Gareth Jones explains the think-tank’s proposed system for moving gift aid administration online.

While IT has now for many years been revolutionising every aspect of our lives, one area it has not seemingly managed to penetrate is the gift aid system.

HMRC has steadfastly stuck to its belief that the system must remain paper-based in order to maintain an audit trail, a contention that seemed disingenuous, but which until now hasn’t been dismantled with clear argument and evidence.

A huge number of hats off then to ResPublica for its report on digital giving and modernising gift aid, which sets out clearly an online alternative based on the principles of cloud computing, but also argues at great depth for why it is the best solution.

Paper declarations destroyed

Under its proposal, paper gift aid declarations would be amended to include a request for the donor’s email address, which, along with the other details, would then be entered into the system.

This would trigger an automated email to the donor to confirm the declaration. The paper declaration can then be destroyed, with a copy of the email being retained for audit trail purposes.

A simple method but one which would greatly reduce the administrative burden of dealing with the claims of all donors possessing an email address.

And the fact that it is a cloud-based system ensures that charities, donors and even government institutions such as HMRC can easily enter the database with differing levels of security.

Text donations

Another exciting area covered by the system is the potential for claiming gift aid on text donations. Currently gift aid is claimed on less than 5 per cent of text donations, with some observers, according to the report, apparently arguing that this could not be increased.

Here, working with Iceni Mobile, ResPublica has devised a system whereby the donor can include ‘gift aid’ or ‘GA’ in their text to indicate their consent.

Whenthe text is received, the software would create a declaration based on the mobile phone number used.  

All very feasible stuff, and surely HMRC can now no longer resist progress. The ball is in its court.