HMRC figures show that UK charities are missing out on over half a billion pounds (£564,000,000) of unclaimed Gift Aid every year.
- London, UK 4 July 2022
To help tackle the problem, JustGiving, the world’s most trusted platform for online giving, has partnered with Swiftaid to make it easier for charities to claim Gift Aid on all qualifying donations.
Since partnering with Swiftaid in November 2021, 2.8 million donors have registered with Swiftaid via JustGiving. In just 5 months of their partnership they have already reduced the amount that’s missed by unlocking over £400,000 in retrospective Gift Aid for the tax year ending April 20221. Approximately 10,000 donors sign up to Swiftaid via JustGiving per day.
JustGiving and Swiftaid believe that this new technology will support small charities in particular, who often don’t have the resources to claim Gift Aid, which is an expensive and time-consuming process.
Swiftaid aims to deliver an additional £1bn in Gift Aid and personal tax relief to charities and individuals annually. 300 charities are already signed up to the platform and JustGiving is urging charities and other giving platforms to do the same.
How it works
Swiftaid matches the details of donors to their Swiftaid account when they make donations across any of Swiftaid’s partner charities or fundraising platforms. When initially adding Gift Aid to a donation, an authorisation is made for Swiftaid to add Gift Aid to donations made during the ongoing tax year. It also supports charities by easing the administrative burden of Gift Aid by centralising and submitting Gift Aid declarations on their behalf and helps donors simply claim higher rate tax refunds from HMRC. To date, JustGiving has added 3 million donors to the centralised database, significantly increasing the chances of other Swiftaid partners matching more donors and reclaiming more Gift Aid. Donor data is not shared for any purposes beyond claiming Gift Aid.
As a founding partner of Swiftaid, JustGiving can register donors to Swiftaid when they make a donation through the platform and add Gift Aid, while donors already registered on Swiftaid will have Gift Aid automatically applied to any donations they make via JustGiving.
Charities registered on JustGiving will automatically benefit from Swiftaid for the donations they process on JustGiving. Charities wishing to use Swiftaid for other income streams can find out more on the Swiftaid website.
“Charities are recovering from the pandemic and face a cost-of-living crisis, so this important technological innovation will unlock a significant amount of money at the moment they need it most. The work of Swiftaid is more important than ever. We’re immensely proud to be partnering with the Swiftaid team and to have reached the milestone of 3 million donors registered via JustGiving in only 6 months. We hope that more charities - large and small – will partner with Swiftaid in the coming months.”
Pascale Harvie - President & General Manager, JustGiving
“It’s incredible to see that in just a small amount of time with JustGiving, we have reduced what’s missed by nearly half a million pounds. Just imagine the difference that could be made if more charities and fundraising providers were involved! Tax relief is such a valuable income for both charities and individuals, and through the use of new technologies we are able to streamline the current manual process to get the much needed relief to where it’s due. Through Swiftaid, we are working to get an additional 1 billion pounds to charities and individuals!“
David Michael - CEO & Co-founder, Swiftaid
“Just4Children is delighted that JustGiving, and its partner Swiftaid, with its new technology is enabling us to claim Gift Aid more efficiently and quickly to help our children receive the medical support they urgently need.“
Jeremy Marris - CEO, Just4Children
About JustGiving
JustGiving has enabled over 10 million people to simply and safely raise more than £5bn for over 28,000 good causes around the world over the last 21 years. We have been proud to power some of the world’s most inspiring fundraisers and campaigns, including the London Marathon, Captain Sir Tom Moore’s birthday walk, and the 2020 2.6 Challenge. JustGiving does not charge a platform fee, ensuring more money goes to good causes. We joined tech-for-good software company Blackbaud in 2017.
For more information on JustGiving, please visit justgiving.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
About Swiftaid
Streeva developed Swiftaid in collaboration with the University of Surrey with the support of public funding from Innovate UK. We successfully proved our concept to automate Gift Aid on contactless donations in Nov 2018 with VISA and the Natural History Museum. We are leading tax innovation in an industry wide project hosted by The Charity Tax Group called the Future of Gift Aid and were featured in a recent Office of Tax Simplification report. Swiftaid is listed on HMRC’s registered software providers and is a recognised donor intermediary and charity nominee. Streeva is certified with the highest international standards for information security (ISO27001) and business continuity (ISO22301).
For more information on Swiftaid, please visit swiftaid.co.uk or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn
JustGiving has submitted this retrospective reclaim to HMRC and is expecting to receive back the Gift Aid payment by July for disbursement to charities. JustGiving is in direct contact with charities due to receive a payment. ↩︎
