FAQs

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  • What about Gift Aid?

    Gift Aid increases the value of a donation to charities by allowing UK taxpayers to reclaim basic rate tax on their gift. Basic rate tax is 20 per cent, so this means if someone gives £10 using Gift Aid, it’s worth £12.50 to the receiving charity. If the donor is a UK higher-rate taxpayer, they can also receive back up to 31.5% of their gift through a tax reclaim if they have registered for Gift Aid.

    DONATE provides a means for NFS to reclaim any Gift Aid on donations made through DONATE. In order for this to happen, the donor must register for Gift Aid when giving through DONATE, but they only need to do this once for all future transactions on DONATE to be Gift Aided automatically. They can then monitor all of their own donations on the platform and submit an easy personal Gift Aid reclaim at the end of the year to www.hmrc.gov.uk.

  • Is there a legal agreement?

    All organisations using DONATE need to confirm to our terms and conditions. Since we welcome charities and non-charities to use DONATE there are separate Affiliation Agreements for each. You can see the charity Affiliation Agreement here and the non-charity Affiliation Agreement here

  • Can I use DONATE if I'm not a registered/exempt charity?

    Participating organisations do not need to be charities but they must demonstrate their charitable purpose either through proving their charitable status or demonstrating a charitable purpose to our Trustees. To find out whether your organisation is eligible read the Government's Guide to What Purposes can be Charitable:

    www.gov.uk/government/publications/charitable-purposes

    As part of our due diligence all organisations will be asked to complete an annual return identifying the charitable purpose to which funds have been applied. If you are not a charity (or an exempt charity), and in specific circumstances, we may ask you to agree to a personal guarantee confirming that any donated funds will be returned to us should funds not be applied to the agreed charitable purpose.

  • How is data used?

    Full details of how we use donors’ personal data (our Privacy Policy) can be found here: http://www.nationalfundingscheme.org/privacy-policy. We only obtain a donor’s email address in order to send them a thank you message and receipt acknowledging their donation. For payments made via app or by using contactless NFC all credit/debit card details are held by one of two world leaders in digital payments – either Barclaycard SmartPay or PayPal. Both are PCI-compliant (www.pcisecuritystandards.org) and no credit/debit card details are ever held by the NFS.

    Donors can opt to share their information with the NFS, with the organisation that receives their gift and/or with all organisations using the DONATE platform. If they have agreed to share their information, you will be able to see their email address in the reports area of your DONATE account and can then use this email address for your purposes, subject to compliance with data protection legislation. You might also include a further request for the donor to share their details in the personalised ‘thank you’ message you send them.

    The National Funding Scheme also produces statistical reports, insights and case studies which it posts on www.nationalfundingscheme.org at regular intervals. No personal data is ever revealed in these documents.