Gift Aid rule change highlights our acquisition v retention culture
Howard Lake | 1 May 2009 | Blogs
The news that the Gift Aid reclaim period is dropping from six to four years should be a huge ‘fit up yir @rses’ for a lot of people (excuse the Scots but I’m sure you can work out what it means).
In the 1990s, this sector fought hard for the Gift Aid system. But like a lot of stuff that comes from free, you tend to take it for granted. I recall a move a few years back from charity finance staff to get rid of Gift Aid claims so that instead the Treasury would automatically top up your individual donations by 28 per cent.
Although this was really ‘free money’, it was still too much effort for some charities to claim it. It wasn’t enough that it was free money, they wanted it delivered free of charge (and effort) too.
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Now that this reclaim period has changed, we’re hearing all sorts of stories about charities not having claimed six figure sums in Gift Aid. And I reckon we’ll be hearing more of them over the summer as there looks like being a spate of conferences looking at how you can Gift Aid your way out of the recession.
I looked at the programme for the IoF’s ‘Fighting the Recession Through Gift Aid Conference’ next month. What I notice about this is that it’s focused on new sources of Gift Aid, such as lotteries, events and donated goods.
I suppose it might change now, but where is the case study showing how a charity reclaimed several hundred thousand by claiming Gift Aid and then explaining the most efficient way to ensure donors were signed up.
As so often happens, this seems to me like another example of the acquisition versus retention culture we have in our sector, where more effort is placed on getting donors in than it is on retaining and stewarding them once you’ve got them (I can’t help thinking about that NatWest TV advert where the manager ‘hoicks’ people in with great offers and then throws them in the ‘keep’ net with much less attractive offerings).
I know the telephone is an excellent way to make sure that you can catch people who aren’t Gift Aided because and you can call them even if they’re TPS registered. In fact, we’ve done several campaigns were we’ve called specifically people to get their signatures for Gift Aid as well as getting Gift Aid signatures as part of upgrade campaigns.
But what I’d like to know is how other charities have done this, what works for them and how email, SMS or social networking such as Twitter all compares. Or even good old snail mail.
This again goes back to my first post about testing. If we are going to make the most of Gift Aid reclamation in this shorted time, we need to know what works most efficiently.
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.