Sense to launch approved Gift Aid scheme for donated catridges
Howard Lake | 23 January 2007 | News
Sense is to launch an HMRC-approved scheme to collect Gift Aid on printer cartridges donated for recycling. The innovative scheme has been developed in partnership with GAIN, the Gift Aid recovery consultants.
Until now donated toner cartridges have not qualified for Gift Aid because they were gifts in kind. However, GAIN has developed a scheme, approved by HMRC, which extends Gift Aid to appropriately handled donated cartridges, and Sense is pioneering it with its supporters.
For Gift Aid to apply, charities can now encourage would-be toner cartridge donors to register their details online and make a Gift Aid declaration. Charities new to cartridge recycling or reprinting their donation bags can also include space on the bags for the donor to add these details. The donor then places the cartridge in the bag and sends it off exactly as with the existing system of recycling.
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When the bag is received by the recycling company, it is opened, the cartridge inspected and, if approved, passed on for processing. If there is a slip with the donor’s details, indicating that the donor wants the proceeds of the sale of this cartridge to benefit from Gift Aid, then this is retained for forwarding on to GAIN. This is the only addition work in the whole process required from the recycling company.
GAIN handles all the administration, including the recording of donors’ details, checking for Gift Aid compliance and submitting the Gift Aid claim on behalf of the charity.
GAIN say that “the charity has no financial obligation to GAIN, as all fees are taken out of the recovered Gift Aid”. Indeed, participating charities’ prime responsibility is simply to promote the scheme to their supporters, explaining that the value of their cartridge can now be increased through the utilisation of Gift Aid.
Participating charities therefore can now benefit from a new source of Gift Aid, generate a list of new supporters, and help to improve recycling rates.
Sense chose to pioneer this scheme both to increase their return from their recycling program and enhance their conservation and recycling policy.
Nick Connolly, Corporate Fundraiser at Sense, said; “Opportunities to help save the environment, get something back from the tax man and support a great charity do not come along everyday. This is one such opportunity and we are more than pleased to be at the forefront of this development.”
The scheme has a number of attractions to charities. First, higher rate tax payers can be incentivised to donate because they will get a tax relief of 23% on their donation: in effect they will get paid to donate. Secondly, all the income from the scheme comes direct from HMRC in the form of tax reclaimed.
According to GAIN the potential market for recycling cartridges is around 19 million cartridges a year, of which around 1.5 million are actually recycled. Assuming a mean value to charities of 70p per cartridge, the total value to charities of recycled cartridges is around £1.1 million. Extending Gift Aid to this figure could generate a further £315,000 or so.
Barry Gower, Managing Director of GAIN, said: “This is a three way win! The charity wins through extra income generated from Gift Aid as well as through free acquisition of additional donors. The recycle company wins through increased cartridges obtained from incentivised collectors. And the (high rate taxpaying) donor wins through being ‘paid’ to recycle, through tax relief on his tax return. And best of all, all of these winnings are paid for by the taxman!”
GAIN is currently offering the new service to UK charities at no charge, with the initial set-up and overheads being waived.
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.