Third Sector blog

In the last week, we’ve seen some calculations from the Charities Aid Foundation and Oxford Economics estimating how much the tax relief cap will cost the charity sector.

At the moment, the Charities Aid Foundation says it will cost £500m. This has been extrapolated by Oxford Economics to a negative cost to society of £1.5bn. Read More »

There must be mixed emotions at Samaritans today – the day of the funeral of Claire Squires. Had she lived, her contribution to the charity from her London Marathon run would probably have been a few thousand pounds. Since her death, it has received a windfall of more than a million pounds in the space of a week. Living with good fortune that flows from tragedy is never entirely comfortable. Other charities must envy Samaritans – yet not envy them.

The windfall amounts to about a tenth of Samaritans’ annual income, and comes in that most desirable form – unrestricted funds. There must have been a gnawing temptation to start buying photocopiers and mending the roof. But that was wisely resisted and the money has gone into a special fund that will be spent in consultation with the bereaved family.

Another heartening aspect was the decision by Justgiving not to levy its usual fee on the donations made through Claire’s web page. Donors were urging them to do this, but they could have kept quiet and taken their cut of the windfall. Instead they quickly decided not to do so – a smart PR move as well as an act of generosity.

Fundraisers would love to define and bottle the motivations of this extraordinary episode. But surely it’s something that can’t be engineered or manipulated. It’s just one of those terrible things life throws out, from which some good can perhaps be salvaged.

Several people in the charity sector have taken the opportunity afforded by the cap on charity tax reliefs recently to have a go at the sector, and whether all charities really deserve the reliefs they have.

The first complaint is about the use that charities put their money to. Should you really get tax relief for giving money to the opera, or Eton, rather than paying for essential services provided by the state? Shouldn’t we have one law for charities doing important stuff – helping the disadvantaged – and another for people doing frivolous nice-to-haves – the donkey sanctuaries and whatever? Read More »

Last week I interviewed Nick O’Donohoe, chief executive of Big Society Capital, about his targets for the new £600m social lender.

What was really interesting was his view of the sector – one that was predicated on the idea that social enterprises and charities should be delivering more services.

O’Donohoe’s starting point is one that the majority of workers in the sector, I think, would agree with: the charity sector is better than other sectors at supporting vulnerable and disadvantaged people. Read More »

I think we have now nailed down the way HM Revenue & Customs thinks its new cap on tax reliefs will work. Firstly, the relief is based on the level of your gift, not the level of tax you paid on that gift. So as soon as your gift hits £50,000, or a quarter of your income, you’re capped.

Secondly, that limit is taken to include Gift Aid. So if you earn less than £200,000, and give £40,001, and the charity claims Gift Aid on that, you’ll be capped. Read More »

Last week, I got in touch with HM Revenue & Customs and asked them how their new tax relief cap would work.

This new idea – George Osborne’s only mention of charity in the Budget – means that you can’t claim tax relief on more than a quarter of your income, or £50,000, whichever is higher, and will obviously make it much more expensive to give very large amounts to charity. Read More »

This year brought a new name for the annual Social Enterprise UK conference – the Social Enterprise Exchange – and a new venue – Glasgow.

The conference was hosted in partnership with Social Enterprise Scotland, and it appeared as if around half the delegates were from north of the border. As a result, the whole thing seemed to have a slightly different vibe from previous years, as well as different faces. Read More »

So the chancellor has said that he’ll cap the amount you can claim back in tax each year at a quarter of your gross income, or £50,000, whichever is higher.

How will this affect charities?

The first thing to say is that it only applies in a limited number of cases, but those will be the ones involving the biggest donations. Read More »

Last week, along with my colleague Gemma Quainton, I went along to a “speedmatching” event for charities that wanted volunteer support for their media strategy.

It was soon obvious that it was surprisingly hard to find a good match between my skills and the needs of small charities. Read More »

After my recent blogs on my problems getting started with my new year’s resolution to volunteer, I was asked by the Media Trust to one of its ‘Speedmatching’ events -  you know, speed dating, but for would-be volunteers.

The aim of the event is to put charities that need advice in touch with eager volunteers who are skilled in PR, comms, or journalism. Read More »