If you are a registered charity and you fundraise online you’ve probably registered with HMRC to receive GiftAid (GA), worth an additional 25% of a donation made by a UK individual who is a taxpayer.
You may well choose to have your online donations managed by an organisation such as JustGiving who claim the GA on your behalf from HMRC. There is a cost involved ( a monthly fee and net GA of 20% instead of 25%).
Where you receive online donations via contactless card readers you often don’t receive donors’ details necessary for a GA claim.. Similarly where you operate bucket collections at an event or have collection cans located for example in a pub, you miss out on GiftAid.
You do however have the opportunity to make a claim direct to HMRC. You can read how to do this at https://www.gov.uk/claim-gift-aid-online
Where individual donations are £30 or less there is a special scheme called Gift Aid small donations scheme (GASDS) for such claims.
Organisations which are not registered charities can still claim GiftAid. You would need to register your organisation with HMRC and provide information which established your credentials with them. Here’s a link which provides information on that aspect of GiftAid. – https://www.gov.uk/claim-gift-aid/small-donations-scheme
I trust this information will prove useful to registered and unregistered charities.
Apparently every year more than £500 million goes unclaimed, according to the Charity Finance Group.