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Concern Worldwide's direct debit records survive office fire
Howard Lake | 7 December 2006 | News
Digital scanning and online storage of Concern’s Direct Debit mandates and Gift Aid declarations has ensured that the charity can continue to receive its regular tax-efficient gifts despite suffering a fire at its London office.
The fire devastated Concern Worldwide’s office in London’s Battersea in September and forced it to relocate. The charity reported that its “telephones, computers and files have all been damaged or destroyed”. This included many paper donation documents, including Gift Aid declarations and Direct Debit mandates.
Fortunately, scanning company Scancapture Ltd had been scanning and saving all of Concern’s Direct Debit mandates and Gift Aid Declarations for the past three years.
Thousands of images had been stored onto CD at Scancapture’s offices in Lancashire, which meant that all donors’ details and the original, signed documentation is safe, secure and recoverable.
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All paper documentation can be displayed on-screen by keying in a donor’s unique membership number, and printed out if necessary. The TIF digital images are linked to supporters’ records on the charity’s database.
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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.