Is payroll giving the future for business and charities?

Payroll Giving in Action (PGA) backs Britain’s charities and wants to encourage the business community to promote payroll giving online as an easy way to show how much they also want to Back Britain’s Charities. Here PGA’s Director, Jeremy Colwill, describes how payroll giving could be a key tool in the survival of charities…

With charity funds being hit across the country due to the recession, we all need to get behind payroll giving and encourage people to give tax efficiently. Donating a few quid a month off the payroll is an easy way to automate giving and ensure that the charity gets the maximum tax gain too.  

HM Government recently consulted the payroll giving sector to engage with all the major stakeholder groups involved with promoting and growing the payroll giving market in the UK.

The outcomes are still very unclear at the moment but it is unlikely the government will have any funds to significantly boost payroll giving, and therefore inflate charity incomes. A majority of people in the payroll giving sector want the HM Government backed Quality Mark and for the National Payroll Giving Excellence awards to continue, and to that end would urge the Government to not go back on their commitment to promote payroll giving as initially outlined in their recent Green and White papers on the subject.

However, regardless of Government action, it is still possible for the charity sector to help itself to generate payroll giving income by accessing the payroll giving scheme online or via mobile internet. As much as  £118m was raised among the 735,000 workers who signed up to the scheme last year, and thought the total amount pledged over the last few years has only been increasing slowly, the amount of people donating online through the payroll has increased dramatically with a 100% increase in some cases.

Payroll giving is already the easiest way for employers to promote and employees to support their favourite charities on a regular and tax-free basis.  For many employees, the time savings are great as it means no more paper forms to fill in and the freedom to give, amend or cancel donations at a convenient time.

The gathering momentum of payroll giving online means that we expect to achieve £10 million extra donations for Britain’s charities within the next 12 months, but the figure could be much higher if all employers with over 500 employees promoted the scheme and all charities had payroll giving as an option on their website. It’s a win-win situation for charities, employers and donors.

Payroll Giving in Action is now offering every UK charity a free Giving Online donation page to recruit payroll giving donations from their website. And if the donor’s employer doesn’t have a payroll giving scheme, we will ask the employer to set up a scheme to Back Britain’s Charities!

If more people can easily support a charity through payroll giving then it’s another large step forward for Britain’s charities.

See more information at www.payroll.givingonline.org.uk