Two million more Direct Debits to charities set up in 2013

Howard Lake | 13 March 2014 | News

• Tagged with:
• Bacs
• direct debit
• Individual giving
• regular giving

Charitable giving by Direct Debit continues to grow, according to Bacs Payment Schemes Limited. The total number of Direct Debit donations to good causes grew from 56 million in 2012 to 58 million in 2013.
The previous year saw growth as well, so from 2011 to 2013 the total number of Direct Debits being paid to charity has increased by four million, or around 7.5%.

Value of Direct Debit donations

The total amount pledged by Direct Debit has also grown, up by £110 million over the past two years to £1.1 billion in 2013.
This growth is supporting by the findings of UK Giving 2012 by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). It reports that Direct Debit accounted for a third of total donations to charity by value, up from a quarter during the previous year.

Causes generating most by Direct Debit

Some charities and types of charity have been more successful than others at securing this kind of regular giving.

• Educational charities secured the largest number of new Direct Debit donations at 6.7% in 2013, although this represented a value increase of only 0.1%.
• Animal charities on the other hand achieved a 5.2% increase in volume and a 4.8% increase in value.
• Old age charities achieved the best increase in total value at 9.2%, with a 3.4% increase in total donations.
• Health charities achieved a 4.6% volume and value increase. Environmental causes increased Direct Debit volume by 4.3% and value by 6.9%.
• Youth charities however suffered a decline, with volume down by 5.9% and overall value by 6.2%.

Bacs’ charity sector specialist, Graham Callaghan, said: “This data again underlines the effectiveness and ease of Direct Debit as a method for supporting good causes, while we know that these type of payments are cost-effective for charities as they are cheaper to process than the likes of cash and cheque.”
Bacs is currently running The Big Break campaign to promote Direct Debit and raise funds for charities.
 

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.