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Press Release - LionHeart

15/12/2005
Traceability of gift aid certificates essential, urges LionHeart the occupational benevolent fund for RICS’ members. LionHeart, the occupational benevolent fund for members of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), today urged all charities to ensure compliance with the Inland Revenue’s audit requirements for gift aid certificates. LionHeart, one of country’s leading occupational benevolent funds with a balance sheet value of almost £10m and an annual income of around £1.5m, recently introduced a new system for scanning all gift aid certificates in preparation for a routine Inland Revenue Gift Aid audit visit that required production of certificates for inspection on demand. “When the Inland Revenue randomly selected LionHeart for a routine audit we knew we had to be able to retrieve instantly any individual gift aid certificate we had ever received”, recalls LionHeart’s Head of Finance and Administration, Roger Chester. “This could be extremely problematic for many charities, particularly those that request gift aid declarations on donation envelopes, such as door to door and church collections.” LionHeart, in partnership with Quantor Scanning Limited, specialists in high volume scanning, and Blackbaud software, developers of the fundraising system Raisers Edge, developed a highly effective solution to the problem. Each gift aid certificate is scanned off-site by Quantor and returned to LionHeart on CD for automatic integration into the donor’s record in Raisers Edge. The original documentation can then be destroyed. “This may sound long-winded and expensive but compared with the cost of storing original paper documents and the possible penalties that the Inland Revenue could levy against the charity, this system is well worth it,” argues Roger Chester. “If we cannot provide full traceability of gift aid certification the Revenue could claim back the full value of all unverifiable tax relief claimed plus interest. Potentially this is a very considerable sum given that claims could go back to the day the Government launched the scheme in April 2000. So I view this project as an invaluable investment against potential loss of gift aid income.” The 90,000 members of the RICS are encouraged regularly to donate to LionHeart whose objectives are to support the past and present members and their families. Gift Aid was first launched within LionHeart at the beginning of 2002. Since then the charity has amassed over 20,000 gift aid certificates many of them covering backdated donations to the beginning of the Gift Aid scheme.

15/12/2005

Traceability of gift aid certificates essential, urges LionHeart the occupational benevolent fund for RICS’ members.

LionHeart, the occupational benevolent fund for members of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), today urged all charities to ensure compliance with the Inland Revenue’s audit requirements for gift aid certificates. LionHeart, one of country’s leading occupational benevolent funds with a balance sheet value of almost £10m and an annual income of around £1.5m, recently introduced a new system for scanning all gift aid certificates in preparation for a routine Inland Revenue Gift Aid audit visit that required production of certificates for inspection on demand.

“When the Inland Revenue randomly selected LionHeart for a routine audit we knew we had to be able to retrieve instantly any individual gift aid certificate we had ever received”, recalls LionHeart’s Head of Finance and Administration, Roger Chester. “This could be extremely problematic for many charities, particularly those that request gift aid declarations on donation envelopes, such as door to door and church collections.”

LionHeart, in partnership with Quantor Scanning Limited, specialists in high volume scanning, and Blackbaud software, developers of the fundraising system Raisers Edge, developed a highly effective solution to the problem. Each gift aid certificate is scanned off-site by Quantor and returned to LionHeart on CD for automatic integration into the donor’s record in Raisers Edge. The original documentation can then be destroyed.

“This may sound long-winded and expensive but compared with the cost of storing original paper documents and the possible penalties that the Inland Revenue could levy against the charity, this system is well worth it,” argues Roger Chester. “If we cannot provide full traceability of gift aid certification the Revenue could claim back the full value of all unverifiable tax relief claimed plus interest. Potentially this is a very considerable sum given that claims could go back to the day the Government launched the scheme in April 2000. So I view this project as an invaluable investment against potential loss of gift aid income.”

The 90,000 members of the RICS are encouraged regularly to donate to LionHeart whose objectives are to support the past and present members and their families. Gift Aid was first launched within LionHeart at the beginning of 2002. Since then the charity has amassed over 20,000 gift aid certificates many of them covering backdated donations to the beginning of the Gift Aid scheme.

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Press Release - LionHeart