Ten million people give to charity through Gift Aid, says CAF
Howard Lake | 31 January 2006 | News
A new report from Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) states that Gift Aid has become the UK’s most popular method of giving tax-efficiently to charity, with £2.8 billion given to charities through the scheme in 2004/05.
Of this £2.8 billion, £625 million was charitable tax-relief on gifts paid back by Government to charities.
CAF has analysed trends in the use of Gift Aid since 2000 when all gifts by UK tax-payers became potentially eligible for tax-reliefs. Its report shows that the Gift Aid scheme has brought “much wider access to tax-breaks on charitable giving”, with more women, younger and less wealthy donors now giving tax-efficiently.
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The value of donations via Gift Aid has grown at an average 11% per annum ever since it was set up in 1990. In the five years since the changes of 2000 alone, charities have received £12.2 billion in total through Gift Aid. About one-third of the value of all donations is now made through Gift Aid.
Cathy Pharoah, Research Director at CAF and one of the report’s authors commented: “It is very gratifying to see so many more people taking advantage of the Government’s generous tax-breaks on giving. The UK now has one of the most favourable tax regimes for charitable giving in the world.
“However, the public could still seriously increase charities’ income through ensuring that much more of their gifts are made tax-efficiently. We estimate that a further one third of existing giving could be converted to Gift Aid. To make all giving tax-efficient is a major challenge for the sector because much fundraising is still done in ways which do not easily lend themselves to conversion.”
The report, “Analysis of giving through Gift Aid” can be downloaded free of charge from CAF’s website.
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.