The Gift Aid Project for the NSPCC

In April 2000, the government introduced new legislation to replace the old covenant system known as Gift Aid. The new legislation is designed to benefit charities in terms of revenue and facilitate the claim process. It now allows charities to claim the tax on all gifts received as long as they have the name and address of the supporter, confirmation that they are a tax payer and have authorised the NSPCC to collect the tax. The covenant system had only allowed charities to collect tax on specifically covenanted gifts.

The challenge this put in front of the NSPCC was how to

• re-engineer their current supporter system to process and mark new claims, back claims and handle the new supporter information they would need to capture
• generate the required, accurate and up-to-date claim details and documentation in the approved Inland Revenue format for the NSPCC records.
  
• submit the claims to the Inland Revenue and produce all required reports for the Inland Revenue and the NSPCC finance department

More specifically, the system would need to be able to identify eligible claims from captured data, calculate the tax, submit them via an Inland Revenue Claim Report, generate tax transaction claim records, produce a letter to each supporter confirming the total amount of tax claimed and update the Supporter System accordingly.

Active Media Business Solutions were approached as they have worked on a number of successful key projects with the charity. They were asked to design a solution to meet the challenge, and which, given the potential revenue for the charity, could be implemented as quickly as possible.

The solution took four months to complete and is an application which

• is easy-to-use and fully automated requiring minimal support
  
• is fully integrated with the NSPCC Supporter System and accounting structures
  
• identifies and processes the tax claims according to the new legislation
  
• meets all data capture and data generation requirements
  
• produces all required reports for the NSPCC and the Inland Revenue
  
• handles interim back claims as appropriate

The carefully customised automation and integration mean that minimal resources are required for processing, as well as ensuring efficiency and data reporting accuracy.

The speed at which Active Media Business Solutions worked resulted in the NSPCC becoming the first charity in the country able to claim the Gift Aid tax under the new legislation. Operating the application is cost and use efficient and most importantly, the results and reporting are accurate.

The additional revenue potential that this provides for charities is considerable as for every £1.00 donated, the charity can claim 0.28 p. The application paid for itself almost immediately and the return on investment is considerable - the software is now successfully processing and submitting 500,000 claims per month, amounting to some 6 million claims per year.