Increasing Gift Aid takeup could help charities' VAT campaign
Howard Lake | 21 November 2005 | News
The editor of Third Sector magazine suggests in the current issue’s editorial that the poor Gift Aid conversion rates achieved by many charities can only harm the charity sector’s campaign to persuade the government to change the rules on irrecoverable VAT for charities.
Stephen Cook, editor of Third Sector magazine, argues that “the chink in the collective armour of charities as they ride forth in the great VAT campaign is described by two little words: Gift Aid.” He suggests that the poor conversion rate offers an easy riposte for government to requests to reform VAT rules. Despite high conversion rates of 80-90% achieved online, the sector average for conversion of donations to Gift Aid is still around 30%.
He argues that whenever the VAT reform campaign delivers its message to Whitehall, the answer will always be “We gave you Gift Aid five years ago, and you don’t make the most of that. Come back when you’ve doubled the take-up”.
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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.