Are there any £1 Direct Debits?

robatwork

The only way this question will be resolved properly is if a representative of a (medium sized) charity comes on and actually says
i) what the cost of processing DDs is to them
ii) if they welcome £1 DDs knowing this isn't likely to lead to larger donations.

mt99

Called the Dogs Trust - they said they had quite a lot of people donating £1 a month and it costs about 8p per direct debit. Other charities may vary.

ST-User

Gocardless does their DD's for 1% fee as far as I know.

epm-84

mt99 wrote: »

Called the Dogs Trust - they said they had quite a lot of people donating £1 a month and it costs about 8p per direct debit. Other charities may vary.

So like I suggested earlier on if you're a tax payer and opt in to Gift Aid the charity will get more than you actually donate.

epm-84

EachPenny wrote: »

But it isn't about whether it is 'ignoring their request' - the issue is about common sense and decency.

If a charity shop says DON'T leave bags outside their shops and you do it anyway then using your analogy it's the same as a charity saying the minimum direct debit payment is £1 and you setting one up for less than £1.

EachPenny

epm-84 wrote: »

So like I suggested earlier on if you're a tax payer and opt in to Gift Aid the charity will get more than you actually donate.

If you live in a simplistic world where the only cost to the charity is the external processing fee. The real world doesn't work like that.

epm-84 wrote: »

If a charity shop says DON'T leave bags outside their shops and you do it anyway then using your analogy it's the same as a charity saying the minimum direct debit payment is £1 and you setting one up for less than £1.

I think you are missing the point, perhaps deliberately.

If you can explain how option (b) can ever be better than option (a) if the motive is to benefit the charity then please go ahead.

eschaton

Quite simply, if a charity accepts DD's of £1 and above then it is worth their while or they wouldn't accept them.

Ashen

EachPenny wrote: »

As takman already suggests, once the fixed costs of running a shop are covered, low-value items that are saleable will still result in the charity benefitting.

A better analogy would be leaving a binbag in the charity shop's doorway full of chipped mismatched plates, broken toys, jigsaws with bits missing, soiled bedding, and shoes with one of the pair missing. Yes, the items may all have some value and may possibly find a customer willing to pay that value. But it is more likely to cost the charity money (funded out of other people's donations) in order to pay the waste disposal costs of getting rid of the contents of the bag.

I wouldn't dump a bag of carp in a charity shop doorway and then claim that I've done them a favour. And for me that is no different to using a charity to process a £1 DD in order to make a personal financial gain.

You took what was admittedly a poor analogy and replaced it with one of the worst analogies I've ever seen.

bigadaj

EachPenny wrote: »

If you live in a simplistic world where the only cost to the charity is the external processing fee. The real world doesn't work like that.



I think you are missing the point, perhaps deliberately.

If you can explain how option (b) can ever be better than option (a) if the motive is to benefit the charity then please go ahead.

Stop digging I'd say.

Zanderman

ST-User wrote: »

Gocardless does their DD's for 1% fee as far as I know.

That's not quite correct - they charge 1% of the DD amount to businesses, but have a minimum fee of 20p, which is 20% if the DD is only £1. Details at https://gocardless.com/pricing/

And for 'branded' DD's they charge £50 a month on top of these charges.

Their business model is to cut out costs to businesses - which by definition means that most businesses will normally be paying much more than this, otherwise GoCardless wouldn't be in business.

A charity running its own DDs would, therefore, almost certainly be paying much more than 20p for a £1 DD - through a mix of higher bank charges and their own staff costs.