IOP Fundraising Complaints Procedure

We are grateful for the generosity of our supporters and take any feedback as an opportunity to improve our service. We are registered with the Fundraising Regulator and have signed up to the Fundraising Promise, demonstrating our commitment to best practice.

Despite our best efforts, we recognise that there may be occasions when you wish to register a complaint. We take complaints seriously and seek to address them appropriately.

A fundraising complaint

If you have a complaint or concern about our fundraising and believe that we have not complied with the Fundraising Promise, and therefore may be in breach of the Code of Fundraising Practice, please raise your concerns following the steps below.

How to complain

Tell us

You may register your complaint with us in any of the following ways:

1. Email: [email protected]
2. Post: Fundraising Complaints, Governance & Compliance Department, Institute of Physics, 37 Caledonian Road, London N1 9BU, UK

Please include your name and contact details in your email or letter so we can contact you easily. Throughout the complaint process, we will treat you fairly and with respect, keep you informed of progress, respond promptly, and let you know how to escalate a complaint if you wish to pursue it further.

We will respond

We will aim to acknowledge all complaints within 5 working days of receiving them electronically, and within 10 working days if received by post. Following acknowledgment, we will aim to provide our response within an additional 10 working days.

If your complaint is of a complicated nature or requires further investigation, we will aim to provide our response within 25 working days of our acknowledgment of your complaint.

If it is not possible to give a response within those timescales, we will contact you to explain why and to provide an indication of when a full response can be expected.

If you are not satisfied

If you are not satisfied with our response, please let us know and your complaint will be investigated by a senior member of staff. The senior member of staff will write to you setting out the outcome of their review and the rationale for their decision.

An acknowledgement will be sent in writing within 5 days of receiving your response, and we will aim to complete the review within 25 working days.  

What to do next

If you still remain dissatisfied with the outcome of our investigation and would like to make a complaint to the Fundraising Regulator, you may contact them via the Fundraising Regulator’s online form provided you do so within 2 months of our response.

Recording complaints

We will retain records relating to a complaint for at least 24 months from the date on which the complaint was made, except where data protection law requires that the information be erased earlier than this (for example, where you make a data erasure request within this timeframe).

A record of the complaint will be available for inspection by the Fundraising Regulator and will include details of the complaint, the date it was received, details of any investigation undertaken and a copy of all communications regarding the issue.

The Fundraising Regulator

The Fundraising Regulator is the independent regulator of charitable fundraising in the UK. It sets and promotes the standards for fundraising practice and adjudicates complaints from the public about fundraising where these cannot be resolved by the charities themselves.

The Institute of Physics is registered with the Fundraising Regulator and subscribes to the Code of Fundraising Practice.