Skip to content
Return to British Red Cross blog home

Red Cross Blogs

Blogs highlighting the work of staff and volunteers within the British Red Cross, part of the largest humanitarian organisation movement in the world.


British Red Cross welcomes Budget Gift Aid changes

By Guest
March 23, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Guest post from our director of fundraising, Mark Astarita:

It was great to hear charities included in the main budget announcement, and anything which reduces the red tape of gift aid has to be welcomed.

Hopefully this will mark the beginning of a continued focus on encouraging charitable giving as part of government policy.

Allowing charities to claim back on up to £5,000 of small donations per year will have a big impact for small charities particularly, while simply making it easier to claim gift aid will save larger charities, like the British Red Cross, huge amounts of time and money.

Changes to the Legacy system could be transformational as it, hopefully, becomes the norm for baby-boomers to leave money to charity in their wills.

Legacies remain vital to the British Red Cross with £1 in every £4 of donated income that we receive from our supporters every year comes from gifts in wills.

What the Chancellor managed to do in the announcement regarding leaving legacies to charities was put the subject on the front pages of the newspapers where it’s rarely or ever been seen before. While in itself not necessarily transformational, with only 7% of the population leaving a charitable bequest, anything we can do to increase the number of people leaving gifts in their will help secure charitable income for future generations.

Leaving money to charity creates a lasting legacy which can make a real difference to people’s lives long after donors themselves have passed away.

See also: Third Sector - Gift Aid reform and tax relief figure prominently in Budget

Comments (2) »

Tags:

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 at 5:30 pm and is filed under UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Aliatif44

     it is a great and unique idea.the red cross is more complex and critical.
    great post this is the way of work to the young generation.

  • Anonymous

    It is an informative post. It is an interesting information. I always visited your blog site. There are so many meaningful posts and also relevant comments on it. 

Author

Guest

Guest

This is a guest post. The British Red Cross has a huge number of staff, volunteers and beneficiaries around the world with inspiring stories to share.

Other posts by Guest

Older posts

Expand All

Categories

Tags

charity shops conflict disaster disaster response earthquake Emergencies emergency response emergency response unit First aid first aid tips first aid training floods fundraising Haiti Haiti earthquake haiti earthquake appeal Health and social care HIV International Pakistan red cross refugees UK volunteer Volunteering volunteers water and sanitation
More »

The British Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

We're listening! You can send us your feedback by emailing SocialMedia [at] redcross.org.uk. Red Cross Blogs is powered by Wordpress.

↑ Back to top