Payroll insight
Peter O’Hara, founder and chief executive officer of Geared for Giving campaign, reveals plans to make payroll giving a social norm The untapped potential of payroll giving
I ’ve been working in the payroll giving sector for almost two decades; the connection began when, at sixteen years old, I started giving to charity through my pay while working in a supermarket. I believe that payroll giving remains the best-kept secret in fundraising. A hidden gem that a million employees take part in every pay day, month on month, year on year, supporting the charities they care about, tax-free from their pay. The scheme currently raises £130,000,000 per year with over 10,000 charities benefiting. So why don’t more employees give in this way? The answer is simple – they have either not heard about payroll giving or their employer doesn’t currently offer the scheme. I now hope with the launch of the new social enterprise, Geared for Giving (www.gearedforgiving.org), together we can change this. The campaign’s simple mission is that we want every employee in the UK to have access to payroll giving. Our aim is to double the number of employees giving from pay over the next five years, which in turn will help raise an extra £130 million for good causes annually. The initial target of the campaign is to make the scheme available in every workplace with 250 or more employees. After surveying this group of 6,900 employers, we found that only 23% currently offer payroll giving. This means that 5,300 of the UK’s largest companies currently don’t offer this type of giving to their staff. If we can get them on board, a further 6,500,000 employees will be
able to give from their pay. How do we hope to achieve this? Helped by the campaign’s high profile business and charity supporters, we’re influencing change with the boards and senior management teams of these companies. The campaign has a proven track record that demonstrates this peer- to-peer promotion of payroll giving works, and we are now upscaling this activity dramatically.
into account the growing numbers of employees, consumers and other stakeholders who believe it’s vital for companies to act ethically? More and more enlightened employers recognise and acknowledge the benefits of being Geared for Giving. We believe the key to transforming payroll giving is encouraging more employers to operate and effectively promote the benefits to their staff, giving them easy access to give tax-free from their pay. However, we need to start influencing change via employees, too. Later this year we will be launching the first national payroll giving site in partnership with BT. This will give the 25,000,000 plus pay-as-you-earn employees in the UK an easy way to find out if their company offers the scheme. It will allow them to sign up to support any charity from pay if they wish, but it will also give them an opportunity to request payroll giving. So, between galvanising these larger employers and making it easy for all employees to give, we believe we can make giving from pay to charity a social norm. This should be something employees do when they start working for a business and something they expect a ‘good’ employer to offer. Geared for Giving has garnered huge support since its launch and I hope employers will embrace our plans and join us to start this transformation of payroll giving together – raising many millions more for the good causes we all care about. n
...it will also give them an opportunity to request payroll giving
The many businesses already on board have chosen payroll giving to show their employees they care about the causes they care about. It’s the mark of an employer that leads by example and is a vital strand of any corporate social responsibility or community plan. It also provides an additional benefit to offer employees. Through payroll giving, any donation is tax free, which means that charities will benefit by up to 25% more on top of employee donations. When it comes to higher rate tax payers, charities benefit even more, receiving 66% or 81% extra on top of their donation – unlike any other form of giving. Does your business plan take
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Issue 28 | March 2017
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
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