One third of UK adults don't know about Gift Aid
Howard Lake | 24 April 2009 | News
Almost a third of UK adults don’t know they can give to charities tax effectively and only one in three could name Gift Aid, unprompted, according to a new report from CAF.
Around three quarters of 16-24 year olds did not know there was any tax-effective way to give to charity. “Any brand manager would look at that figure and be worried,” said director of research Richard Harrison.
CAF estimates that around £752m in Gift Aid goes unclaimed each year, although most people’s experience of using tax-effective giving is positive.
Unprompted, only seven per cent of people cited payroll giving and one per cent legacies as means of giving tax effectively. Hannah Terrey, head of policy and public affairs, said that CAF would conduct further research into what makes a successful payroll giving campaign.
CAF recommends that government should work with the sector to raise awareness of Gift Aid ‘through creative campaigns’. It also recommends simplifying Gift Aid to make it easier for spontaneous gifts to be tax efficient and suggests the case for using an opt-out approach to Gift Aid should be further explored.
The report, The Public Bond with Tax-Effective Giving in the UK, is available online at www.cafonline.org
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.