Around eight out of ten charities are not supplying all the required information about their fundraising activities and policies in annual reports, according to the Fundraising Regulator.

Its research found that just 21% of reports included all required details in the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016.

This covers statements about their fundraising approach, whether they are adhering to regulation, monitoring of fundraising, number of complaints they had received and whether they are protecting vulnerable people.

The Fundraising Regulator found that just 40% of charity reports give a statement on protecting the public and vulnerable people in their fundraising. A similar proportion are including details of their monitoring.

“Although this does not necessarily mean that charities are not monitoring fundraising or don’t have polities to protect a particular group, because it is not presented in the report, many charities are missing out on the opportunity to demonstrate their policies and activity which can help build trust in their fundraising processes,” said the regulator.

When charities did report on their fundraising details “they did this through statements that were clearly written and with enough detail for the reader to be informed about the activity”, added the regulator.

This is the second year that the Fundraising Regulator has been collecting charity sector reporting performance. Direct comparisions are limited as a different scoring approach has been taken this year but “overall there is little improvement on year one”.

It added: “We have identified that most organisations are not providing enough information about the reporting of monitoring of fundraising activities carried out on behalf of the charity, numbers of complaints and, crucially, what they are doing to protect vulnerable people and other members of the public while fundraising.”

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