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Royal Mail Group awarded Guinness World Record for payroll giving
Royal Mail Group has been awarded the Guinness World Record title for the most registered charities supported through a Payroll Giving scheme. With around 42,000 employees giving to charities directly from their payroll, the Group's payroll giving staff account for 6% of all payroll givers in the UK.
In the 23 years since payroll giving was introduced at the company, Royal Mail Group employees have given £45 million to 975 registered charities via the scheme. Over £2 million has been raised in the last year alone. One in four of the Group's employees are signed up to give via this tax-effective method.
The 975 charities consist of a wide range of organisations, and includes the Royal Mail Group's own charity, the Rowland Hill Benevolent Fund.
Royal Mail Group received the Guinness World Records official certificate at a special ceremony in London.
Chief Executive Officer, Moya Greene, said: "Our postmen and women play a vital and trusted role in every community across the UK. I am delighted that our postmen and women have been recognised as the world’s best for donating to charity direct from their pay."
Johnson, Livingstone and Paddick commit to Legacy10 campaign
The three major London Mayoral candidates, Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick, are supporting the Legacy10 campaign by committing to leave at least 10% of their estates to charity in their wills.
Legacy10 campaigns to ask individuals across the UK to pledge 10% of their estate to charity. Founder Roland Rudd invited the candidates to show their support for the campaign, which has seen many people from sport, business, and the arts take the pledge.
Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: "I am pleased to give my support to the Legacy10 campaign. I think this is a fantastic idea, rightly promoting leaving a legacy for charitable purposes in order to ensure that this becomes the norm, rather than the exception to the rule."
Labour candidate Ken Livingstone said: "Londoners have a proud history of charitable giving, and so I am very happy to personally support the Legacy10 initiative."
Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick said: "I am proud to support the Legacy10 campaign. So many London charities and arts institutions stand to benefit from the forthcoming inheritance tax changes, and I hope everyone in this great city signs up to this exciting initiative."
Last month the three major political parties' leaders all signed up to the Legacy10 campaign.
According to the 2011 Legacy Market Snapshot by Legacy Foresight, currently only 7% of the UK population leave a gift to charity in their will, yet 74% of them donate to a charity in their lifetime.
New system to help Cancer Research UK validate supporter bank details
Cancer Research UK has implemented a bank account validation tool to help it prevent the loss or delay of donations through inaccurate bank account details and to save time in re-engaging with supporters. Using eVERIFY from electronic payment solutions provider Albany Software, the charity expects to reduce the number of donations lost through human error in providing bank details.
The new system, which integrates with CRUK's Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system through Albany’s API toolkit, will crosscheck and validate UK bank account information provided by donors. It will do this in real-time, enabling the charity to validate the donor's details while they are on the phone.
Previously the charity could validate bank and credit card details only when it initiated one of its bi-monthly Bacs runs. It made the organisation entirely reliant on the accuracy of the details submitted by its donors over the phone. It would then have to contact the donor again to find out the correct details, costing more time and money.
Rakesh Jena, Senior Business Design Manager at Cancer Research UK, explained that Direct Debit payments are a core financial process for the charity. "Before implementing eVERIFY," he said, "there wasn’t any decisive control on how the account numbers and sort codes of donors were taken, which resulted in rejected payments and essentially lost donations. Our staff then had to backtrack and phone the donor again to get the right details so the payment would go through, which effectively meant campaigning twice for the same donation."
The system has been in place for two months and Jena reports "a big improvement in the number of rejected payments, with all the incorrect payments we’ve flagged at point of entry being prevented from going through the rejection cycle.”
One million recycled M&S hangers raise £370k for UNICEF
Marks and Spencer customers have recycled 100 million clothes hangers in six months and raised £370,000 for UNICEF in the process.
Since the partnership launched in July 2011, M&S customers have been invited to leave hangers behind when shopping, rather than take them home, so that they could be used again in store or recycled. M&S made the donation because of the savings it helped them achieve.
M&S donates 50p for every £1 saved from hanger recycling to UNICEF, to fund a new project in two locations within the Mymensingh and Dhaka regions of Bangladesh.
All intact hangers are shipped back to M&S garment manufacturers to be reused, and shipped in containers that would have previously been travelling back to their destination empty. Damaged hangers are reground and turned back into hangers; and the metal hooks are melted down and reused. Even the cardboard boxes used to house the hangers are reused at least four times, then recycled, according to M&S.
People’s Postcode Lottery redesigns website to make funding process easier
Grantmaking charity the People's Postcode Trust has redeveloped its website in an effort to simplify the funding process.
Funded by the players of People's Postcode Lottery, the Trust has so far given over £3.2 million to 628 projects across Great Britain, in grants ranging from £500 up to £100,000. The organisation supports community group projects, especially those with limited resources and capability, as well as registered charities.
Clara Govier, Head of Charities for People’s Postcode Lottery, explained the changes on the website. “We understand", she said, "the funding landscape can often present itself as a complicated minefield, with excessive jargon and cumbersome application forms... As well as offering a simple two step application process, our new website offers enhanced search functionality.
"Now applicants can scour our project database to help them understand the types of projects we routinely support - thereby increasing their likelihood of a successful application. We’re also hopeful that these improvements will help to open up new funding opportunities to groups who have never applied to us before”.
The standard application process for projects under £10,000 is currently open. The deadline for applications is 5pm on 24 February 2012.
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