Funeral directors to encourage online giving to boost Gift Aid
Howard Lake | 13 August 2013 | News
The National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) has launched a campaign to encourage more people attending funerals to make charitable donations online rather than cash donations. This will help increase the value of those donations to charities through Gift Aid.
The Association estimates that each year charities miss out on more than £25 million because donations at funerals are usually anonymously made in cash and funeral directors can not claim Gift Aid for charities.
The GiftAid 25 campaign is being carried out in association with online giving site JustGiving, Memory Giving, Friends and Relations and EMS Internet.
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The campaign is also designed to help funeral directors themselves. The NAFD, which has 3,700 funeral firm members, estimates that collecting and processing cash charitable donations currently costs the average funeral directors around £2,000 a year.
Alan Slater, chief executive officer of the NAFD explained: "By launching the ‘GiftAid 25’ campaign we are not only helping funeral directors to provide an improved, added value service to their clients at a difficult time but we are also helping to support local communities by ensuring more money is given to well-deserving charities."
JustGiving has developed a new platform specifically for funeral directors to process donations online and ensure that charities can, where possible, reclaim Gift Aid.
Liz Bettles of Green Willow Funerals, based in Wales, has used the new online system. She says that, as a result, Green Willow Funerals have raised over £20,000 for local and national charities, almost £5,000 which was Gift Aid. This is money that would not have been recovered if the donations had been in cash.
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.