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GoodPAYE has harnessed leading technology to revolutionise Payroll Giving, bringing charities, employers and employees closer together to maximise donations, so more amazing work can be done for those who need it most. We talk to Managing Director, Richard Packman, about GoodPAYE, Payroll Giving and the partnership with PayCaptain.
How did GoodPAYE come about?
Around 18 months ago, GoodPAYE was set up with our five charity shareholders – Barnardos, Crisis, WaterAid, RNIB and the Royal British Legion and with Good Innovation, an innovation consultancy for the charity sector.
The reason for setting up GoodPAYE was because Payroll Giving has been around for about 35 years – it was first set up in 1987 – but there has been little or no innovation or growth, especially over the last 10 years. There’s still a lack of awareness and uptake - only about 20% of employers in the UK currently offer Payroll Giving and fewer than 4% of employees on a payroll scheme give using this method. Compare this with over 30% of employees in the US giving through payroll, we’re quite a long way behind.
There’s about 1 million people giving in this way with around £110 million donated through Payroll Giving, but over the last 10 years it has remained pretty flat. This is not an insignificant amount but is a mere drop in the ocean compared with donations raised through other channels.
For me as a start up entrepreneur, it was about spotting the opportunity where I believe something can be done better and where we can make a real difference.
It’s the great thing about Payroll Giving where people can make a real difference. They want to donate and this is a cost-effective way of doing it. Prior to GoodPAYE, it just wasn’t being done in a very good way and not a lot of companies knew about it.
Tell us about GoodPAYE and how you work with charities.
Payroll Giving is an employee benefit. We work with the employers and employees – in a similar fashion to how a pension provider works - but we also have charities in the mix as well. Our aim is to connect the employees with their chosen charities and support them donating to their charities in the most tax-efficient way.
We work with charities that want to grow their income and reach new audiences through Payroll Giving. Charities join us on our platform. Once they join us, they’re included in various communications and campaigns to employers to engage with their employees. Charities are also included in the discovery section of our website and have their own landing page, so employees can learn more about them and what they do.
The charities can update their page whenever they need to and add links to social media, videos, impact statements (explaining the impact of a £20 donation, for example). Through our platform, we help the charities to generate new supporters.
The platform also allows the charities to run reports on new supporters and, if the donor has given their consent to be contacted, the charities are able to communicate directly with the supporter and build a relationship with them. We are, of course, fully GDPR compliant.
What are the benefits of Payroll Giving?
There are multiple benefits to Payroll Giving, and different for each of the parties we work with – employees, employers and charities:
For employees:
- It is the most tax efficient form of individual giving as the donation is made direct from gross pay. It’s better than doing a Direct Debit and Gift Aid, for example. It means that the employee pays less in tax and the charities receive the donation plus the tax relief much sooner
- Protects employee data including personal and banking information as the donation is made direct from payroll – no need to set up DDs, no bank details are handed over
- Simple and easy – the employer takes care of the admin, so the employee doesn’t have to. The employer deducts the donation direct from gross pay and GoodPAYE distributes it to the chosen charity/charities
- Keeps employees up to date as they can login in to GoodPAYE at any time and see the charities they’re supporting, change their donation instructions and add and discovery new charities
For employers:
- Free and easy to use
- Helps employers meet their Corporate & Social Responsibility (‘CSR’) goals
- Helps them empower their employees to make changes to the world whilst at work and give them additional meaning and purpose at work
- Protects employee data as fully GDPR compliant
- Reduces admin as the employer makes one lump sum payment to GoodPAYE for all donations and GoodPAYE distributes it to the chosen charities
For charities:
- Gives them access to new audiences and gives them new reach
- Employees do tend to give more when using payroll giving
- Low attrition rate – the average lifetime of a giver with payroll giving is around seven years
- It’s also an extremely cost-effective form of acquisition
- Reduces administration time as there’s no need to retrospectively claim for Gift Aid as the money is the gross amount and already has the tax benefit built into it
What’s the GoodPAYE onboarding process for charities and how long does it take?
It’s a very quick and easy process… once charities have decided to join us, there’s a very simple fundraising agreement that the charity signs before completing the onboarding form. Once these are completed, GoodPAYE can get them live within 24 hours.
GoodPAYE will create their landing page with any content and video that the charity provides. They can, of course, do this themselves but it’s a service offered by GoodPAYE as part of the onboarding process.
What’s included in the ‘package’ for charities that sign up with you?
Charities have their own landing page that they can customise, edit and update as they like. We include the charity in the discovery section of our website so employers and employees can learn about them and what they do. Charities can choose which category they want to appear in for more discoverability – for example animal charities, cancer charities etc – so that they appear when filtered by the user.
