Sue Ryder launches Gift Aid for donated goods
Howard Lake | 29 November 2006 | News
Sue Ryder Care has launched a ground-breaking scheme to claim Gift Aid on goods donated and sold in its shops. After a long trial process and consultations with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) approval has finally been given for the scheme.
Director of retail at Sue Ryder Alan Hodges said that it had been a long and complicated process, but that the charity now believed it had set up a workable system that was acceptable to all parties.
When people bring donations into any of Sue Ryder’s 400 shops they are asked if they would like to Gift Aid the proceeds. If they agree, they are asked to fill in a form with their name and address and sign an agreement to donate. The form states that they may decide to keep the money rather than donate it to Sue Ryder Care if they change their minds. The charity then acts on behalf of the donor to sell the goods. A tracking system keeps tabs on the items and once they are sold, a letter to the donor is automatically generated explaining how much has been raised. The donor then agrees to donate the money to the charity, or in a small number of cases to keep it.
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In the original trial we sent out 800 letters to donors and only three came back saying they wanted their money, said Hodges. In fact we had more phone calls saying what a good idea it was and that people were pleased to see we were making the most of our resources.
The scheme was tested in 18 shops in Kent and East Sussex and is now being rolled out to all Sue Ryder Care shops.
Hodges said he was glad the charity had managed to come to an agreement with HMRC and had come up with wording and systems that satisfied HMRC’s requirements.
He said he hoped this would lead the way for other charities to be able to claim Gift Aid on donated goods. It’s not just for large charities, he said. This could represent a significant bit of free income for groups of hospice shops for example.
The Institute of Fundraising has been following the development of Gift Aid systems and director of policy and campaigns Megan Pacey said she had checked with HMRC that the Sue Ryder scheme complied with all their requirements because lots of people have tried to do this before but it hasn’t worked. You need to make sure you have dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts..
Anyone else who wishes to develop such a scheme must make sure they have explicit approval from HMRC, she said.
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.