Organise Your Money (What You Want To Give Away)
Many of us give to charity, but most of us do it with our heart, not our brains. It’s great to respond to an emergency – but charities need to predict their income, not rely on special appeals. Why not decide how much you want to give to charity every year, and then open a special charitable giving account – into which the government adds the tax you have paid on the money you are giving away.
The best people for this are the Charities Aid Foundation – opening an account with them simplifies and streamlines what you give and at the same time ensures you maximise the benefits of your gifts.
They say:
- We’ll help you take control of your giving.
- We’ll ensure every donation you make, large or small, is tax-effective.
- We’ll supply you with a CharityCard that enables you to make donations at your convenience.
Join the fray by signing in.
04 Sep 2005
I was doing this before Generous, but I’ve signed up to register the fact.
03 Oct 2005
I was also already doing this and have just put it down to register. I don’t go through CAF, though, because we have Give As You Earn at work, and where a workplace runs this scheme, they usually (always?) use an administrative charity to run it, but it can be different charities, not always CAF.
I used to give money by standing order in my old job because it made me remember, and it makes less of a “dent” if it comes out at the start of the month. But GAYE is even better as it comes out of my pay cheque, so I don’t notice at all…
Perhaps that’s not a good thing?
Katie
05 Oct 2005
Was doing this before Generous. Always sit down at the start of each year too work out where my allocated pot will go too. Then contribute via direct debit or standing order and make sure I tick the gift aid box.
Godalming, GB , 17 Oct 2005
This action encouraged me to set up a direct debit to my favourite charity in the New Year, but I now realise I need to think about a CAF account so occasional donations to other charities can benefit from gift aid.
AF , 13 Nov 2005
I have been regulary giving a little to some charities and organisations for some years. I especially like to support friends who are working abroad with charities and organisations that help care for the environment.
14 Nov 2005
We have been doing this for a while. Royal Bank of Scotland has an excellent Give As You Earn scheme for its staff, whereby it double matches the first £100 donated per month per employee. So for every £1 given, nett cost is about 80p and the charity gets £3.
02 Dec 2005
Was already signed up for CAF and paying into to it but rather lazily then not getting around to giving it away… hopefully this will prompt me to finish what I started Steve
06 Dec 2005
I’ve just moved this back to focusing on rather than done as we realised that although we increased the amount we were giving each year we didn’t look at who or what we were giving to. So we’ve stopped the standing orders and are actually thinking about to whom and why we are giving the money.
London, GB , 17 Feb 2006
I am also already doing this, and I find the CAF fund very useful. I have set up a number of regular payments and try to find time to review how much and who we give to at least once each year. If one of us gets a payrise, I do the review immediately because, as Katie says above, it’s easier to give away money that you haven’t yet got used to having. I also keep a file for requests that I get out of the blue and consider them all together when I review our giving. That way I can be sure that we are giving to the charities who are important to us, rather than those that shout loudest, or that I tend to meet collecting in the street. Please also think about the proportion of your charitable giving that goes overseas – we are trying to make sure that we give at least 0.7 per cent of our gross income, as a personal “mirror” of the request made to governments by the UN General Assembly in 1970 (and not yet achieved by the UK!).
26 May 2006
We’ve been doing this for years. it makes giving so easy. I’d really recommend CAF.
27 May 2006
Still giving but its not really organised.
Godalming, GB , 01 Aug 2006
I’ve been encouraged to assess my giving and give more. However, a CAF account isn’t appropriate as I don’t pay tax and I tend to plan most of what I give. Hubby tends to Gift Aid most of what we give to charity anyway.
Leicester, GB , 01 Aug 2006
The CAf provides an excellent service where you can set up accounts for others to give a portion of your CAF donation. We have set up accounts for our six godchildren – they have their own CAF Chequebook and statements. CAF transfer a bit from our general giving each month for them to donate to charities of their own choosing. The benefits of GAYE were only available for a few years – the government topped up a bit. It is now cheaper to gift aid directly to a charity rather than use an intermediary such as CAF. CAF takes a small percentage for administration and to give to the NCVA. We put some into CAF each month so that we have a fund to give to emergancy or one-off requests (such as the sunday collection at Greenbelt or instead of sponsorship for a charity race or for disaster relief). The rest of our giving is planned and given monthly via standing order, gift aided. Remember that if you are a higher rate tax payer you can get the difference between the tax relief (28%) and the tax paid (40%) back. If you have overpaid tax and fill in a self-assessment tax form, the Inland Revenue gives you the option of letting them send all or a part of your overpayment to nominated charities.
30 Oct 2006
We do most of our giving through direct debit, and find that it’s almost always possible to gift aid one-off donations. In the days before gift aid on modest donations I can see that a CAF account was very useful, but I’m not sure how much added value it provides now.
05 Jan 2007
have just set up caf account and joined everyclick.com too. every little helps.
Kingston upon Thames, GB , 01 Aug 2007
Just set this up as well – brilliant.
23 Aug 2007
We give a set proportion of income and review it each year. It turns out to be about the same as we spend on holidays.
Wellington, GB , 13 Oct 2007
Not with CAF, but directly with a couple of organisations & some old friends who are doing voluntary work.