Why the RSPCA Doesnt Need to Beg for Gift Aid

Why the RSPCA Doesn't Need to Beg for Gift Aid

Guest post by Rosemary Rodd, RSPCA Cambridge

RSPCA Cambridge is a branch of the RSPCA responsible for providing animal welfare services in the Southern part of Cambridgeshire. Our clinic and emergency vetline provide access to low-cost veterinary treatment for over 3,000 pets each year, and we also treat and rehome strays who have been picked up injured or ill.

In recent years we have been struggling to raise sufficient funds to keep our activities going and this year we installed a gift aid system in all three of our branch charity shops. This system makes it possible for us to reclaim an extra 25% of the value of every item sold from HMRC provided its original donor pays UK income tax and completed a gift aid form at the time of donation.

We found that getting donors to sign the forms was a barrier to making the system work for several reasons:

Our volunteers were reluctant to appear ungrateful by asking donors to complete an extra chore.

Some donors were confused about what they were being asked to do (for example they sometimes thought they were being asked to sign direct debit forms to make regular money donations).

The generic gift aid posters supplied by the vendors of the gift aid system were not terribly appealing, because they didn't speak to the particular interests of our donors.

We put an advert on Pimp My Cause, asking for help with publicising the gift aid system and Mike Freeman responded.

He was extremely helpful, giving us advice on training our volunteers to feel confident about asking donors to sign and also producing three
posters to be used in our publicity.

These posters are visually very appealing and being in electronic form they can not only be printed out, but also used on our website and facebook page to prime donors to expect to be asked to complete a gift aid form. This aspect is extremely important as Mike pointed out to us that most people automatically say no when asked to sign anything as a self-defence mechanism to avoid endless begging letters.

We particularly like the colourful "heart" poster which combines thanks for the actual donation of goods with the request to complete the form.

Prior to our gift aid campaign, the percentage of gift aided sales was varying at around 8-12% and is now consistently around 18-25%.

We don't expect to achieve 100% as not all of our donors are UK tax payers, but we are hopeful that it may be possible to drive the percentage
up to 50%, which would mean an increase in our income of over £1,000 - enough to cover a week's running costs for our clinic.