When it comes to charitable giving, every penny helps. And with micro donations, also known as pennies to charity, even small amounts make a big difference.
What are micro donations?
Micro donations or micro philanthropy is a form of charitable donation that donates small amounts – usually in the range of 50 pence to £10 in the UK. In the past, micro donations have been used most effectively by companies collecting spare change at till points and checkouts.
Consumers may have experienced the opportunity to ‘round up’ during charitable drives such as Children in Need and Red Nose Day. This is where, at the time of checkout, a purchaser is asked if they would like to ‘round up’ to the next pound. The difference between their sale amount and rounded-up value gets donated to charity. This is also a micro donation.
With advances in technology, increased used of mobile phones for payments and a reduction in payment processing fees, micro donations are becoming more popular and more readily available in the UK. Micro donations offer charities excellent opportunities to fund raise. A number of micro donations platforms already leverages the potential of micro philanthropy and collect micro donations for good causes. But which charities benefit from micro donations?
PayCaptain has a payroll feature which gives employees the option to make micro donations through outsourced payroll by donating their pennies from their pay to charity. This is a separate feature to Payroll Giving, also known as Give As You Earn (‘GAYE’), where employees reduce their taxable pay to make donations to charities of their choice directly from their gross pay. To read more about Payroll Giving, click here. Giving pennies from your pay is PayCaptain’s micro donation functionality.
How do micro donations work for employers with PayCaptain?
Firstly, employers need to decide which organisation they want to be their chosen corporate charity. All donations for charity pennies will be donated to one organisation.
PayCaptain recommends communicating micro donations examples and micro donations ideas to employees and the benefits to the chosen charity before activating the functionality in the payroll app.
Messaging in the app for sign up to the scheme can be customised – including branding and message text. The messaging includes the question asking the employee whether they would like to donate their pennies to the chosen charity as well as the thank you text from the employer.
When the payroll software has run payroll, PayCaptain handles the payment direct to the chosen corporate charity as well as providing payroll reports back to the employer about the value of the donations each month from those that have opted-in to the scheme. This is information that can subsequently be communicated back to the employees.
How do charity pennies work through payroll with PayCaptain?
Instead of donating a set amount of money to charity, an employee can elect to have their net pay rounded down to the next full pound, with the excess going to charity. So, if an employees’ net pay is £1,000.96, it could be rounded down to £1000 and the extra 96 pence donated to charity.
The scheme is optional and the employee will be asked if they would like to opt-into donate their pennies to charity from their net pay. Employees can both opt in and opt out of the donation scheme through the PayCaptain app.
Particularly in organisations with large numbers of employees that sign up to the scheme to donate pennies from their pay, the charitable donation can be extremely beneficial to a charity, whilst having very limited impact on the individual employee.
Micro donating through donating pennies from pay to charity is an easy, affordable way of giving to charity each month. Not only that, but micro donations are a great way for an employee to donate to charity if they're unsure where to start. The donation is limited to a maximum of 99 pence so it’s an easy way to contribute and support a charity if the employee is tight on time or money.
How does PayCaptain help?
The functionality – Donating pennies from your pay – is already available in the PayCaptain mobile payroll app. Employers simply need to advise PayCaptain that they would like to activate the functionality and the name of their chosen corporate charity. PayCaptain will do the rest!
PayCaptain will customise the messaging in the app and even supply the information to communicate the new feature out to the employer’s team. When the pay run is processed, PayCaptain will deduct the pennies from payroll for those employees who have opted in and make the payment to the corporate charity. The total value of the donation from payroll will be reported back to the business.
If you’d like to know more about donating pennies from your pay and the host of innovative features in PayCaptain including savings, pensions, salary advances and payment splitting, please contact us and we’ll be happy to talk through how we can help your business.
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