We help you give and we strengthen the causes you give to

Generosity is our cause

Submenu title

Back

hrmc logo

Stewardship introduce pioneering Instant Gift Aid feature to mark Gift Aid Awareness Day

Bethan Walker Bethan Walker
2 min

We're pleased to announce today a ground-breaking new feature to add Gift Aid instantly to charity donations made using our giving accounts.

The plans - announced to coincide with Gift Aid Awareness Day - will see us adding the tax relief instantly to all gifts up to £25,000. It is thought to be the first time a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) service has offered the provision anywhere in the UK.

Stewardship giving accounts help over 30,000 account holders to give tax-effectively to 1000s of charities, churches and individuals in self-supported Christian activities each year. Last year we claimed over £10million of Gift Aid from HM Revenue & Customs on behalf of its growing giving community.

Our plans for ‘Instant Gift Aid’ will see us underwrite the value of reclaimed tax to account holders at the point of their incoming gift, making it available to distribute to good causes immediately. The new feature will be launched throughout mid-October 2018.

Stewart McCulloch, CEO of Stewardship says, “At Stewardship one of our goals is to make it easy for Christians to give to the causes they care about. Currently, our givers experience a delay distributing funds to good causes because of the different clearance periods - one for their payment and second for the claimed Gift Aid. This makes for a slightly complicated user experience, but our team have been working hard over the past year to find a way to make this simpler and so to improve the giving process.”

He continues “This pioneering new feature has been made possible following HMRC launch of online Gift Aid claims, which has dramatically shortened the turnaround time from claim to payment. With average claim processing times now down to a matter of days, from 7 – 10 weeks, we can deliver an idea which has been an aspiration for over a decade for our team.”

The change will have a big impact on those receiving gifts made by Stewardship's generous account holders too, with Instant Gift Aid meaning the full donation will be distributed to them sooner than in the past and in one single payment, making it much easier to track and record amounts received.

Daniel Jones, Stewardship’s Chief Generosity Officer, comments “The introduction of this revolutionary approach to Gift Aid heralds the start of an ambitious programme of change which will see us roll out a more user-friendly and intuitive giving experience, across all devices, to our account holders in 2019. Our teams are continually tracking technological and digital trends to better improve the service we offer. With Instant Gift Aid and an updated mobile experience, we’re making it even easier for our account holders to give generously whenever and wherever they might be.”

To find out about the ways you could be more generous with a Stewardship Giving Account, visit stewardship.org.uk/give

Generous Newsletter

Monthly emails for supporters. Inspiration, practical tools and guidance to support the causes you love in more meaningful ways. 

Profile image of Bethan Walker
Written by

Bethan Walker

Bethan worked for Stewardship as Marketing and Communications Executive between 2011 and 2022. In her role, she worked with a number of teams across Stewardship, helping to ensure that short and long-term marketing projects were being fulfilled.

Bethan attends a local church in Essex, where she is part of the worship team. She is married to Mark and has three children.