.

Door and street no-shows down again

Summing up the Dars report, Tappin said: "Attrition has risen slightly, with street showing the highest attrition, followed by door and lastly private."

The attrition rise is more pronounced in the early months of 2012 but, Tappin insisted, the data is too new to draw any concrete conclusions. Doorstep fundraising income has been fairly consistent year-on-year, and Tappin forecasted that this trend would continue into 2012’s results.

Thirty-four charities took part in Dars this year, although two could not be used as the data did not pass through the quality control system in time. This is more or less the same as last year, when there were 30 contributors.

Face-to-face is the only type of fundraising that is subject to attrition monitoring of this kind.

'Dars can only go so far'

The representative from British Red Cross, meanwhile, asked several questions pushing Tappin to clarify his statements – such as his repeated references linking attrition to the economic climate, and whether he could also bring in other factors that have had an impact from within the charity sector itself.

“We can only go so far with Dars,” Tappin admitted. He added that he hoped that he would be able to go to Adrian Sargeant, professor of marketing and fundraising, to get a better idea of the wider picture.

Sargeant today launched a report by the Impact Coalition, entitled Through a Glass Darkly: the case for accelerating the drive for accountability, clarity and transparency in the charity sector.

Tappin did insist throughout his presentation that the averages in his graphs were weighted, and that every survey was extensively quality-controlled, with several questions asked back to each contributor.

PFRA chair Paul Stallard spoke out following Tappin’s presentation to admit that Dars needs finessing to make the data more meaningful to the Association’s members. He said that more participation from members would help improve what he described as “massively useful” data.

Stallard did insist: “I was impressed [with Dars] last year, and I’m just as impressed now" but added "there are a million questions and issues that need finessing – and we can’t do this without the data.”

Tappin had earlier encouraged the crowd to make sure they submit their data to next year’s Dars, saying that with more participants they could make a more accurate assessment of trends.

PFRA records deficit for second year running

The PFRA’s latest accounts reveal that the organisation is running with a deficit for the second year in a row – although by how much has more than halved, from -£39,768 last year to -£15,650 in 2012/13.

This performance can largely be attributed to the fact that donor recruitment has fallen, for both doorstep and street face-to-face. The PFRA is funded by levies on each donor signed up via face-to-face.