Gift Aid

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Gift aid is a simple government initiative which allows you to increase the value of your donations at no extra cost to you. HM Revenue and Customs regards membership subscriptions as ‘donations. Therefore, your group can claim gift aid on these. You can also get gift aid on money donated for sponsored events. Gift aid is not available on camp or trips fees because the benefit to the ‘donor’ is regarded as too high to qualify for the scheme.

For every pound donated you can claim 25p from HM Revenue and Customs, helping your donations go further.

In real terms, this means that if a group had 50 members, paying £105 per year, it would give them a total annual income of £5,250. Assuming all of the parents/guardians are taxpayers then the potential gift aid is around £1,312.05 per year.

If you have not claimed Gift Aid before, your group must be registered with HM Revenue and Customs. Further information about this can be found at fundraising.scouts.org.uk/gift-aid

You are entitled to claim back the previous four years of contributions. Using the example above, this could give you a one-off payment of £5,248.20!

In the past it has been found that many groups will spend a great deal of time on a grant application with no guarantee of a return. Gift aid does not take anywhere near the amount of time to administer as a standard grant application, and income is guaranteed, yet not everyone is doing it.
 

Gift Aid small donations scheme

Scout Groups can claim Gift Aid on donations (e.g. bag packs and donation buckets etc.) under the Gift aid small donations scheme (where the collection took place after 6th April 2017), please visit gov.uk/claim-gift-aid/small-donations-scheme for more information. (also see The UK Goverment pages on the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme)

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