3 COMPLAINT PROCESS
You may make a complaint to us in person, by telephone, or in writing, by either post or e-mail. The complaint should be made as quickly as possible after the event. This is particularly important if the complaint is connected with a charitable collection or similar form of face-to-face fundraising.
3.1 Complaints made in Person or by Telephone
We will:
- Listen to you, keep calm and not argue
- Gather the facts using open questions
- At the end of the meeting or call, summarize the conversation to confirm to the complainant that we have understood the situation
- If the member of staff you are speaking to is knowledgeable about the area of the complaint, then they will try to resolve the complaint at that time
- If you are satisfied, then we will go to 3.3, below
- If you are dissatisfied, then we will also:
- Take your contact details and acknowledge your complaint in writing within 14 days, including a summary of your meeting/telephone conversation and confirm that the complaint will be dealt with within 30 days
- We will then go to 3.3, below
3.2 Complaints made in Writing by Post or E-mail
We will:
- Acknowledge the complaint in writing within 14 days, confirming that we will seek to resolve the complaint within 30 working days
- At this stage, we will only contact you further where we have insufficient details to take the complaint forward
3.3 Update our Complaints File
We will:
- Enter the details of your complaint onto ARC’s Complaints File, which is held in the format provided by the Fundraising Standards Board
- If you are satisfied, then this is the end of the process
- If you are dissatisfied, then go to 3.4, below
3.4 Resolving the Complaint
- We will establish the area of our operation the complaint involves. Having first consulted with relevant members of staff, we will make contact with the appropriate person and gather any relevant information regarding the materials and/or circumstances of the case.
- If a third party is involved (for example a partner charity), then we will also speak to them to gather any information about the circumstances of the complaint.
- We will take care to record all the important points and file these with the case
- Having gathered all the relevant information, we will need to seek a meeting with the relevant person with authority for the area concerned. We will include a representative of the partner charity, if they have been implicated, at this meeting.
- This assessment meeting will set out the nature of the complaint and determine what action needs to be taken. We will record whether it is about an alleged breach of the Institute of Fundraising’s Codes of Fundraising Practice and/or the Fundraising Standards Board Fundraising Promise, as the FRSB will need this information if the complaint is referred to them.
- The outcome of the meeting will typically produce one of two options: The complaint is justified. We will write to you to apologize and let you know how the complaint has been used to improve on your future fundraising activities. We will also take action to prevent any recurrence of the problem. The complaint is not justified. We will write to you to explain that while we take complaints very seriously, in this case we will not be changing our fundraising practices and give a reason for our position.
- In exceptional circumstances, we may need more time than 30 days to gather all the information (for example, if a key member of staff is on annual leave or sick). If this happens, we will contact you in writing with a copy to the Fundraising Standards Board, outlining the situation.
- When we write to you, we will make it clear that if you are not happy with our response, then you should contact the Fundraising Standards Board within two months of receiving our response.
- We will make sure that all correspondence is on file and that this can be made available to the Fundraising Standards Board if the complaint is pursued further.
- The Complaints File will be updated with the outcome
3.5 Reporting to the Fundraising Standards Board
A record of the number and nature of all the complaints we receive about our fundraising activity will be made as part of our annual return to the Fundraising Standards Board.