The clock ticks on. Just 34 days remain, at the time of writing, before UK charities lose the opportunity to exploit the Gift Aid potential of two years' worth of donations.
On April 1, HMRC's six-year Gift Aid rule hits the bin and the four-year era takes its place.
The past week has seen 35 more donorflex organisations prepare themselves for the changeover.
They've requested and downloaded the Gift Aid seminar file containing the all-important donorflex Tracker reports that will allow them to lay their hands on potentially significant sums of money that are already within reach. That leaves two questions.
To those who've already acquired the reports – either at January's special donorflex Gift Aid seminar or in the weeks since – we ask this:
- Have you run them and revealed how much unclaimed Gift Aid is waiting to swell your coffers?
To those 100 or so organisations that haven't requested the Gift Aid reports, the question is more direct:
- Why not? If you're experiencing a difficulty of some sort, please don't hesitate to call Care Data Systems and explain what kind of help you need – before the unclaimed money slips out of reach for ever.
This is a good opportunity to remind you that one of the reports contained in the Gift Aid seminar file is titled So you think you are perfect.
This allows you to identify those occasions when, in short, an inputter's twitchy keyboard finger has been responsible for an incorrect Gift Aid declaration date being set on a donor's record.
Finally, if you've already run the reports and have a success story to shout about, please let us know. We hate the thought that any donorflex user will miss out on the cash that's waiting to be claimed, so any encouragement to act soon will be welcome.
Remember, a donorflex exercise using live data from two client organisations has already revealed potential Gift Aid reclaims of more than £80,000 and £30,000 respectively.