Charities can log in at any time on the platform, download reports etc. If the supporter has consented to be contacted, the charity can download their contact information, so they can use it to start building a relationship with their supporters. They also get included in comms and campaigns that GoodPAYE runs, which increases their visibility.
What information do they need to give you to get them set up?
Charities are required to complete a simple onboarding form which is charity name, number address and logo. It also has fields for the content that’s wanted on the initial landing page set up and the agreement signatory.
Do you just work with charities in the UK?
Yes. Payroll Giving is a UK Government scheme, so we only work with UK charities. We do work with global charities – like WaterAid for example – but they need to be registered in the UK.
February 2023 was Payroll Giving Month. What did charities and GoodPAYE do to increase the profile of payroll giving during the month?
There was lots of activity on social media, which was useful as charities spread the word about Payroll Giving to increase the awareness and visibility amongst both employers and employees that it was lacking.
We obviously communicated a lot with charities and employers during the month and also ran a webinar in conjunction with PayCaptain and the CIPP (Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals).
One of the things we highlighted was that it’s not only important to talk about Payroll Giving during the month of February, but charities can talk to their corporate partners at any time of the year. By doing so, they’ll raise awareness with employers!
I think it’s really important that all employers in the UK should offer Payroll Giving to their staff, and we’ve made it really simple for them to offer it. We can also help charities with this by giving them the tools and materials to publicise it. We can also join seminars and meetings and demo the solution to employers and charities.
When charities sign up with GoodPAYE, do donations come direct to them?
When an employee signs up to payroll giving on our website, they then select the charity that they’d like to donate with. Once the employer has run payroll and made the deduction from gross pay, they send it to PayCaptain.org, which is our integrated Payroll Giving agency. We then distribute those donations to the chosen charities. As soon as we receive the money from the employer, we distribute it automatically.
Why are GoodPAYE and PayCaptain such a good fit?
GoodPAYE and PayCaptain are a great fit because we’re both trying to create change by doing things differently using tech as a force for good.
One of the reasons why Payroll Giving hasn’t had the uptake in the past that it should is because there are too many parties involved. There are PFOs (Professional Fundraising Organisations) who help employers promote Payroll Giving to their staff and then there are Payroll Giving Agencies, like PayCaptain.org – which is an HMRC approved agency for the purposes of handling Payroll Giving donations.
Historically the PFOs would try and increase the uptake and engagement with employees. They’d recruit employees for Payroll Giving and then provide the information to the employer. But that’s where their involvement ended.
The employer would then need to engage with an HMRC approved Payroll Giving agency and send the donations to them who would distribute it to the charity. The charity would then need to match the reports and the donations to specific supporters.
So, it was all really messy! But GoodPAYE and PayCaptain are forward-thinking companies that are using technology and automation to improve the process. Through our partnership we’re able to talk about Payroll Giving as a complete solution as opposed to having to distinguish between the different organisations and the different roles they have. Instead, we’re a one-stop-shop that works much better for employers, charities and employees.
Why do you enjoy partnering with PayCaptain?
PayCaptain is really refreshing to work with and everything is really straightforward because of their technical approach. They make everything really easy. They’re very responsive and friendly and are purpose-led, like us. PayCaptain has a desire to make change, not just for the sake of making change, but because it makes sense and it improves peoples’ lives.
Our values are aligned too, so it makes it much easier for a working partnership.
How easy is it for employees to donate through Payroll Giving?
As a result of the partnership between GoodPAYE and PayCaptain, it’s super-easy for employees to donate through their payroll. First and foremost, their employer needs to be signed up and offering a Payroll Giving scheme. As with charities, it’s very simple for employers to sign up – they come to the website, see what we do and they fill in a very simple agreement. Once that’s done, we get them set up within 24 hours. We provide them with all the marketing materials and tools they need to engage their employees.
Once the employer is signed up, the employee can come to our platform through a special link that their employer provides for them. They can come and discover the different charities and what they do, sign up through a very simple registration form and select the charity or charities that they’d like to donate to and the amounts they’d like to donate, then select their comms preferences.
Once an employee has set up their instruction, everything else is down to their employer. They run the payroll, make the deduction from gross pay and send it to GoodPAYE through PayCaptain.org, then we automatically distribute it to the charities for them.
Employees can log in at any time, add or amend charities and donations, see how many donations they’ve made and have all the information at their fingertips.
What are your plans for GoodPAYE in the future?
We want to increase awareness, accessibility and uptake of Payroll Giving and ultimately have all employers in the UK offer this valuable benefit to their employees. We’d also like to raise awareness of all the charities in the UK, many thousands of which people don’t know about right now.
Alongside all of this, we want to help charities build relationships with their supporters and demonstrate the impact that their donations are having too!
To learn more about GoodPAYE and Payroll Giving, visit www.goodpaye.com
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