Thousands of UK charities benefit from the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) each year. Many organisations continue to look for ways to make the most revenue from it. This article will outline some strategies for ensuring your charity claims as much of its yearly GASDS allowance as possible.
Recent research by Third Sector revealed some shocking results with regard to payroll schemes within charities: although 7 out of 10 large UK charities offered payroll giving to their employees, average employee participation was only 1.7%. How can this be? Charities cited several reasons; some placed more importance on staff effort than staff donations, while others opined that it was the pennies that mattered, and not the regular revenue.
Donations are the lifeblood of every organisation, and getting supporters to donate to your cause requires obtaining their consent to contact them. June 2016’s introduction of new data protection laws ensures more protection for charity supporters and require organisations to abandon the ‘soft opt-in’ approach, which previously allowed charities to continue to send their marketing material to previous donors. The new law requires explicit consent to be given by would-be supporters in terms of how they wish to be contacted.
UK charities receive £2bn in legacy donations each year. This already-incredible figure is expected to triple in size over the next several decades. Even so, there is hesitation among many charities about how to go about getting those vital donations with ease and tact. After all, not many people are really comfortable talking openly about their own death. The good news is that there are several ways to speak to your supporters about it, as well as several ways to be successful without causing offence.
Although creating a really great grant application isn’t considered to be rocket science, it requires different things at different times. Because anything can happen to interfere with your application, you need to be prepared to alter your plans if necessary. This will require a degree of flexibility, as well as the ability to respond quickly and to exercise diplomacy, among other things. You will also need to be able to track the responses to your applications over time with different funding bodies. What approaches and projects have been most successful in securing donations? A good quality charity CRM such as SubscriberCRM will be able to help you with this.
One common issue faced by every charity is how to create a case for core fundraising. These vital funds are integral to your ability to operate; it is these donations which will ensure that you continue to receive the income needed to keep computers and software up to date, the roof in good repair and the lights and heating on.
Email and direct mail are two completely different methods of fundraising. Yet interestingly, many of the mistakes made in direct mail are also being made in email. When you need to raise money for your organisation email marketing becomes serious business, so it’s important to ensure you’re not making these mistakes.
One great way to get noticed as a charity is to figure out quirky ways to raise money that get people involved and that inspire the donations you want. From slightly off to downright strange, your group can get their inspiration from others who have gone a different route with raising funds. Events such as these are an especially effective way of engaging your corporate supporters by encouraging their workforce to become actively involved in fundraising.
Facebook’s new “donate” button promised to make it much easier for people to donate to their favourite charities. According to one test, however, the results were not as positive as was hoped. A UK Facebook page having over 400,000 likes and 100+ new likes weekly reportedly didn’t generate any donations in the first month of displaying the button, nor did it receive many clicks.
Is it really true that the rich are getting richer? Well, if you look at the most recent Rich List, you’ll see that the flow of money continues to be in favour of the few. But with new fundraising regulations that threaten to place the retention and recruitment of donors in jeopardy, how possible is it to attract the support of that elusive 5%? The good news is that building quality relationships with major donors is definitely within your reach.