The annual face-to-face fundraising donor attrition benchmark, DARS, is the only  one of its type in fundraising. But is it independent and is it doing what it says on the tin? Dominic Will, from Home Fundraising, has some concerns

After criticism of the Donor Attrition and Retention Survey at the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association's annual meeting this summer, civilsociety.co.uk asked both sides to make their case for whether the survey is robust and involves any conflict of interest. Read the opposing view here. Read the alternative view here. 

Let’s be clear from the outset, I am very much in favour of robust analysis that both helps provide the context for and validates the effectiveness of face-to-face channels. A report on industry-wide attrition has the potential to be a useful resource, providing an opportunity for charities and agencies to benchmark their own performance, and enhance decision-making regarding longer-term activity through this medium. The fact that no other fundraising channels aspire to report on recruitment and retention information in quite the same way should demonstrate the transparency of face-to-face to fundraisers and help change some wider perceptions about the channels.

The value of reporting of this type however is governed by three factors; the overall purpose of the survey, the data going into it and the associated methodology.

A desire to recognise some industry benchmarks for the F2F channels represents a sound purpose, however the amount of variables within each channel – cause, operational model, scale of campaigns and geographical region to name but a few – make it extremely difficult to arrive at meaningful conclusions and I’m yet to be convinced that DARS is on the right track to achieving this.

The sample size in the 2013 report represents less than 20 per cent of donors signed up on street and door over past year and barely exceeds this percentage of the market in the previous five years of DARS reporting. Clearly there are some big players missing from the survey, meaning that any industry-wide assertions need to come attached to a rather large caveat.

An example of this would be DARS commentary on in-house door-to-door activity and comparative agency results (now as an agency provider I would object to us all being lumped together under one banner but that’s another issue!). Considering in-house door-to-door campaigns make up such a tiny percentage of the overall volume of donors recruited, it is spurious at best to include them in the sample and rather pointless to suggest that these types of operations achieve better donor retention rates than their agency counterparts.

As for the set-up and control of the survey there is a crystal clear conflict of interest with a member organisation (Decaid) of the PFRA – which commissions DARS – producing the report and providing commentary both in the document and during the presentation of the figures to the sector.  This commentary clearly has the potential to influence commercial decision-making and therefore any observations and indeed the production of the report should be the responsibility of an individual or agency independent of the PFRA and wider fundraising industry.

I’m not for one moment questioning Rupert Tappin’s integrity, merely highlighting the appropriateness of Decaid’s involvement and I would expect the same question from Rupert or other industry stakeholders if the shoe was on the other foot. Decaid promote stewardship and donor communications services. To quote the final line in the DARS Report 2013 summary:

“Increasingly however resources must be put into working in partnership with face-to-face agencies, developing different propositions for recruitment and retaining more of the donors recruited by developing personalised stewardship programmes if we want to see this method continuing over the coming years.”

The discussion around the integrity of information and how it is positioned is hugely important when we consider the common misconceptions and negative feeling too often displayed both within and outside of our sector towards F2F channels – and professional fundraising in general.

In the past few months alone we have seen the PFRA and Fundraising Standards Board report contradictory figures relating to door-to-door fundraising which understandably makes it difficult for fundraising directors, CEOs and other senior sector figures to fully understand the context of the market and promote the channel effectively to trustees and external stakeholders. This is unnecessary. The wider debate around trust and confidence needs to be taken on more robustly and the management information around donor numbers, cumulative fundraising income and the hugely impressive low complaints ratios are there to do it. The points I am highlighting with DARS are just a small part of this much wider and more important issue.

Dominic Will is joint managing director of Home Companies.