About The Service
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a. The Alternative Wedding List is operated by Give It Limited, a non-profit-making company whose principal activity is generating charitable funds for a number of established UK charities through this and similar on-line gift list services. We keep the costs of the services as efficient as possible to ensure that the maximum possible funds reach the participating charities - unlike other services that need to make company profits, Give It spends only what it needs to spend on running the services and then makes sure that the charities get the rest. When guests donate to a charity through this service, 100% of that donation goes to the charity and the costs are covered by some of the Gift Aid claimed back from the Inland Revenue.
b. Give It claims back an extra 28% of the value of each donation through the Inland Revenue's Gift Aid scheme, which allows charities to claim back from the taxman the tax that any UK taxpayer has already paid. We can do this efficiently as we can make a claim to the Inland Revenue in respect of all the donations made through the service. We do this on behalf of the charities using the details we have on each donation (but we can only do this for donations made by individuals who have confirmed that they are a UK taxpayer).
If you pay tax at the higher rate you can also reclaim tax relief on your gross donation at 18% (i.e. the difference between the higher rate of tax at 40% and the basic rate at 22%).
If you are not a UK taxpayer you can still make a donation through The Alternative Wedding List but we will not be able to claim an extra 28% tax on behalf of the charities.
c. We use part of this tax claimed back from the taxman to fund the service. Costs we have to cover include the running of this website, credit/debit card costs (processing/merchant charges), administration, marketing and promotion of the service. Give It forecasts these costs in advance so that participating charities know what these costs will be, and charities also have access to all Give It accounts so that they can help us keep costs as efficient as possible. Once we've covered the costs we then pass on all of the remaining funds from this 28% claim from the taxman to the charities. Costs of the service are forecast to be amongst the most efficient fundraising operations around.
d. Initially we will need to use more of the tax that we are able to reclaim from the Inland Revenue to cover the costs of the service than we will need to use once the service is operating at a busier level. A typical donation based on our first full year of forecasted operation can be demonstrated by the following example: £100 gift. £100 sent straight to charity. Give It claims £28 on behalf of the charity from the Inland Revenue. We retain £16 to cover all the costs (this reflects our full-year forecasted costs) and pass on the remaining £12 to the charity. This forecasted £16 out of the £128 total represents a very efficient method of raising extra funds for charities. As the service grows we'll keep this section updated to reflect how we're performing.
Give It don't just process the donations - we market the services to prospective users (rather than relying on charities to market to their existing donors), exhibiting at a large number of wedding fairs, advertising across various media, liaising with the media, etc., as well as undertaking a variety of 'behind the scenes' activities required to run the operation.
e. Couples registering for a list with The Alternative Wedding List are asked to select one of the groups of charities that we've put together - see here how these groups are made up. Their wedding list is then made up of gifts of donations of varying values to the charities within the selected group (see the 'Example List' for how this could look).
We've committed to our participating charities to present groups of charities to couples - this enables us to provide choice for couples, a variety of charities for guests to choose to donate to, and means that participating charities get a reasonable amount of 'exposure' to potential donors.
f. If you have any questions about this service and can't find the answer in our FAQ section, please contact us at weddings@giveit.co.uk