Charities still failing to promote share giving, says Giving Campaign

Howard Lake | 4 May 2004 | News

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A nfpSynergy research report, commissioned by The Giving Campaign, shows that charities are failing to promote share giving to donors, despite the fact that, according to the Inland Revenue, share giving was worth almost £150 million in 2001/02 alone.

According to an analysis of self-assessment forms as at Autumn 2003, almost 22,000 share

gifts were made, averaging around £7,000 per donation. Over 12 million people in the UK own shares and The Giving Campaign is urging charities to promote share giving in order to benefit from this high-level income stream.

Joe Saxton, Director of nfpSynergy, commented: “It looks as through Share Giving is the Cinderella of new fundraising

techniques: unpromoted and unloved by fundraisers but nonetheless raising

extraordinary amounts of money. Indeed with an average donation of £7000 it may be that donors are using Share Giving as a kind of ‘living legacy’ – a highly tax-effective way for people to dispose of substantial assets in their lifetime to charities they care deeply about. The really exciting

prospect is that when charities do start to comprehensively build share giving into their fundraising mix we could then see £500 million or even a billion raised each year within a decade.”

The nfpSynergy report explores why charities are reluctant to promote share giving and suggests a number of guidelines to address this. These are:

• promote it little and often, explaining the tax incentive
• target share giving at high value donors
• timely promotions (e.g. when there are ‘windfall’ share hand-outs)
• identify an individual/department who will be responsible for share giving
• promote Share Giving as part of a complete service for supporters

Share giving enables the donor to claim full tax relief equal to the market

value of the shares on the day the gift is made, together with tax relief on

associated costs such as brokers’ fees. For example, a higher rate taxpayer

giving a charity £1,000 worth of shares, is entitled to reclaim £400, and a basic rate tax payer giving £1,000 would be entitled to reclaim £220. Furthermore, no capital gains tax will apply.

Very few charities seem to mention share giving on their Web sites as a tax-effective method of giving. One example of a small charity that does mention it, and includes a print-out form for share givers to send in with the shares, is the Gwalior Children’s Hospital. It features the sharegift option throughout its site on the navigation bar.

The Giving Campaign has published a free Share Giving Guide for Donors, which

charities are encouraged to download, apply their own logo and distribute.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.