The number of complaints received by the Fundraising Regulator rose by 8 per cent last year, new figures show.
The regulator’s latest annual report, published today, says 1,137 complaints were made to it in the year to the end of August 2023, up from 1,056 in the previous year.
The regulator said 509 of the complaints it received in 2022/23 were outside of its remit, a similar proportion to previous years.
It said it closed 1,140 complaint cases in 2022/23, including 54 that were received in the previous financial year, 94 per cent of which were closed within four weeks.
The Fundraising Regulator investigates complaints about charitable fundraising that cannot be resolved by the organisation itself or where it involves significant public harm.
It publishes a separate annual report on complaints about fundraising made to organisations themselves, although it said last month that it would pause collecting complaints data for about two years after the publication of this year’s report.
This is so it can consider making changes including widening the sample of charities it collects complaints data from.
The report has previously only featured complaints reported by about 60 charities that spend more than £5m a year on fundraising.
Gerald Oppenheim, chief executive of the Fundraising Regulator, says in the report: “Our complaints caseload has continued to increase, and this year marked greater use of our self-reporting pathway by charities, enabling fundraising organisations to report any of their compliance concerns with the code to us.
“We are pleased to see charities have made use of this function, with 20 organisations submitting self-reports to us. We had constructive dialogues with the organisations involved.
“This has helped our understanding and increased confidence in our responsive approaches to regulation.”
The report shows the regulator’s income remained flat at just under £2.6m, with spending of almost £2.5m over the same period.
It held funds of just under £2m at the end of August 2023, the accounts show.
The number of organisations registered with the regulator increased by 7 per cent over the course of the year to almost 6,100, the regulator said.
It said that 64 charities had refused to pay the annual fundraising levy, the voluntary charge that charities spending more than £100,000 a year on fundraising have been asked to contribute to support the regulator’s work.
This represents about 2 per cent of those that have been asked to pay the sum, with 1,983 charities paying in full.
“It is disappointing that a small minority of charities do not recognise their collective responsibility to fund independent regulation of fundraising,” the report says.
“It is also unfair to those charities who do pay. Choosing not to contribute does not only affect the charity concerned; it means that our regulation and services, which are beneficial to all fundraising organisations, will be underfunded.”
The regulator’s average monthly number of employees during the year was up from 24 in 2021/22 to 27 last year, according to the accounts.
Employment costs rose by slightly more than £200,000 to £1.5m over the same period, including wages, social security costs and pensions.
The regulator also used the report to publish research showing that 73 per cent of donors are more confident supporting charities that display the fundraising badge, the logo that shows organisations are registered with the Fundraising Regulator.
Researchers found that of 2,200 people surveyed, 61 per cent said they would be more likely to think positively about a charity displaying the fundraising badge and 51 per cent said they were more likely to support a charity they had never heard of if it was displaying the badge.