Fundraising page estimated cost

One of the top queries to our helpdesk recently has been about working out the net total raised by a fundraising page, i.e. the amount raised on a page minus our 5% transaction fee, the VAT on our fee and the debit/credit card fee (see here for more detail).

This used to be quite complicated to work out, requiring you to look at many different donation and Gift Aid payment reports and to do some manual calculation and manipulation of the data we provide.

But that wasn't deliberate on our part, it was only due to the nature of how our finance processes work - for every donation that is eligible for Gift Aid, we pay that in full to the charity straight away and only take our fee from the Gift Aid payment we subsequently make, which can be up to 6-8 weeks after the donation was made.

And if a donation isn't eligible for Gift Aid, we take our fee out of that donation. Our processes can therefore appear fairly complicated because of that difference.

Thankfully, it's not that complicated any more!

We've just released an easy way to see the gross and estimated net donation figures for a fundraising page using the fundraiser quick search function.

Here's how...

When you log-in to the Charity Account, enter the person's name who's page you're looking for in the search box on the first screen as below:

You can then click on the person's name to see a summary of their fundraising:

When you click on "See sponsorship to this page" you will then see a list of all donations, plus the estimated fees charged for each donation, and a total for the page:

You'll notice that, as above, we tell you why these fees are only estimated:

These fees are estimated because we can only calculate the exact fees after we have successfully reclaimed Gift Aid on a donation and paid it to your charity (which can be 6-8 weeks after a Gift Aid claim is made).

And even when we do pay the Gift Aid over, it may not be possible to get an true exact figure for a page: this is because we don't charge VAT on our transaction fee for each donation, the VAT is charged on the total fees per payment we make to you.

So if a payment to you includes donations from more than one fundraising page, the total VAT charged would have to be split per donation, and that may mean small rounding errors occur (but these would be discrepancies of pence, not pounds!).

But this new feature will give you as close as you will get to the exact figure for a page, so if you, or your fundraisers, would like to know exactly how much your charity has received thanks to their fundraising efforts, you can find out in less than a minute!

More information on how our (sometimes straightforward, sometimes complicated) payment processes can be found here, including documents and easy to follow diagrams.

Comments

[Cycle india]

Just a quick message to say our charity found using Just Giving for our recent Cycle India event was very worthwhile. We raised around £100k for our small charity - http://www.heal.co.uk

We're now planning another event and will be recommending all cyclists to have a Just Giving page, and only take payments this way.

Thank you.

[Jonathan]

Hey, thanks for the comment - that's great to hear. And I'd love to find out a bit more about how you managed to raise all the money and whether you have any tips for other charities!
Jonathan