Gift aid is a fantastic benefit to all manner of charities and not-for-profit organisations. And yet many do not know how best to maximise the potential of gift aid or even exactly whether or not people that donate are actually utilising it.
Unfortunately, whilst gift aid is extremely beneficial to many organisations, many charities lose millions of pounds a year in potential extra sponsorship merely by gift aid not being given when it could. The majority of people donating do not know anything about gift aid, and those running smaller charities can also struggle to ensure that they have the processes in place to expedite the collating of gift aid data.
The biggest problem is that many people donate fairly small sums of money and do not think twice about their donation. They want a swift and easy process, and making the process longer and more complicated can put off certain people from donating at all. As such, the majority of charities will benefit greatly from gift aid software that can help make every step of the process far faster and more accurate.
However, whilst such software will help, others are calling for changes in legislation to remove much of the red tape surrounding gift aid donations. By combining new software, raised awareness of HMRC gift aid amongst individuals and, possibly even more importantly, companies as a whole, and by removing much of the red tape, the amount charities receive to help them do positive work could be bolstered dramatically.
Whether it is your organisation that is struggling to deal with the paperwork and accounting surrounding gift aid or whether those giving to your charity are failing to know about it or do anything about it, by taking a few simple steps, and adding to the voices of those calling for a change to the process of receiving gift aid, charities could find they have far more money to use for the causes they support.