Sharing the Caring to merge with CAF
Howard Lake | 10 November 2004 | News
Payroll giving agency Sharing the Caring is to merge with the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) by the end of 2004.
Sharing the Caring is a wholly owned subsidiary of Help the Aged, and one of the UK’s leading promoters of payroll giving to employees. CAF is the UK’s leading provider of agency services through its Give As You Earn scheme. The merger will therefore enable CAF to offer complete payroll giving services covering promotion of payroll giving, collection and distribution of donations, and complete end-to-end relationship management for companies and charities.
CAF also claim that, by shortening communication channels between all parties it will result in more efficient and cost effective processing.
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Total payroll giving in the UK has grown from £37 million in 1999/2000 to around £91 million in 2003/04. However, their remains considerable potential for increasing this total.
Sharing the Caring is responsible for
raising around £6 million each year for over 100 UK registered charities. CAF currently channels £60 million per annum in
payroll donations to thousands of charities.
Jenny Byers, Executive Director, Donor Services for CAF, said: “This is a tremendous opportunity for payroll giving. By mobilising the combined reach and expertise of Sharing the Caring and CAF, and by drawing on the Government’s own commitment to the scheme, we can generate even greater
interest in this valuable form of giving.”
Michael Lake, Director General for Help the Aged, explained that Sharing the Caring is not a core activity for Help the Aged because it provides a payroll giving
service to the charity sector as a whole, and has only ever delivered “a very modest margin ” to the charity. He said: “Sharing the
Caring has been a great success for Help the Aged and I am proud of its many
achievements. I am pleased that we have been able through this merger to pass the baton on to CAF, whose sole goal is to capitalise on the enormous future potential for payroll giving for the benefit of the charity
sector”.
The merger is “not a financial transaction” so CAF will not make a payment for Sharing the Caring. It is likely to lead to the loss of “a very small number” of the 41 staff at Sharing the Caring’s office in Canterbury.
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.