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UK donor charter

A monkey rescued from the pet trade by member society SOS Fauna
A monkey rescued from the pet trade by member society SOS Fauna
© SOS Fauna

When you choose to support WSPA, we promise to:

  • Bank your donation promptly so that it is working for animals as soon as possible.
  • Acknowledge your support and keep you updated on how your support helps animals.
  • Use your donation wisely and responsibly.
  • Keep administration costs to a minimum.
  • Be available if you have any enquiries and to respond honestly and as promptly as possible.
  • Treat your personal information in confidence and comply with the UK Data Protection Act (1998).
  • Endeavour to communicate with you in ways you feel comfortable with.
  • Respect your wishes regarding how your donation is spent.

These are explained in detail below.

Bank your donation promptly so that it is working for animals as soon as possible

This means we aim to process your donation completely within 72 hours (three days) of receiving it. 'Processing’ includes checking the payment and accompanying details are correct, banking your donation, storing any paperwork you send according to regulations and preparing acknowledgement letters where required. As soon as your donation is banked, it is ready to spent on animal welfare.

Acknowledge your support and keep you updated on how your support helps animals

At WSPA we believe it is important to acknowledge receipt of your donation and keep you updated on how your money is being spent. Unless you tell us that you’d rather not hear from us, we will endeavour to update you on the work your support makes possible.

Use your donation wisely and responsibly

With finite resources and so many animal welfare problems in the world, we aim to make the best possible decisions on how to spend your donation. At WSPA we believe firm commitment to long term projects and campaigns will achieve the best results for animal welfare. If we improve a country’s standard of animal welfare through legislative change, we can help literally millions of animals. While occasionally we may be in a position to rescue small numbers of animals from dangerous situations, we must remain focused on the ‘bigger picture’.

Keep administration costs to a minimum

You support WSPA because you want to help animals, and of course you want as much of your donation as possible to be spent on animal welfare. In order to run an efficient and effective organisation we will incur some administration costs. We do however aim to keep these to a minimum. In 2004 administration costs accounted for 13% of total spending.

Be available if you have any enquiries and to respond honestly and as promptly as possible

Our Supporter Services Team is dedicated to answering any questions you have about WSPA’s work. Our aim is to ensure that as a supporter you have access to information on the projects and campaigns you are funding.  We welcome any interest you may have in our work and will always strive to answer your query, however complex. Due to the huge range of issues WSPA covers all over the world, we may need some time to get information from partner organisations and member societies.

Treat your personal information in confidence and comply with the Data Protection Act (1998)

This means we will always respect your wishes to opt out of receiving communications from us.  We will also store any information you give us securely. We do want you to remember that if you ask us not to contact you under the UK Data Protection Act (1998), it literally means we can never contact you again. We will honour any such requests, but it may be that you just want to change the way we contact you rather than stop us from contacting you altogether; see below.

Endeavour to communicate with you in ways you feel comfortable with

We spend a great deal of time trying to ensure that we:

  1. keep you informed of our work in animal welfare
  2. provide you with an opportunity to support our work in animal welfare to a level you feel comfortable with
  3. communicate with you in ways you feel comfortable and as often as you feel comfortable. 

There are limitations to our flexibility; you will of course understand that if everyone wanted us to send different updates to them at different times, we would lose our ability to take advantage of cheaper printing and posting in bulk. However, we do avoid sending graphic images and are very careful not to send too much mail to you. 

We are also very careful about using other forms of communication such as the telephone, and are currently looking at ways we can adapt our mailings to suit your needs. Most importantly, we will always listen to your thoughts and suggestions and will endeavour to take these on board as we develop our communications with all our supporters.

Respect your wishes regarding how your donation is spent

Most of the money supporters donate to WSPA goes into a general ‘pool’ of funds. This is important as we need the flexibility to spend that money quickly and where it counts; improving animal welfare really effectively and really quickly.  Sometimes though, you may wish to provide funding for a specific animal welfare project or campaign. If you specify where you want that money spent, we will spend your money on that area of animal welfare. If we are not able to for any reason, we will of course inform you and discuss how you would like to proceed.
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