Annual Return

We ask our members to complete an annual complaints return in order to monitor the total level of fundraising complaints across the sector, to highlight common issues behind those complaints and to enable us to feed relevant information back to the organisations that drive and shape fundraising standards and best practice guidance.

All the information you provide on your annual complaints return is kept strictly confidential and we only ever publish results for the membership as a whole.

Here is an example of a previous years return.

These are the results from the 2009 annual return:

Fundraising Type Volume of Activity Complaints Complaints as % of Volume
Direct mail

200,392,580

5,081

0.003%
Telephone

4,719,957

2,147

0.045%
Door to door

22,382,011

2,106

0.009%
Data protection

-

1,172

-
Outdoor events

957,245

530

0.055%
Raffles

29,799,368

338

0.001%
Street

147,880*

312

0.211%
Email

74,926,415

234

0.000%
Door drops

131,296,211

224

0.000%
TV

59,664,996

151

0.000%
Legacies

-

156

-
Volunteer

-

108

-
Lotteries

11,804,882

86

0.001%
Challenge events

103,797

65

0.063%
Online

2,161,724,744

60

0.000%
Cash collections

771,263

53

0.007%
Social activities

247,365

43

0.017%
Corporate

-

34

-
Other prize draws

2,872,579

12

0.000%
Major donors

-

12

-
Trusts

-

11

-
Radio

102,760

10

0.010%
Total

2.7 billion

12,945

0.000%

Source: 733 completed membership annual returns for period Jan - Dec 2009; 73.4% response rate out of 998 eligible members (those who have been signed up to self-regulation for longer than 6 months). 69.5% of members received no complaints during the year.

* This number only denotes the number of people who sign up and complete a direct debit donation form. It does not take into account the number of people that are approached by a street fundraiser and decline to donate.

A full copy of the UK's annual complaints report can be viewed or downloaded in PDF format.

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