Raising money for charity as a business

AmyHunt

Hi,

I work for a small company in Birmingham. We regularly take part in charity fun runs under our personal names, not listed as the business.

Does anyone know of the best ways to;

• Increase our fundraising whilst not sounding pushy to our customers and prospects
• Increase funding with things like; gift aid; tax pay-outs on funding raised (for the charity)
• Create a long-term partnership with select charities

We currently have a just giving account and promote it very regularly (as I do the promotions myself) so they appear on at least one platform of our socials at least every other day. I send emails out to customers with buttons in my bio and newsletter too.

In 6 months we've (I've) only managed to raise £52 and £22 of that came from staff. #help!

Savvy_Sue

Starting at the end and working backwards ... if you want to create a long-term partnership with select charities, first, pick your charity / charities!

You can do that either by asking for suggestions from staff (and customers?) and then voting on them - you might want a Charity of the Year.

Or if there's any obvious connections between any of you and a particular charity, maybe just go for that.

Then, get in touch with your chosen charity and ask what you can do for each other! For example, we've had companies baking for us, or holding raffles, or coming as a group to our auction, or putting on special events for us.

In the past, we've run a 'Director's Challenge' style event for such companies.

the charity should be able to provide literature, collection tins / buckets, website links etc which you can promote to all.

You should, btw, have the permission of any charity you're supporting before using their name in your publicity. Generally they'll be delighted, but for example a charity helping problem gamblers might not want you putting a race night on ...

Personally, I think that picking the right charity should help with both the other questions too. A local charity will appeal to your customers, and a larger charity will mean that many people will have heard of it and want to support it (hopefully, anyway ...)

Gift Aid again should be easy to do with help from the charity but only applies to individual giving. Tax incentives on giving from the company I know nothing about, apart from that there used to be some but I don't know if there still are - talk to your accountant?

00ec25

gift aid applies only to donations from individuals, not companies, and is a matter between the charity and the donor. Not something your company can play a part in

donations by a company are deductible against its corporation tax, but there is no multiplier effect for the amount you give.

sounds like your customer base does not value the charities you do, given your modest success to date.