Joint fundraiser but only one charity registered for gift aid

unlucky67

Hi we have just done a joint fundraiser for two local groups. They are both charities but only one group is registered for gift aid..
As the income was dependent on donations we decided to try and push the gift aid - and it has been very (if not too) successful.
We had decided to split the donations 50:50, even though one group contributed most to the organisation and attracted the higher support - the gift aid reclaimed by them would compensate for the difference....on the gift aid declaration it clearly stated that the gift aid would be claimed by the one group.
So the donations that had been gift aided would be allocated to them in the split....only (and money is still coming in) it seems that more than half the amount has been gift aided.
Not sure where we stand now - I am thinking that the best approach is for the gift aid registered group to take all the donations, (claim gift aid as appropriate) and make the relevant (50% pre gift aid cash) donation to the other group.
Does this sound reasonable? Does it sound allowable? Any problem with that?
(The idea is for the two groups to work together more in the future - the next event should attract more support for the other group -but the take will also be split 50:50)

Savvy_Sue

unlucky67 wrote: »

Not sure where we stand now - I am thinking that the best approach is for the gift aid registered group to take all the donations, (claim gift aid as appropriate) and make the relevant (50% pre gift aid cash) donation to the other group.
Does this sound reasonable? Does it sound allowable? Any problem with that?

Does the GA registered group have provision within its governing document to make donations to other groups? If not, I'd say it was either not allowable or full of problems.

heretolearn_2

You are over thinking this.

Split the actual donations 50/50 (making sure if you can that the gift aid reg.charity gets gift aidable donations).

1) As above - charities can only do certain things with their money - and donating it to another charity would be unusual.

2) You are sticking the gift aid reg. charity with an admin/accounting pain in the bum, even if they are allowed to

3) If you told the donors that the funds would be split 50/50 then you are obliged to do that, without fiddling around getting clever.

4) 50/50 means before gift aid. What a charity does to maximise the value of its donations is then up to them. Smart ones gift aid. Ones run by not smart people/lazy people don't. Why should the well run charity lose part of their money - earned by the effort of gift aiding - to a charity that is too lazy to do it? You might as well say that if one had a good savings account paying more interest on the donations received, they should share that interest with the charity that doesn't.

5) basically you are saying that a charity that is not registered for gift aid, for whatever reason should get gift aid money any way. Well, they shouldn't. OK, I said above that it could be laziness, but there's lots of other reasons charities aren't gift aid registered. Failing the HMRC gift aid audit is a reason lots of small charities don't claim - they are not managing their finances and donations properly. My firm does gift aid claims for charities and I can tell you that if a charity isn't, there's often a very good reason for it, and we have to work with them to get everything properly managed and in order before they start claiming.

unlucky67

Sorry! I missed those replies...sure I ticked the e-mail box - and remember checking and thinking no-one had answered...
So to update...nothing in the constitution that said we couldn't make a donation to other charity (we are the GA reg one)...so that is exactly what we did - banked all the money, claimed gift aid on all the donations we could and then donated half the money taken on the day (pre-gift aid) to the other charity. The gift aid claim has gone through and our accounts have been examined and accepted by the Charity regulator - and in the Trustees report we openly said we had donated half the money to the other charity - most of the expenses were covered by a grant or by people donating time/facilities - all these went through our accounts .
We are both very similar small groups - the trustees change every year. They have to rely on the part-time employees (like me!) to help them. I do the accounts but do a lot of extra work voluntarily - I work more hours than I get paid and don't get a paid a lot - but they can't afford to pay anymore -the other group have someone like me who just does their job - the minimum... I find keeping a track of gift aid etc can be a bit of a hassle - even though we have been registered for years it was only after I took over that we actually claimed any! There will be no reason the other group couldn't be registered too - except for having someone with the motivation/knowledge/time to do it.......
(I have been asked if I would be interested in doing the same job for the other group - I would love to help them out (they are struggling and in a real mess) but I have enough to do)
Charities making donations - I do the Brownie accounts too and we often have little fundraisers for other groups - if possible it doesn't go through our accounts but a couple of times it has had to - we have banked it and then paid it out - and we haven't had a problem with that either.

Seanymph

see E 10

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/publications/cc20.aspx#e10