Charity representative bodies have said they will be pushing the government to strengthen a bill to amend the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme, which was introduced in the House of Commons earlier this week.

The Small Charitable Donations and Childcare Payments Bill seeks to widen access to the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme and was announced in the Queen’s Speech earlier this year.

Proposals in the bill include loosening the rules around which charities are eligible to take part, and expanding the scheme to cover contactless payments.

GASDS was introduced in 2013 to enable ‘top-up’ gift aid-style payments for small cash donations, even if they are not accompanied by the normal paperwork, but has raised far less for charities than was originally intended.

Latest figures suggest that it raised £21m in 2014/15 – far less than the £135m the government had expected the scheme to be raising by 2015. 

NCVO, the Charity Finance Group and the Charity Tax Group all said more could be done to improve the bill.

NCVO: ‘They haven’t addressed concerns’

Michael Birtwistle, senior policy officer at NCVO, said: “We’ll be seeking further conversations to improve this bill. We’ll be pushing MPs to do more.
 
“Given how rare it is to get Parliamentary time for giving, we think there’s more which can be done to enhance this bill for smaller organisations. They haven’t full addressed the concerns we had around GASDS.
 
“Half the organisations we spoke to said the biggest problem was that they couldn’t use GASDS without having some gift aid income already. This matching requirement is their biggest priority, but it isn’t in the bill.”

CFG: ‘Only minor improvements’

Andrew O’Brien, head of public policy and engagement at the Charity Finance Group, said:  "If a bill is going to be presented to Parliament, it should be something that can substantially improve the scheme. This bill simply doesn't pass this test. 

“This bill offers only minor improvements that are not of the scale required to make this scheme work better for small charities and achieve its core objectives.” 

He added that: “Expanding donations to contactless payments and loosening the eligibility criteria are welcome steps”, but echoed NCVO’s concerns about the matching requirement and said that the “contactless payments is also only likely to help the largest charities”.  

He urged charities to put pressure on MPs and Lords to improve the bill “otherwise, we’ll look back on this as a massive missed opportunity to get this scheme right”.

CTG: ‘We have requested additional statistics’

John Hemming, chair of the Charity Tax Group, said that relaxing the gift aid history requirements "will hopefully widen access to the scheme, particularly among smaller charities”. 

“We have requested additional statistics from HMRC officials on take-up and eligible charities so we can assess the impact of these changes," he said. "We call on the government to keep the scheme under review and consider further reforms of the eligibility and matching criteria if necessary. 

"We welcome the decision to take forward our proposal that contactless payments be covered by the Scheme as this should help to futureproof it, although further discussions will be required on the practical implementation."

IoF: ‘We hope the bill is a chance to improve the scheme’

In a statement the Institute of Fundraising said: “The GASDS is an excellent idea but at the moment it is not working effectively enough and take-up is too low, especially among smaller charities.  

“We have previously raised concerns and called for reform to make sure that more charities are able to benefit, in particular around the matching requirement, the types of donations covered and raising awareness of the scheme more widely within the sector.  

“We hope that this bill is a chance to improve the scheme and plan to engage closely as it makes its way through Parliament.”

Additional reporting by Emily Corfe and David Ainsworth