Donaldson was a founder member of the Church Socialist League, and chaired the organisation from 1913 until 1916. He was also an early member of the Christian Social Union, sat on the council of the Industrial Christian Fellowship. He was a leader of a march of unemployed workers from Leicester to London, in 1905.[7] In 1913, Donaldson led a deputation of Church of England clergy to the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, demanding women's suffrage. Being passionate about world peace, he was the president of the London Council for the Prevention of War (1927) and chairman of the League of Clergy for Peace (1931–40).[8]
On 1 April 1925, Donaldson in an address as Canon of Westminster Abbey, listed his "seven social evils" as:[9]
^‘DONALDSON, Rev. Frederic Lewis’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2016; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014; online edn, April 2014 accessed 15 Oct 2017
^"Deaths: Canon Frederic Lewis Donaldson". Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party: 38. 1954.
^"Donaldson, Frederick Lewis (1860–1953), Church of England clergyman and Christian socialist | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/47177. Retrieved 10 March 2019. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^"Evils of World are Outlined". Archived from the original on 2 April 2017.