Standing Orders account for an important and significant part of the charity’s income. The most usual way for a supporter to set up a Standing Order is for them to fill in one of our forms and post it back to us. We then put the details on our database and send the form to the donor’s bank so the bank can arrange for the payment to be made. It is important that we keep all the donor’s details correctly, particularly when Gift Aid is involved.
Other donors set up monthly donations through CharityCheckout, our on-line Credit Card Donation site and this is fine. CharityCheckout informs us and we are able to keep our records updated.
Yet other donors are choosing to set up their own Standing Orders on the Internet and again this is absolutely fine. It does mean, however, that we often do not have any details other than a sum of money coming into the charity’s account each month, which may or may not have a name attached to it, depending on the practice of the bank. This makes it difficult to keep the records required of us by Law and demanded by our Auditors, so it would be a great help to us if donors who do this could send us a few details for our records:
their name and address
their bank’s name and address
the amount to be donated; starting date and frequency of giving
whether or not the donation is to be gift-aided.