The idle complainer holds a special place in the British heart. So fond are we of the grumbler that the caricature ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ was spawned to gently ridicule the worst offenders. With this long-established tradition of complaining, is it time the charitable and voluntary sectors started taking complainants more seriously?

The Charity Commission thinks so, last month publishing research criticising two- thirds of charities for failing to have a proper complaints procedure in place. Of those, 80 per cent told the Commission they did not need one.

The survey highlighted how small and medium-sized charities are misunderstanding how complaints should be handled, with 77 per cent incorrectly believing the Commission had responsibility for resolving disputes.

The Commission says service users, often the most vulnerable people in society, are further marginalised if their voices cannot be properly heard by the charities with which they engage. The code of governance for the sector, endorsed by the Governance Hub, advises charities to have a complaints procedure and organisations are now being encouraged to sign up to the Fundraising Standards Board which requires charities to put a system in place to deal with feedback, positive and negative.

What this means is that charities are now under pressure from across the regulatory board to deal with complaints effectively. Charity Commission executive director of policy and effectiveness Rosie Chapman says organisations will quickly feel the benefit of having a procedure to deal with criticism in place. “You have nothing to lose and everything to gain – free feedback and evaluation, better targeted services for your users and a demonstration of your desire to raise your game for supporters and funders,” she says.

Charities must, however, make sure complaints procedures are properly tailored to their work. Chapman warns organisations that they must carefully consider what type of process they need before implementing one. “Think about the services you provide and their purpose. Think about how you deliver them and points of access, contact and implementation you offer,” Chapman says. “Then think about meaningful ways that people can provide feedback in an easy and accessible way.”

David Hunter, policy and development officer at Acevo, says having a policy and advertising it well could save valuable time and resources in dealing with complaints, especially in the long term. “While perhaps initially awkward, handling complaints allows organisations to evaluate their activities and to move forwards. As Goethe said, ‘Mistakes are the portals of discovery’,” he says.

Hunter believes that procedures need not be excessively complicated to be effective. They should be clear, easy for staff to use and establish suggestions for how to avoid making the same mistake in the future. In fact, Acevo says it would support the Charity Commission if it wished to develop a template for charities to use.

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But the Commission needn’t jump to its feet. Such a service is already under development at the Fundraising Standards Board. When the FSB launches to the public in October, many charities will find themselves facing increasing pressure to sign up to its standards, and to therefore introduce a complaints procedure for the first time. The FSB says it will support this process.

“One of the services that we are going to offer is an off-the-shelf complaints mechanism,” says FSB director Jon Scourse. “There is really no point in every charity having to reinvent the wheel.” The service, which is being drawn up now, will be available on the board’s website later in the year. The ready-made customer complaints system will be consistent with the timetable already set out by the FSB for dealing with complaints about members which are taken to the board itself, or to an external complaints commissioner if necessary. Scourse says having a strict timetable is key to an effective response, as it sets boundaries for both the complainant and the staff resolving the problem.

The suggestion that all charities need a complaints procedure, including those with neither members nor service users, has caused some disquiet. One unnamed online blogger, calling himself only ‘The Ranger’, used his site to openly criticise the Commission, arguing that a small charity with the sole aim of conserving the local population of dormice would not find a formal complaints process beneficial. “Why should it expend resources handling complaints from people who think it should be conserving squirrels?” he writes.

Scourse disagrees. “If you’re facing the public, either selling goods or seeking donations, frankly it’s in your self-interest,” he says. “A complaint is not a problem, it’s an opportunity. A complaint that is effectively handled creates a really good impression with the person who has made the complaint and creates loyalty.”

National mental health charity Mind has its own formal complaints procedures, but also requires all independent charities affiliated to it to have a similar service in place. It produces guidelines for those charities when they develop or review their system. “If you’re setting up a complaints system for the first time it’s important to acknowledge that things will sometimes go wrong,” says executive officer Frances Brown. “Complaints are valuable feedback and if properly managed can provide useful information to the organisation in order to improve their services and demonstrate accountability.”

The charity puts together a database of all complaints received, and reports back to its management team and trustees who use the information as a key performance indicator. Brown advises setting a clear and tight procedure for dealing with complaints. The charity should use the development process to state what it is and what it does. “If you have a mission statement, include it,” she says. “Having no definition can leave the charity open to complaints about issues that are totally outside of your control.”

Brown echoes the call for a strict timeline for the procedure. “Responses need to be speedy but be realistic in setting timescales in the procedure that you can work to, as late or no response will further compound the complaint,” she says. “Having a clear procedure and purpose for monitoring this information helps staff to see the process more objectively as a point of learning and accountability and fairness to the complainant, and not as a system that is about assigning blame.”

The National Trust has such a procedure in place, and promises to acknowledge a complaint within seven working days, and resolve the issues within a further 21. Customer care manager Kevin Merrell says this helps to improve public confidence, but also highlights problems that could balloon if left unchecked. “I think it’s really important that things don’t just disappear into a black hole,” he says. “The quicker we can resolve the issue the better. It gives us an opportunity to nip problems in the bud.”

For Merrell, a key component is flexibility. While many members, service users or representatives of the public will use the channels put in place by a charity to make their voices heard, others will aim straight for the top, addressing letters of complaint to trustees, directors or other visible figureheads.

Merrell says that if the complaint goes in at the top, it should be responded to from the top as this is the only way to ensure confidence in the charity in today’s increasingly demanding social climate. “In the modern world consumers have got certain expectations,” he says. “Those expectations are rising day by day. People compare organisations with organisation. It doesn’t matter if you’re a commercial business or a charity; we’re all now on the same stage.”

While this may be another strong argument for all charities to set up a formal system, not everyone agrees. A spokesperson for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations says the route is not right for all organisations, and there are other ways for a charity to prove its transparency. “It’s up to our individual members to have or not have a complaints procedure. Every charity is different and they have different needs, and their users have different needs,” a spokesperson says. “A complaints procedure is one of the ways to be open and accountable, but it’s only what happens when things go wrong. So we would encourage our members to put in place measures to engage with their users at every step of their operation.”

Good advice. But with the Commission and the FSB shouting ever louder on the issue, the introduction of a formal procedure will be shooting up the to-do list of management
teams across the sector this summer.

Setting up a complaints procedure: six key considerations

• Keep the system simple and accessible
• Define your charity’s purpose and remit within the procedure
• Clearly define what constitutes a complaint and who can
  complain through the system
• Ask yourself how you will handle information and what you
  will do with it
• Set a strict timescale for reporting and responding to complaints
• Consider what support you can give to complainants, and to staff who
  find themselves the subject of a complaint

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