Fundraising FAQ

We will always respect your wishes and respond promptly if you would like us to change how we contact you.

Please call our Supporter Services team on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence. We select the recipients of our mail appeals and newsletters up to eight weeks in advance; if you are requesting to be removed from our mailing list you may still receive mail through the post within this time frame.

We will always respect your wishes and respond promptly if you would like us to change how we contact you.

Please call our Supporter Services team on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence.

If you’re changing your name, please include your previous full name and your new full name as well as your address (including postcode). If you’re moving house, please include your previous address (including postcode) as well as your full name and new address (including postcode).

Here at Battersea we welcome all feedback on our fundraising activity, whether you would like to praise, complain or make a suggestion, we will be happy to hear from you.

Please call our Supporter Services team on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your name, address and a contact telephone number so that we can call you in case we need any more information.

The Fundraising Regulator is the independent regulator of charitable fundraising. If we are unable to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction and it is about our fundraising activities, you can ask the Fundraising Regulator to consider it. You can contact the Fundraising Regulator in whichever way is most convenient to you.

By calling 0300 999 3407
Through the Fundraising Regulator website
Please note that the Fundraising Regulator can only consider complaints received within three months of the original incident you wish to complain about, or within two months of our final response to you.

We are very careful how we spend our supporters’ generous donations, and we only carry out fundraising activities proven to generate income for the welfare of our dogs and cats. Our fundraising letters raised a six figure sum for our animals last year and significantly contributed towards the £18m it costs to run our Home each year. We think it is important that we let our supporters know about the vital work their support funds. That’s why all our communications to our supporters include a heartfelt thank you for their support and share with them how their support is making a difference to the lives of the homeless dogs and cats we care for.

We will always respect your wishes and respond promptly if you would like us to change how we contact you.

Please call our Supporter Services team on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence. We select the recipients of our mail appeals and newsletters up to eight weeks in advance; if you are requesting to be removed from our mailing list you may still receive mail through the post within this time frame.

Although we recognise that some people would prefer not to receive gifts from us, we do find that many people enjoy receiving them and that they help us to spread awareness of our work. We also see a significant increase in the amount of money we are able to raise for our dogs and cats when we send them out. We carefully consider the cost of all gifts – which only cost a few pence – and regularly test the effectiveness of doing this.

Should you wish to still receive our letters but without the gifts, please call our Supporter Services team on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence.We select the recipients of our mail appeals and newsletters up to eight weeks in advance; if you are requesting to be removed from our mailing list you may still receive mail through the post within this time frame.

The cost of gifts varies for each letter, but each one costs only a few pence.

The level of contact we have with our valued supporters depends on their past relationship with Battersea and we will always respect their feedback on how often they would like to hear from us. We aim to keep them up to date on the work they fund and also give them regular opportunities to support us.

All our communications to our supporters include a heartfelt thank you for their support and we share with them how their support is making a difference to the lives of the homeless dogs and cats we care for.

When contacting potential new supporters we will not get in touch with them by letter more than twice in a year.

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home is a registered member of the Fundraising Regulator, the independent regulator of charitable fundraising. We regularly monitor all of our fundraising activities against the Codes of Fundraising Practice and the Rulebooks for Street Fundraising and Door Fundraising issued by the Fundraising Regulator, the Data Protection Act 1998, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, HM Revenue & Customs rules and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Please call our Supporter Services team who will be able to let you know on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence. Battersea and our agencies do not currently sell or share personal data with any other organisation for marketing purposes.

We have found that holding a raffle is a popular and effective way of raising money for our dogs and cats. We currently run four raffles per year which are promoted by letter to new and existing supporters of Battersea.

If you prefer not to receive our raffle letters please call our Supporter Services team who will be able to let you know on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence.We select the recipients of our mail appeals and newsletters up to eight weeks in advance; if you are requesting to be removed from our mailing list you may still receive mail through the post within this time frame.

We offer a mixture of cash and other prizes. Our main prizes are cash but even after the costs of these prizes have been removed, our raffles raise a six figure sum which are vital funds towards the running of our Home, enabling us to care for dogs and cats who need us.

Read the rules for our raffles.

We hold four raffles per year so we may send raffle tickets to supporters inviting them to take part in our raffle for each occasion. If we are contacting someone who has not supported us in the past we will only mail them about our raffles once in a 12 month period.

If you prefer not to receive our raffle letters please call our Supporter Services team who will be able to let you know on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence.

Our raffles are licensed under the Gambling Commission Licence number 5084. Battersea is also a registered member of the Fundraising Regulator, the independent regulator of charitable fundraising. We regularly monitor all of our fundraising activities against the Codes of Fundraising Practice and the Rulebooks for Street Fundraising and Door Fundraising issued by the Fundraising Regulator, the Data Protection Act 1998, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, HM Revenue & Customs rules and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

We love hearing what our supporters have to say and the telephone is great way for us to have a two way conversation, as well as enabling us to raise funds. It is a cost effective method of fundraising and we raise over £800k per year as a result of telephone conversations with our supporters making a significant contribution towards the £18m it costs to run our Home each year.

