2014 State of the Not-for-Profit Industry report

The proportion of UK charities reporting no income from gift aid increased eight percentage points to 50 per cent this year, according to the 2014 State of the Not-for-Profit Industry report.

However while fewer charities were receiving gift aid, the amounts being claimed increased as gift aid accounted for six percent of total income for UK respondents to the survey, which was up from four percent from 2013.

The report, produced annually by the fundraising software company Blackbaud, surveyed 219 charity professionals working for organisations in the UK and 204 in Ireland.

According to the report, 43 percent of respondents use a fundraising/donor management system to process their claims, while 10 percent use a specialist gift aid system, 20 percent use an accounting system, and 24 percent use spreadsheets.

The report says that the percentage of individual donations that included gift aid claims varied, but nearly four in ten charities estimated that a majority (60 per cent or more) of donations included gift aid claims.

The report also shows that peer-to-peer fundraising, where supporters raise funds on behalf of their chosen charity, for example through challenge events, is increasing, with 69 percent of respondents said they had received donations from this method, up from 60 percent in 2013 and 38 percent in 2012.

Charities receiving such donations were also using social media and online giving tools, with 75 percent of those respondents that received peer-to-peer donations also accepting digital donations and 84 percent using at least one social media platform to communicate with supporters.

The report shows that social media use by charities grew 16 percentage points to 96 percent this year. However respondents felt they were struggling to use social media effectively with more than 60 percent rating themselves lower than seven out of 10 on a scale of effectiveness.

The survey shows that on average, 15 percent of all private giving is from online donations, and almost half of the charities surveyed use text-giving, with 22 percent saying they planned to do so over the next year.

To download the full report visit www.blackbaud.co.uk/files/bbe/SONI/SONI_UKReport2014.pdf.