Supporter FAQs

If you’re a UK taxpayer, Gift Aid increases the value of your charity donations by allowing charities to reclaim the basic rate of tax on your gift at no extra cost to you. That’s an additional 25p for every £1 you give. Visit our Gift Aid page for further information.

You can make a Gift Aid declaration over the phone by speaking to our Supporter Helpdesk team on 0300 330 1234. Check if Shelter has a current Gift Aid Declaration on record for you.

Please contact us on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk, and we can confirm whether we have a valid gift a declaration on file for you.

You can change the amount and frequency of your regular gift by contacting our Supporter Helpdesk on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk.

We're sorry to hear you would like to cancel your gift. Please contact our Supporter Helpdesk on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk and they will be able to help. It would help us if you can tell them why you need to cancel, as there might be other options that would suit you better.

The Direct Debit Guarantee (or the ‘Direct Debit Indemnity’) is the Direct Debit scheme's customer protection and one of the main reasons the scheme is so popular. As a supporter of Shelter, the Direct Debit Guarantee protects you against payments made in error or fraudulently, making Direct Debit the UK's safest payment method. For more information see Direct Debit's official website.

If you have donated by text and given us permission to contact you, from time to time we'll be in touch to tell you about our work and how you can help us make a difference. You can stop these calls or texts at any time.

• to stop calls, text ‘NOCALL SHELTER’ to 78866
• to stop texts, text 'NOSMS SHELTER' to 78866

You can also call our supporter helpdesk on 0300 330 1234 to tell us how you’d prefer us to keep in touch with you.

We’ll send you a free reminder message the day before your gift is due. The following day, when your gift is given, you’ll receive another message thanking you for your donation.

If you’d prefer not to give for a month, reply ‘SKIP’ within 24 hours of receiving the first text message. We won’t take your donation for that month.

Don’t worry if your phone is out of range or switched off when we send the first text. We’ll only take your gift 24 hours after we know that your phone has received our message.

To stop your monthly text donations, all you need to do is text us.

• if you’re donating £3 per month, text STOP to 70007
• if you’re donating £5 per month, text STOP to 70025
• You can also call our supporter helpdesk on 0300 330 1234 to tell us how we should keep in touch with you

Face-to-face (F2F) fundraising is an extremely effective way for us to raise vital funds to help us to continue our work. It means that our fundraisers can highlight the important work we are doing to help people facing bad housing and homelessness, to people who we may not otherwise speak to.

We’re proud of our fundraisers and hold them to the highest standards of conduct and professionalism. In 2018 our in-house fundraisers helped us to attract over 22,000 new supporters of Shelter.

Our teams work on high streets and in shopping centres, as well as going door-to door throughout England and Scotland. We have teams based in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds and Glasgow.

Shelter is a Living Wage employer. We pay all of our F2F fundraisers an hourly rate, which at the least meets the Real Living Wage as determined by the Living Wage. Our in-house fundraisers may also receive small incentive payments based on hitting certain targets, however they do not receive commission for people they sign-up to support Shelter.

For door-to-door fundraising in London, we’re proud to work with Connect Fundraising, which has over 30 years’ experience.

We also work with several other professional agencies, who promote our Weekly Lottery. They operate door-to-door in Southampton, Northampton, Newcastle and surrounding areas, as well as a number of shops and shopping centre locations in the midlands and south of England.

We regularly train our agency fundraisers and carry out observations, so we can ensure you have the best conversations about our work. We can’t end the housing crisis alone, and working with agencies who have the same beliefs and values as ours means we can talk to more people who can help us end the crisis sooner.

Have you met one of our fundraisers recently? Tell us what you thought at info@shelter.org.uk.

All Shelter fundraisers have an ID badge – which includes their name, as well as Shelter and the Institute of Fundraising logo. They also wear branded clothing. If you’d like to check whether the person you spoke to was genuine, then you can get in touch with our Supporter Helpdesk on 0300 330 1234 or on info@shelter.org.uk, who will be able to confirm that for you.

Yes. Shelter is a member of the Institute of Fundraising (IoF) and is registered with the Fundraising Regulator. All of our fundraisers are trained to adhere to the Fundraising Regulator’s Code of Fundraising Practice and rulebooks which are monitored and enforced by the IoF’s Compliance Directorate.

We are regularly mystery shopped on behalf of the IoF Compliance Directorate, ensuring that our fundraisers uphold our standards. The IoF Compliance Directorate has site management agreements with over 100 local authorities, regulating access to towns and cities throughout Great Britain. Find out more about the work that the IoF Compliance Directorate does.

