Gift Aid

What is Gift Aid?

Gift Aid is a program the UK government put in place to encourage donors to give more via a tax relief incentive. Under the program, UK income taxpayers complete a declaration that they are a UK taxpayer. Any donations that the taxpayer makes to a charity are then treated as being made after deduction of income tax at the basic rate of 20%. The charity can then reclaim the basic rate income tax paid on the gift from HMRC. For a basic-rate taxpayer, this adds approximately 25% to the value of any gift made under this program.

How the Gift Aid Add-on Works

We’ve built the add-on to be an all-inclusive package that has everything you need in order for you to begin allowing accepting Gift Aid through your GiveWP-powered online donation forms. Upon activation, the plugin includes default settings with meticulously written content that will provide your donors with a clear understanding of what Gift Aid is and why they should opt-in to give with it. It doesn’t stop there. There are many other features included to get you up and running accepting Gift Aid quickly and easily.

Gift Aid from the Donor’s Perspective

We go above and beyond just adding a simple checkbox to your donation forms. From the get-go, the objective of the Gift Aid add-on is to provide donors with a clear understanding of what Gift Aid is and why they should opt-in with their donation.

Here’s how the Gift Aid looks within a donation form:

As you can see there’s a brief explanation of what Gift Aid is alongside the official “gift aid it” graphic. As well, you will see a “Tell me more” link that allows donors to view a more in-depth explanation:

All the content you see is customizable to suit your specific fundraising needs. Additionally, many options, including the extended explanation option, can be enabled or disabled on a per form basis.

Easily Downloadable Declaration Forms

When a donor gives and opts-in to Gift Aid they can then download a PDF of their declaration for their records. Likewise, you as the charity have a full record of all the declaration forms within the admin. For the donor, their declaration form download appears on the receipt page of the donation:

Smart Address Detection

Rule #1 – Don’t frustrate your users when they’re completing their donations. If a donor has already entered in an address within the billing field’s then the add-on will simply ask them if they would like to use the same address rather than having them re-enter the information. This improves the overall donor experience and lessens the number of fields they have to complete to make their donation.

Intelligent Country Detection

The Gift Aid fieldset will not display in donation forms for visitors who select a country other than the UK. Because Gift Aid is only a UK program valid for tax paying citizens of that country it would be unnecessary and burdensome to ask non-UK donors to participate.

Customizable Globally and Per Form

The Gift Aid add-on offers flexibility to be enabled and customized for all your donation forms or for just a few select forms. With the “Global” and “Per Form” customizations built in you have the power to do just that.

Admins have the ability to: 

• Enable Gift Aid globally and override options on a per form basis
• Disable Gift Aid globally and enable on only a select few forms
• Enable Gift Aid globally and disable on a per form basis

Each option includes default settings and content to help you get started faster. This saves you time figuring out the plugin and gives you a head start on making this feature as clear as possible for your donors.

Powerful Tools for Tax Purposes

Filing taxes can be hard! We’ve worked hard to reduce some of the burdens with excellent reporting and export features. With this add-on, you can export in bulk Gift Aid donations to CSV files and also download PDF declaration forms for printing and filing purposes.

Bulk Download and Export

Once you receive Gift Aid donations you will be able to easily export those to a CSV file

Gift Aid Feature Rundown

• General Features
  • 100% customizable content
  • Configure globally or per form
  • Fully documented and supported
  • Optimized code and interface
• Donor Features
  • Country detection built in
  • Content provided to easily understand the UK tax program
  • Optimized for maximum opt-in rates
  • Downloadable declaration forms
• Admin Features
  • Bulk download declaration forms
  • Customizable PDFs
  • Full reporting built in
  • Easily modified and extended