Gift Aid on donated items raised £4.5m for Sue Ryder in 2014
Howard Lake | 28 April 2015 | News
Sue Ryder’s early use of extending Gift Aid to the value of donated clothing and household items generated £4.5 million for the charity in 2014, a record to date, and a 20% increase on the previous year’s record amount.
This now brings the total additional income generated through its retail Gift Aid scheme to £16.5 million.
Launched in 2006
The scheme, which has over 900,000 registered Gift Aid donors, was launched at Sue Ryder in 2006. Since then the scheme has been adopted by many other charities in the UK that have trading operations, and has helped them generate millions of pounds of income.
Until Sue Ryder staff and their technology partner Eproductive worked out a way to apply Gift Aid to donated goods ie. non-monetary gifts, and one that met with HMRC approval, Gift Aid was restricted to financial donations.
Eproductive spotted an opportunity to create an easily traceable audit trail and created the EpR Gift Aid system, which was trialled through Sue Ryder shops.
How it works
If someone wants to become a Gift Aid donor, the donor has to be a UK tax payer, and the donated items have to belong to the donor. The donor has to complete a donor declaration form for the charity to claim the Gift Aid. For example a dress donated to Sue Ryder is sold for £5 and then the charity claims back a further £1.25, making the total donation to the charity £6.25.
Keren Caird, Retail Business Development Gift Aid Manager at Sue Ryder said:
Advertisement
“Recently we updated the scheme to email donors to notify them of the sales value of their items. This has been really warmly received and gives us an additional saving in postage and printing costs, which means more money can go directly to supplying our incredible hospice and neurological care.”
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.