Telemarketing is one of the many ways we communicate with supporters. It remains one of the most cost-effective ways to engage supporters and update existing ones. You may receive a call from Shelter or one of the agencies we work with. This means you may see these numbers appear on your phone:

NTT: 02034766360, 02034760445 or 02034760566
Ethicall: 0117 4406344, 0117 4406345, 0117 4406346 or 0117 4406347
Listen: 0300 012 7201
Shelter's in-house team: 0114 229 1334

We rely on the generosity of individuals and organisations to help us continue our work, which means embracing all forms of communication to reach different people.

We understand that some people would prefer not to be called and we take care to record contact preferences, so if this applies, please contact us on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk to update your details.

Telephone operators will make it clear they are raising funds for Shelter and the purpose of the call. Telephone operators will declare how much the campaign costs and the benefits to Shelter.

If you don't wish to give contact or bank details over the phone, you can request a paper form in the post. All Direct Debits created or updated on the phone are covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee. Calls may be recorded for training purposes.

Mailings to supporters are a key part of how we raise funds and update our supporters on our work. Writing to supporters helps us to keep costs low and for every £1 we spent, we generate £5.12 in funds that are spent on our work.

Appeals for support cost approximately 66p per mailing, which includes creative design, printing and posting.

We sometimes send fundraising appeals to potential supporters who are not already on Shelter’s database, who we believe may like to support the work Shelter does.

If you would prefer not to receive our appeals, or would like to change the frequency of which they are sent to you, please contact us on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk.

We often highlight the challenge facing thousands of families struggling with homelessness and bad housing by including the experiences of some of the people we have helped in our newsletters and appeals for support. Everyone who is featured in our appeals has agreed to appear, and are often very passionate about sharing their experiences, to help us ensure others don’t have to go through the same.

If you would prefer not to receive our appeals or would like to change the frequency of which they are sent to you, please contact us on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk.

Thank you for your recent gift to Shelter – we really do appreciate it.

We apologise for contacting you so soon after you sent a donation. Our appeals are often prepared weeks in advance of posting and it’s likely that there was not time to prevent the second letter being sent out once your donation was processed.

If you would like us to check that your gift has been received or update your details, please contact us on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk.

To sign up for fundraising and campaigning please contact us on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk.

To inform us of a change to your details, please contact us on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk.

To update the record of a deceased loved one please contact our Supporter Helpdesk on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk, where someone will be able to assist you with this.

We are sorry to hear you don’t want to continue receiving our fundraising and campaigning communications. Please contact us on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk. We also have a webpage where you can manage your email communications.

The personal information we collect from you in order to process your gift or campaign action may include name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number and credit/debit card details. We may also use publicly available information or data from third parties. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.

We also gather general information about the use of our websites using cookies, such as which pages users visit most often and which services, events or facilities are of most interest.

We also track which pages users visit when they click on links in Shelter emails. We may use this information to personalise the way our communications are presented to contacts and supporters, to make improvements to our websites and to ensure we provide the best service.

Wherever possible, we use aggregated or anonymous information which does not identify individual visitors to our websites. Please see our cookies policy for more information.

We will use your personal information to provide you with the information or services you have requested and if you are happy for us to do so, we would like to be able to keep you up to date with our work and contact you about our fundraising and campaigning activities.

To make sure we’re contacting you in the most appropriate way, we may analyse your information to help tailor the content we share with you. For example, we may use your postcode to send you information about events and campaigns in your area.

We may need to share your information with our third-party suppliers for the purposes outlined above. We may use a third-party company to manage mailings for fundraising appeals, campaigns, or to conduct research surveys or for storage of your personal information on our behalf. We actively screen and monitor these companies to maximise the protection of your privacy and security.

They are only permitted to use the data in accordance with relevant data protection legislation, under strict instructions from Shelter, and in accordance with a data processing agreement entered into between Shelter and the supplier.

We do not share, swap or sell your details with any other charity or company for the purpose of their raising funds or sending you marketing materials.

We use secure servers when you make a donation or payment via our websites.

All sensitive payment data that we collect through these forms is protected in encrypted databases. We take appropriate measures to ensure that the personal information disclosed to us is kept secure, accurate and up to date, and kept only for so long as is necessary for the purposes for which it is used.

If you feel you would like to make a complaint about Shelter’s fundraising activities, please contact our Supporter Helpdesk on 0300 330 1234 or info@shelter.org.uk.

They will work with the relevant Senior Fundraising Manager to respond within 10 working days for a non-service complaint, and 15 working days for a service complaint.