The National Park City Foundation (National Park City) is committed to creating a safe, respectful, and welcoming environment that enables all of our supporters, participants, contributors, volunteers and paid staff to collaborate together in a cooperative atmosphere.

This complaints policy and procedure is for all members of the public, and those connected with the National Park City movement and applies to all volunteers and employees regardless of length of service.

If for any reason you wish to make a complaint in regards to an activity carried out by or on behalf of National Park City, or you wish to raise a concern about the conduct of a participant, contributor, volunteer, staff member or a member of the Board of Trustees, we will take the matter seriously and commit to resolving the complaint as fairly and expediently as is reasonably possible.

This procedure does not form part of any employee’s contract of employment. It may be amended at any time and we may depart from it depending on the circumstances of any case.

Definition

A complaint may be triggered by a variety of factors that affect an individual’s well-being and / or experience of participating with the National Park City movement. These include the following: harassment, intimidation, incompetence, dangerous, unsafe or unhealthy work or event environment, or bullying.

Everyone is entitled to have their complaint heard and to be treated fairly under the terms of the following procedure. We will keep the individual making the complaint updated throughout the process of investigation and resolution.

Certain issues such as sexual harassment, violence or bullying may require external expert opinions. This will be decided as necessary by the Board of Trustees.

Complaints procedure

We will address complaints using the following procedure, unless the complaint is of an extreme nature, warranting immediate intervention.

If you wish to complain about a matter in progress we would encourage you to raise an immediate concern with an available staff member or volunteer leading the activity. 

If this is not possible, or not appropriate you should contact us via email complaints@nationalparkcity.org which will be received by our Executive Director.

If your complaint concerns a senior staff member, you may instead submit it to the Board of Trustees. Your complaint should set out the nature of the complaint, including any relevant facts, dates, and names of individuals involved so that we can investigate it.

STEP 1: Informal Resolution

Any person who experiences an issue that may trigger a complaint should if they believe it is safe and appropriate to do so first raise the issue informally by talking to an available staff member or volunteer leading the activity. 

In most cases we hope to be able to resolve issues and complaints as they are raised, and to ensure that any possibility of misunderstanding or poor communication is addressed before advancing the procedure. 

However, if it is not possible or appropriate to resolve the complaint informally then we would ask you to raise a formal complaint which will be dealt with using the Complaints Procedure, set out below.

STEP 2: Submitting a Complaint

When a complaint is raised you should outline clearly the nature of the complaint, whom it involves, where and when it took place, and any steps taken already to resolve the issue as appropriate via email complaints@nationalparkcity.org.

You should receive a response in writing within 28 days. The seriousness of the complaint may warrant an earlier response, and this should be clarified to you with the time of the earlier response specified.

STEP 3: Dealing with the complaint

We will arrange an initial complaints meeting, normally within one week of receiving your written complaint to undertake an initial investigation. 

Following this initial meeting we may get in touch with you to seek additional information or evidence, or let you know how we’ve resolved the complaint if this can be done immediately.

We will write to you, usually within one week of the initial complaints meeting to notify you of any further action that we intend to take to resolve the complaint. 

 In doing so we will explain:

• Our response and how the decision we made was fair
• How we have covered all the issues in your complaint
• How we have corrected any shortfalls in our activities
• Ensure we have clearly explained the outcome to you

We will also advise you of your right of appeal if you are dissatisfied with how we intend to resolve the complaint.

Appeals

If the complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction you may appeal in writing to the Board of Trustees, stating your full grounds of appeal, within one week of the date on which the decision was sent or given to you.

We will hold an appeal meeting, normally within two weeks of receiving the appeal. This will be dealt with impartially by a more senior manager who has not previously been involved in the case. You will have a right to bring a companion.

We will confirm our final decision in writing, usually within one week of the appeal hearing.

Should you wish to take a complaint further you can contact the Fundraising Regulator to complain about the way you’ve been asked for donations, or how fundraisers have behaved.

To make a serious complaint about the charity you may complain to the Charity Commission.

Created: July 2025

Next Review: May 2027