Dear All,

Some of you have mentioned gift aid and being an "agent". This is something even most accountants don't understand, including at my own AM.

It's perfectly possible to collect money for an external charity, to claim gift aid on those donations and then pass the donations and gift aid on. I can't cover every detail here but generally speaking it works like this:

1) James gives Meeting £100 for a local refugee charity. Meeting has not decided to collect for this charity but accepts the money and pays it on. Here Meeting is only a conduit and is acting as an agent. The donation should not appear in the annual accounts as income and gift aid cannot be claimed.

2) Meeting decides to hold monthly collections as a furtherance of its own charitable objects and chooses worthy causes to give to. Friends donate and the money is passed on. Here Meeting has control over whom to give money to and acts as the Principal. The fact that Friends donate into a restricted fund which Meeting will use for the purpose of supporting another organisation does not make it an agency arrangement. Nor does the fact that Meeting is now bound to use the funds as promised. It was still the decision of Meeting. The donations received count as income for accounting purposes and gift aid can be claimed. If gift aid is claimed it has to be passed on.

A Meeting may of course decide they find it too complicated to handle the accounting or cash handling and simply direct Friends to give directly to the receiving charity. Meeting is also free to use the recipient's own gift aid forms and let them claim the gift aid. However there is a certain appeal in knowing how much was collected and for this all the donations will have to come through Meeting. Knowing the above may also help with collecting contactless donations, depending on your setup. Ultimately some Meetings may even move to using third-party donation processors that process gift aid claims for them automatically.

In Friendship
Oliver 
Oliver Müller
Warden
Nailsworth Quaker Meeting
0770 883 1000
01453 832396
https://nailsworthquakers.org.uk
On 28/06/2024 10:44, n.heny42 wrote:
Hi Lorraine 

Hope all is well with you.  I miss Winchester Friends, and you and Andy - but, all is going well up north.

We do both cash collections and give Friends the details so they can give to the charities directly - the details go out in the weekly notices email.  Like you, we have no idea, and no way of knowing, what amounts have been paid directly by Friends.

The weekly cash collections are for the local Meeting, BYM, and the cause/charity which changes each month.  The various collections are recorded on a spreadsheet each week by the Deputy Warden and banked monthly, along with the small amounts we get donated towards post Meeting refreshments and a few room hire cheques (we dont accept cash for room hire anymore).  I suspect the time it takes to record the collections on the spreedsheet, send that to the Treasurer, record in Quickbooks, then take to the bank along with the few cheques, costs more in staff time than makes it financially viable (it's a Building Society, and I've never been in there for less than ½ an hour on the odd occasions I've gone myself).

Our Finance Committee is still working towards getting a card reader (thank you to all the Friends here who contributed to my question about card readers), and I'm still hoping this might be the way forward for us.  We need to find a way to simplify how Friends give, and recognise that many don't carry cash which has meant our collections have decreased (that's my understanding anyway), and we have no way to know how much Friends are giving to the causes we are supporting.  

Occasionally the Meeting as a body give donations to charities, so not acting as agents.  That's a very easy process either as a BACS payment, or if that's not possible, by using one of the Meeting's debit cards.

As an aside, I'd be interested to know which card reader Winchester decided on in the end, and how it's working out for you.

All the best

Tasha


Natasha Heny 
Manager/Warden
Lancaster Quaker Meeting House 



-------- Original message --------
From: Winchester Quaker Warden <winchesterquakerwarden@gmail.com>
Date: 27/06/2024 21:19 (GMT+00:00)
To: Quaker Wardenship Support <wardenship@lists.quaker.eu.org>
Subject: [wardenship] External charities

Hello Friends and colleagues,
We would be interested to know if your Meetings donate to external charities, in which case how that is done.
At Winchester we have in the past collected donations, on a regular basis, to pass on to chosen charities - cash, cheques or BACS.
This created a lot of admin for the Treasurer, and now we have the added problem that our local bank (HSBS acting on behalf of CAF Bank) no longer accepts cash.
What we are doing currently is invite Friends to donate to chosen charities, but not through our bank account, i.e. straight into the other charity's bank account.
We do not know how many people do that, we have no idea how much money goes to the charities, and we don't know if the charities are aware that those donations are connected to our Meeting.
We have recently bought a fund-raising card-reader, which can allow for donations to be earmarked for specific purposes, but we are not using it for external charities.

If any of your Meetings passes donations on to external charities, it would be great to hear about your process for that, and if it works well.
Thanks very much,
Lorraine

Andrew and Lorraine O'Hanlon
Warden-Managers
Friends' Meeting House
16 Colebrook Street
Winchester  SO23 9LH
01962 864184

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