Online giving websites charging commission!!

Savvy_Sue

fengirl wrote: »

CAf does a whole lot more than banking - including collecting donations on behalf of charities.

True, but so far they don't have the event fundraising facilities which JustGiving has, and that is what JustGiving is so popular for!

lilysgarden

I've just used www.virginmoneygiving.com to raise funds for CLIC for an abseil next week. From everything I can see, they don't charge anything at all and automatically add gift aid to every donation.

Good luck with the marathon, let us know how you get on!

Nikki x

Savvy_Sue

lilysgarden wrote: »

I've just used www.virginmoneygiving.com to raise funds for CLIC for an abseil next week. From everything I can see, they don't charge anything at all and automatically add gift aid to every donation.

They can only add it if you declare that you are a taxpayer, surely?

edgex

lilysgarden wrote: »

I've just used www.virginmoneygiving.com to raise funds for CLIC for an abseil next week. From everything I can see, they don't charge anything at all and automatically add gift aid to every donation.

Good luck with the marathon, let us know how you get on!

Nikki x

gift aid
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/gift-aid.jsp

Every time you make a donation through Virgin Money Giving we’ll ask if you’re eligible for Gift Aid - simply have a read through the information and tick the relevant box to let us know.
That’s it – if you’re eligible we’ll reclaim the Gift Aid from HMRC and pass it to your charity in full.

they do charge
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/about-us/more-money-goes-to-charity.jsp

Because we’re not-for-profit we only charge charities the minimum fees needed to cover our running costs. That’s a single start-up fee of £100 + VAT from each charity and 2% of donations. Gift Aid is reclaimed from the Government and passed to charities in full. Fundraisers and their sponsors don’t pay a penny to use our website.
Should we have any money left over after covering our operating costs, we’ll use it to reduce our fees further or improve services for fundraisers and charities.

bungle4x4

i think its important to understand that charities are massive business these days.

personally, where possible, i look into how much of a Charities income is spent on admin and advertising. you'll be surprised.

i was watching the rugby the other day and a charity had a lot of electronic advertsing space taken. wonder if the organiser recieved tickets?

Savvy_Sue

We are not all massive businesses, although all charities should be run in a businesslike way, ie efficient, making best use of resources.

Using volunteers is obviously good, but it's not necessarily the most efficient way to do it, so some admin may be very good value for money.

And before anyone goes "Oh No, Virgin charges the charity how despicable" I say again that it's probably WORTH 2% of every donation to have the money plop automatically into the bank account, and have the Gift Aid position checked and claimed, rather than have envelopes stuffed full of cash or cheques arrive on your desk ... (not that I mind the envelopes stuffed full of cash or cheques arriving, you understand!)

JohalaReewi

As well as smoothing out the nightmare of gift aid tick boxes on sponsor forms, JustGiving (and I guess Virgin - haven't used them yet) score because you get the donation more or less straight away so you don't have to go chasing your sponsors for the money they promised.

GiveItBack

bungle4x4 wrote: »

i think its important to understand that charities are massive business these days.

personally, where possible, i look into how much of a Charities income is spent on admin and advertising. you'll be surprised.

i was watching the rugby the other day and a charity had a lot of electronic advertsing space taken. wonder if the organiser recieved tickets?

While I commend the fact that you care enough to make an effort when donating, I'd like to suggest that this is not the best way to judge the effectiveness of a charity.

As an example, I'll create 2 hypothetical charities. For simplicity, we'll assume they have the same aim, and the same income. Their aim is to provide water to people in the third world.

A spends 10,000 on admin advertising and so on, and raises £100,000.
B spends 50,000 on admin advertising and so on, and raises £100,000.

By looking simply at 'admin / fundraising' costs etc, the first is more efficient.

However, B uses their 50,000 net to provide water to 50,000 people, while A use their 90,000 net to provide water to 10,000 people.

BB is significantly more efficient, and if everyone donated to them the impact would be far greater.. In fact, if everyone donated to them, their admin and fundraising costs would not be significantly higher.

People worry about the input side, the admin costs, but not the outcomes, and I'd urge anyone who donates to charity, and wants to do so well, to look deeper, and look at the outcomes.

benbmy

Hi

I should start by declaring an interest - I'm one of the founders of Bmycharity.

We used to charge commission, but from 1 October this year we stopped doing so. We now generate our revenue through advertising, and take no cut from the donations people make through our service.

The results so far have been dramatic: total donations have doubled and the average donation has increased by more than £5 - clear evidence that donors prefer not to see their donation skimmed.
(As a new user I'm not allowed to post links, but if you check charity news sites like UK Fundraising you'll see their reports on this today)

We believe that it's time for commission charges to stop and we're doing what we can to encourage other providers to do what they can to eliminate commissions. Our results show that donors are more trusting when no-one is "taking a cut" and that's important because online fundraising dramatically increases Gift Aid capture and reduces adminstrative costs. It's in the interest of the whole charity sector to promote it since more than £100 million in savings and increased Gift Aid is at stake.

If you would like to get involved in our campaign to set fundraising free, please get in touch or Google "Freemycharity" - you'll see articles on why and how we provide our services for free.

Best wishes

Ben