The sharing of Olive Cooke’s personal details by charities she supported led to her receiving ever-growing amounts of fundraising mail and feeling ‘overwhelmed’ by charity approaches, a Fundraising Standards Board investigation has concluded.

Of the 1,442 charities that participated in the FRSB’s investigation, 99 had Cooke’s details on file - 19 began contacting her prior to the year 2000 and a further 80 charities had begun corresponding with her since then, with 32 charities initiating contact in the past five years.

With each charity sending Cooke an average of around six mailings each year, the total number of mailings from the charities in the FRSB’s sample more than trebled from 119 in the year 2000 to a peak of 466 in 2014, the FRSB said in a statement.

However, the FRSB said the actual amount of mail she is likely to have received from all charities may have been as much as six times higher, according to an interview she conducted with The Bristol Post in October 2014.

Twenty-four of the 99 charities had passed on Cooke’s contact details to another organisation and seven in 10 had obtained her contact details from a third party such as a fellow charity or commercial data supplier/list broker. The FRSB’s investigation found details were held on donor lists maintained by 22 separate commercial data suppliers.

The FRSB’s investigation started on 18 May 2015 after the media reported links between Cooke’s death and the high volume of fundraising approaches she received. Cooke’s family later stated that charities had nothing to do with her death, but that she had been distressed by the high number of approaches she was receiving.

The FRSB report also summarises complaints about charity fundraising received in the weeks after Cooke’s death.

The FRSB said its investigation also identified insufficient opt out procedures. Only 14 of the 99 charities that corresponded with Cooke offered her the specific opportunity to opt out of future mailings via a tick box in each communication. The large majority required donors to contact the charity proactively and ask to be removed from future mailings.

FRSB chair Andrew Hind said the investigation underlines the need for a charity’s right to ask being balanced with the public’s right to say ‘no’. The situation demonstrates the “inevitable consequences” of a fundraising regime where charities have been willing to exchange or sell personal details to each other and third parties, he said.

“But Mrs Cooke was not alone. Her experiences were echoed in the many complaints that the FRSB received following her death.”

The FRSB welcomes the changes to the Code of Fundraising Practice introduced following its interim report on the issue last June, Hind said. If charities comply with the strengthened code it will “go a long way” towards ensuring donors are not similarly pressured in future, he added.

“Nevertheless, there needs to be an easier way for individuals to control how they are approached by charities and greater organisational commitment to meeting donors’ needs. We support the development of the Fundraising Preference Service, although it will be for the new Fundraising Regulator to identify an effective way in which this can be implemented.”

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