Legal firms urged to double payroll giving participation rates
Howard Lake | 23 February 2013 | News
Helena Kennedy QC has urged legal firms to aim to increase payroll giving rates by staff to 10% by May 2013, doubling the average rate achieved by such firms.
She made the call on the fifth anniversary of the Geared For Giving Campaign, which was set up to promote payroll giving, and which is funded by payroll giving agency Workplace Giving UK.
At the outset of the Campaign in 2008, an average of 4.5% of employees at Legal Week's top 50 firms gave to charity by this method. Nearly five years later, this has risen to just 5.1%. The national average of any kind of employer who operates the scheme is 6%.
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Some firms have of course achieved better results. CMS Cameron McKenna LLP, for example, have helped promote the scheme to achieve a 20% uptake.
"Most tax effective way to support a charity particularly for a higher rate tax payer"
Helena Kennedy said “Workplace Giving remains the most tax effective way to support a charity particularly for a higher rate tax payer. Their £10 gift can increase to £16.67 if given from pay for a 40% tax payer.
From supporting the Campaign over the past couple of years my biggest learning is that awareness of the scheme is still so low, but employers who make it easy for their staff to engage can see huge improvements in their uptakes and ultimately monies raised for the charitable sector."
She added that some employers were supporting the scheme further by matching employee donations.
Workplace Giving UK claims that it has persuaded companies with a total of 2.2 million employees to implement payroll giving, and so far raised £3.6 million. Companies already involved include Boots, Habitat, Odeon and Yorkshire Bank.
www.gearedforgiving.com
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.