What is Gift Aid?
Gift Aid is a scheme enabling registered charities to reclaim tax on a sum of money donated by an individual who is a UK taxpayer, effectively increasing the amount of the donation. Using Gift Aid means that the taxman will add 25p to every pound a donor gives. If your organisation raises money which it currently is unable to claim Gift Aid for, it may now be able to make a claim for all or some of this money. That’s an extra 25% your charity could be missing out on and we may be able to help it to recover this. Aidvante works with organisations to find new and undiscovered techniques to help their organisation attain excellent outcomes in their demands for gift aid and thus appreciate the exceptional benefits that this provides.
HMRC
We carry out proprietary practices to conform with all applicable UK law and maintain statutory records of all Gift Aid claims produced by charities (as part of our service) for at least 5 years after the end of the tax year to which they relate (and make these documents accessible to HMRC and the Charity Commission if and when necessary). We also liaise on behalf of the organisation with HMRC and the Charity Commission if any queries or audits are produced as a consequence of our job in connection with a Gift Aid claim.
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If any Gift Aid claim is queried or audited by HMRC, it will give us the opportunity to answer the queries and correct any errors. If HMRC are not satisfied – we will simply make a technical withdrawal of the claim.
We are focused on meeting all the requirements of HMRC audits and therefore there is relatively low chance that any problems will arise and if there are any, we will be diligent in correcting them. For Gift Aid, there is no charity commission, as only HMRC is responsible for this. As far as the use of our services is concerned, Trustees are allowed under charity legislation to use any legitimate business service that serves to benefit the charity and as the charity does not pay us anything in advance – this also removes any financial risks to it.
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What we offer
There are a range of services that charities can take advantage of, to achieve this we offer a number of different services and approaches.
Preparation of Gift Aid claims
Use this service if you have time pressures within your charity. This is suitable for those who want to remain efficient and make sure your returns are correct every time. Also, it can be used as an alternative to giving away a percentage of donations to giving platforms.
Gift Aid Consultancy
This usually begins with a thorough review of all the fundraising activities. We will also look at all other fundraising areas where Gift Aid may be received but compliance may be somewhat more difficult due to the special conditions required. Our review will take a look at your current set-up and put forward recommendations for improvements. There are many benefits to a review: 1) Ensures compliance; 2) Improves internal procedures; 3) Consultancy on current fundraising activities, with suggested improvements; 4) Access to over the phone advice for Gift Aid queries; 5) Access to ongoing Gift Aid training and updates; 6) VAT - sometimes there can be inconsistencies and conflict between Gift Aid and VAT, we can assist you to set the optimum position for your charity. Gift Aid can often be missed by organisations and has the potential for unclaimed gifts that the charity could use. We also find that even minor changes can make this system more successful a long way. If your charity is involved in any of the activities below, you may be able to gain from a health check or review.
Those collecting small cash donations (Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme)
Membership charities
Those involved in fundraising events
Specific fundraising activities – charitbry dinners, auctions, challenge events, community fundraising etc.
Gift Aid set-up – We can guide your charity through the whole process of setting up and operating Gift Aid claims including:
- Reviewing eligibility of donations
- Setting up Gift Aid declarations
- Registering your charity for Gift Aid
- Record keeping systems
- Providing you with the necessary templates
Gift Aid - Mock Audit
The Mock Audit involves us at Aidvante undertaking a Gift Aid Audit as if we were HMRC, (if you wish to take on our Gift Aid Service, the auditors will be different from the processors). This provides an opportunity for your organisation to submit to an inspection of your Gift Aid practices and assess the degree of adherence, without the possibility of any consequences in the event that things are not 100%. HMRC has a duty to take care of public funds and is therefore very focused on ensuring strict adherence to the rules relating to the payment of Gift Aid claims.As far as the audit itself is concerned, HMRC has a well-defined policy setting out what the charity needs to provide as verification of its gift aid procedures. To save you the trouble, we can manage your Gift Aid completely! To find out how, contact us for further information.
Is this suitable for my charity?
Gift Aid can often be overlooked by charities and has potential for unclaimed donations which could be used by the charity. We often find that even small changes can go a long way to making this process more effective. If your charity is involved in any of the below activities, you could stand to gain from a review or health check.
- Those collecting small cash donations -Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme
- Membership charities
- Charities involved in fundraising events
- Fundraising activities – charity dinners, auctions, challenge events, community fundraising etc.
Advanced Aspects
Aidvante ensures that data is accurately filtered in order to display true metrics to the greatest extent possible. Additional data views are sometimes separated out to show subdomains as well. In addition, when the situation calls for it, we like to use custom metrics and custom dimensions. Typically, these necessitate website integrations, but we can increasingly do so using container integrations like Google Tag Manager– for example, we can identify logged in users and tag their activities accordingly.
Dashboard creation
Knowing that your data quality has improved is frequently wonderful news, but stakeholders rarely have the time to appreciate this detail. As a result, we frequently create custom dashboards in either Google Analytics or Google Data Studio to track the activity of your website in real time. We always factor in the specific elements of your setup to provide you with the most accurate business information. If data for these dashboards is required, it is always agreed upon ahead of time.
Channel Reporting
Our clients occasionally ask for an expert to interpret their data and tell them the storey behind what's been going on. We also use other tools to support this storey, so we can be certain of the reasons for climbs or dips. We frequently see a lot of "direct traffic," which is usually anything but direct. We can clearly discuss visible channels, such as search engines organic and paid traffic, as well as referral traffic from other websites, from this analysis, but we can also highlight ways to surface other channel statistics in here, such as email marketing, dark social, referrals from Google properties, URLs from Apps and SMS messages, and others.
Goals and Ecommerce
Events are unlikely to appear in your analytics package without a special installation. Frequent tasks, such as form submissions or link hits, can be tracked as measurable events in your website analytics and translated into Goals for reporting with some effort. Goals can also be carried over into your paid advertising efforts, allowing you to optimise your advertising expenditure to promote more of the same behaviour. Ecommerce websites aren't typically set up to track success effectively - popular analytics packages like Google Analytics have complex ecommerce features that are rarely enabled or used to their full potential. A fuller implementation will almost likely help you if you require product-level knowledge and extensive basket abandonment reporting
