The Advancement Division is committed to supporting the relationship between our alumni and friends and the College, building this engaged community and participating in Imperial’s continued success as a world-leading institution for scientists, engineers, medical professionals and business leaders. Despite our best endeavours, we understand that there may be occasions where our supporters would like to raise a complaint about our work and in those cases we welcome their feedback as this helps us to improve the quality of our work and continue to strive for excellence in all that we do.
We are committed to ensuring the accessibility of our Fundraising Complaints Policy and its procedures and to resolving supporters’ complaints wherever possible.
Definition of a fundraising complaint
We define a fundraising complaint as a criticism which alleges or indicates that we have not complied with the Fundraising Promise as required through our registration with the Fundraising Regulator, and that we have been in breach of the Code of Fundraising Practice and its associated rulebooks as detailed on the Fundraising Regulator’s website. All complaints warrant a timely and appropriate response and a proposed outcome to rectify and eliminate the issue from reoccurring. Fundraising complaints can include:
- Concern and criticism about the quality of our fundraising work
- Concern and criticism from a current supporter about a particular fundraising approach or campaign
- Concern about the behaviour of our staff and students when fundraising on the College’s behalf
A fundraising complaint is not:
- A general query about our work
- A request to amend our records e.g. to amend a supporter’s address, cancel or amend their donation
- A request to amend a supporter’s contact preferences
Fundraising complaints are complaints which are specifically about an action or area which is within the remit of the Advancement Division and suggests that we have not complied with the Fundraising Promise. For non-fundraising complaints which relate to Alumni Relations and Advancement Events please contact them via their contacts pages available here:
- Alumni Relations contacts page
- Advancement Events contacts page
For complaints about other areas of the College, we will endeavour to forward them to the relevant departmental contact.
Our complaints procedure
We have a dedicated procedure for investigating and responding to complaints about our work.
If you would like to make a complaint you can contact us:
- Via email: giving@imperial.ac.uk
- By phone: +44(0)20 7594 9330
- By post: Advancement Division, SALC Mezzanine, Level 5, Sherfield Building, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ
Complaints can also be made in person to our staff and a similar process to below will be followed. Please note that normally only complaints made within three months of the situation or experience taking place will be investigated by us. In exceptional circumstances we may investigate and respond to complaints made after this period but these may be more difficult to resolve satisfactorily because more time has passed.
- We will acknowledge your complaint within five working days of your contacting us
- We will respond with a detailed report on the outcome of our investigation within 20 working days
In most cases this response should resolve your concern. However, if you are not satisfied with our response:
- You may ask us to escalate the complaint by responding to us within 15 working days of when we sent you our response
- We will aim to respond to this escalation within ten working days
If for any reason we are unable to respond to you within the timeframes above, we will inform you of this and provide you with an amended timeframe.
If you are still not satisfied with how we have addressed your complaint, you can make a complaint to the Fundraising Regulator, provided that you do so within two months of receiving our response to you.
We expect our staff to be courteous towards you at all times, and to handle complaints in a professional manner.
We will maintain a record of any complaint received by us for a period of at least 24 months.
We may amend this Fundraising Complaints Policy from time to time. Any changes to this Policy will be communicated via this page.
Advancement Division
February 2017