We fully recognise that not everyone is happy to speak to us over the telephone, and we will always respect your wishes and respond promptly if you would like us to change how we contact you.

Battersea does not make “cold” telephone calls. We do undertake telephone fundraising but this is to our existing supporters we have a prior relationship with. Many of our supporters enjoy the opportunity to talk to us, particularly about their own much loved pets. So our telephone activity is more like a conversation, with our fundraisers listening and responding appropriately.

If an existing donor asks us not to call them again, we note this and respect their wishes. The only exceptions to this would be if we have incorrect bank details for a supporter; we want to confirm their Gift Aid declaration; or if we want to make absolutely sure that a new donor who has just signed up to a monthly donation on their doorstep completely understands what they have signed up to and still wants to continue.

Battersea does not make “cold” telephone calls. We do undertake telephone fundraising but this is to our existing supporters we have a prior relationship with and who have already provided us with their telephone number.

Please call our Supporter Services team who will be able to let you know on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence.

Although we are a very well-known charity, we simply don’t have the resources to carry out telephone fundraising in house, which is why we employ an agency to help us with this. Our fundraising team work closely with all agencies who fundraise on our behalf to ensure they are representing our Home and our animals in the way in which you and we would expect.

If we ever find this is not the case we act swiftly to rectify the situation, and for this reason we welcome feedback about our fundraising. We are always incredibly careful with how we spend your money on fundraising, and undertake a series of due diligence checks, training and ongoing compliance checks and as we would never want to take part in any activity that would affect our ability to care for our animals.

All telephone fundraisers should identify themselves as calling on behalf of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home at the start of the call. Calls should be made from an identifiable number, not “withheld” or “unknown” and you can call back the number to verify it is valid.

Alternatively please call our Supporter Services team on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence.

Telephone fundraisers could ask for a variety of things, including making or increasing a regular donation to the Home, whether we can claim Gift Aid on your donations, or if you would like to consider supporting the Home in different ways.

Yes. We do undertake telephone fundraising to our existing supporters who have given us consent to do so. Many of our supporters enjoy the opportunity to talk to us, particularly about their own much loved pets. So our telephone activity is more like a conversation, with our fundraisers listening and responding appropriately. At any point a supporter can change their mind and tell us that they no longer wish us to call them and we will always respect their wishes.

The only exceptions to this would be if we have incorrect bank details for a supporter, we want to confirm their Gift Aid declaration, or if we want to make absolutely sure that a new supporter who has just signed up to a monthly donation with one of our fundraisers they met is happy to proceed with us setting up their Direct Debit.

Battersea does not make telephone calls to prospective supporters who have not had a prior relationship with the Home.

The use of personal data for telephone fundraising is regulated by the Information Commissioner, and covered by the Data Protection Act, and Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations. Battersea Dogs & Cats Home is also a registered member of the Fundraising Regulator, the independent regulator of charitable fundraising. We regularly monitor all of our fundraising activities against the Codes of Fundraising Practice and the Rulebooks for Street Fundraising and Door Fundraising issued by the Fundraising Regulator, the Data Protection Act 1998, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, HM Revenue & Customs rules and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Gift Aid is a simple way to increase the value of your gift to Battersea - at no extra cost to you. If you pay tax in the UK, we can reclaim the basic rate tax (25%) on your gift. So, if you donate £10, it is worth £12.50 to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

In order for Battersea to reclaim the tax you have already paid on your donations, you must have paid income or capital gains tax (in the UK) for each tax year (6 April to 5 April) at least equal to the tax that all the charities that you donate to will reclaim on your gifts for that tax year.

The process is simple - all you have to do is make a Gift Aid declaration. If you are donating online, just tick the Gift Aid box on the donation form. If you donate on the phone we will ask you to make the declaration over the phone; if you have received a mailing from us you can tick the box on the donation form. Alternatively, we would be happy to send you a Gift Aid Declaration Form for you to fill out in your own time.

A Gift Aid declaration is a statement by an individual taxpayer that they want a charity to receive the tax paid on their donation back from the government. It must include your first name or initials, last name, full home address and postcode.

The declaration wording normally covers present, future and past donations. We can back-claim four years and we will continue to claim until you tell us otherwise, so long as you are eligible.

To let us know if you stop paying tax or wish to cancel your declaration, please call our Supporter Services team on 0300 3231 216 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence.

To claim Gift Aid on your fundraising, we must have the first name or initials, last name, full home address and postcode of each individual donor/sponsor. So please encourage them to tick the Gift Aid box on your sponsorship form when they sponsor you. Without these details we legally can't claim Gift Aid.

Please call our Supporter Services team on 020 7627 7883 (Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm). Outside of these hours you can always leave us a message and a contact number and we will return your call the next working day.

You can also email us at fundraising@battersea.org.uk or write to us at:

Supporter Services,
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,
4 Battersea Park Road,
London.
SW8 4AA.

Please include your full name and your address in any correspondence.