CAF's Efundraising service accepts multiple currencies
Howard Lake | 27 May 2003 | News
Charities Aid Foundation’s (CAF) online donation service efundraising.org.uk can now handle donations in foreign currencies.
Charities using CAF’s Tailored Efundraising service will now be able to appeal for donations in foreign currencies through their Web sites.
The Efundraising facility lets charities of any size accept secure, tax-effective credit/debit card and Direct Debit donations from their own Web site, without the need for a specialised trading and banking service.
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As well as UK sterling, charities can now appeal for gifts in US dollars or Euros. CAF expects to add further currencies to the service. If a donor chooses to make a gift in US dollars or Euros they will be debited in their own currency and CAF will convert the donation to UK sterling before passing it on to the charity.
The service includes an online tracking facility also enables charities to identify which sites or e-mails their donations have originated from.
Another new development is the introduction of a ‘Tell a Friend’ feature, which it is hoped will promote the online giving service to a wider group through “viral marketing.”
Since its launch in 2002 almost half a million pounds has been raised through CAF’s Tailored Efundraising service. In addition, the proportion of donations given tax-effectively through the service is high; on average 78% of donations through Efundraising are made via Gift Aid compared to a sector average of 28%.
Jenny Catt, CAF’s Business Development Manager, comments: “With the introduction of this new facility, we are delighted that we can now help charities to receive online gifts in foreign currencies – which we hope, in turn, will make international fundraising a real possibility for thousands of UK charities in the future.”
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.