Donor Complaints About Fundraising: What Are They and Why Should We Care?

The Fund Raising Standards Board is the body responsible for the self-regulation of fundraising practice in the UK. As a requirement of membership of this body, charities are required to complete an annual return detailing the complaints received about their fundraising practice in the previous year. We conduct through this study an analysis of these data to highlight the percentage of solicitations in a wide variety of media that result in a complaint. We also examine the nature of those complaints and interpret our results in the context of the wider literature exploring the role of complaints in bolstering customer/donor satisfaction and determining subsequent behaviour.