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Eproductive was proud to win the inaugural award for ‘Most Supportive Supplier to the Sector’ at the Association of Charity Shops’ (ACS) annual conference this month.
The ACS is the only member organisation dedicated to supporting charities who run shops as part of their fundraising activities, and their annual conference, held at Keele University brings together staff at all levels from across the sector.
The awards were sponsored by Corporate College (Derby College) and presented by their Director for Retail/Business & Administration Kath Schofield and Sue Azzopardi, Head of Trading at British Red Cross and Chair of the ACS.
Eproductive’s Chris Cowls and Jo Collins were delighted to accept the award (pictured). Chris says: “It was an honour to win the award for Most Supportive Supplier to the Sector – we were really proud to have been nominated. We work closely with our clients in order to provide a service that has real value and it is great that this has been recognised.”
We are delighted to announce that between them, our EpR Gift Aid clients have now claimed over £10million from HMRC, which is a fantastic achievement.
The value of monthly gift aided sales being entered through the EpR system is now a staggering £3.8million – and this is increasing all the time.
Alan Hodges, Retail Director at Sue Ryder Care recently said: “We are now in our fourth year of using EpR Gift Aid and achieving 40% Gift Aid conversion of threshold donated goods which is generating in excess of £2 million additional annual revenue for the charity.”
Well over a million people have already signed up as gift aid donors in over 2,300 shops, across 45 charities using EpR Gift Aid. Many of our clients are already making the most of their new warm supporter details by integrating them into their existing marketing databases.
Following extensive development, and consultation with HMRC, we are trialling email notifications, which will mean further savings for our clients on time and postage costs.
This is just one of many developments we are currently working on. If you would like to find out more about EpR Gift Aid, please do get in touch.
Health and social care charity Sue Ryder Care has raised over £3million in gift aid since the inception of its groundbreaking scheme to link gift aid to donations of goods brought into its shops, which began 3 years ago.
The charity has over 220,000 gift aid Donors, who regularly take any unwanted goods into their local Sue Ryder Care shops and gift aid their donations, and the charity signs up around 2,400 new donors each week.
Once a certain amount of a gift aid donors goods have been sold, Sue Ryder Care writes to them to say how much their unwanted items have raised, up to four times a year, and donors have told the charity that seeing how much their donations have helped has prompted them to look out more unwanted items to take in, so repeat donations have risen dramatically.
If you haven’t already signed up then you can online, or you can pick up a leaflet in your local Sue Ryder Care shop where their team of dedicated staff and volunteers will be happy to talk you through the process.
Alan Hodges, Director of Retail, Sue Ryder Care said “Donors have thanked us for our great service, and they are genuinely pleased to know that their act of giving us the best of what they no longer use benefits others. We are obviously delighted - to secure an additional £3million from the scheme over a three year period is staggering and will enable the charity to provide many more hours of quality care for people living with end of life and long-term conditions including; Cancer, Stroke, Brain Injury, Multiple Sclerosis, Dementia, Huntington’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease and Motor Neurone Disease. We have ambitious plans for growth, so the charity needs to use innovative ways to raise as many funds as possible. This scheme is revolutionising the way charity shops operate.”
Alan continued: “One of the additional benefits has been more contact with our donors. Staff are meeting with them face to face in store, we then write to donors to tell them how much their donation has raised and, crucially, we can engage them in finding out more about what Sue Ryder Care does.”
By offering its donors the opportunity to gift aid the 1.4 million bags they hand over to its shops each year, the charity has helped develop an innovative way to add 28% to the value of every donation, be it a dress, ornament or book.
All quality donations help the charity, so people are being encouraged to take unwanted goods into their local shop and to sign up to gift aid so that an extra 28% can be reclaimed.
St Giles Hospice is thanking local people for helping to add an incredible £100,000 to the value of items they donate to the charity’s network of shops, simply by signing up to Gift Aid.
Since the Gift Aid scheme was introduced in September 2007, more than 13,500 people have filled in a form at one of the St Giles Hospice Shops to say that they are a UK taxpayer. This simple action enables the hospice to reclaim 25p in every £1 sold, and an extra 3p in government subsidy.
Lynwen Truesdale, St Giles Hospice Shops Director, says: “We’re extremely grateful to everyone who has signed up to Gift Aid, which they only need to do once, and then show their card when they donate items at our shops across the region. By helping us reclaim £100,000 so far, they have made a huge impact on the high standards of care which we continue to offer local people living with cancer and other serious illnesses.”
St Giles Hospice Shops play a vital role in funding the care offered by the hospice at its facilities in Sutton Coldfield and Whittington between Lichfield and Tamworth, or in patients' own homes across the region.
The 16 hospice shops are based in major towns throughout the hospice's patient catchment area, which ranges from Ashby de la Zouch and Atherstone in the east, to Cannock and Walsall in the west – and from Burton and Uttoxeter in the north, to Sutton Coldfield and Coleshill in the south.
St Giles Hospice spends £6 million caring for local people with cancer and other serious illnesses, as well as providing support for their families and carers, and relies heavily on the support of local people to enable its valuable work to continue.
This month Barnardo's rolled out Eproductive's EpR Takings & Bankings module within its 360 shops.
Phillip Northcott, Retail & Trading Management Accountant for Barnardo’s said: “Introducing EpR Takings & Bankings across our estate was a surprisingly easy process. The input screens are simple, and tailored to our own till ‘Z’ Readings, meaning that shop managers find the data-entry very straight-forward. Reconciliation is performed at the point of entry and the system is internet-based, enabling real-time report access for our retail managers and head office staff.
“The system will save us a substantial sum on input costs and gives us a clear advantage in reconciliation and transparency at all levels. The planned Space Allocation reports will also aid us in improving sales within the chain.” There are now 800 charity shops across the country using EpR Takings & Bankings.
More than one million donors have signed up to help charity shops reclaim the Gift Aid
on the sale of their donated goods - and a recent benchmark showed that just 0.1% asked for their money
back when notified of the amount raised. The figures, revealed by charity retail management system
supplier Eproductive, show that, despite the tough economic conditions, donors are more than willing to
help secure this key revenue stream for charity shops.
In order to reclaim Gift Aid on the sale of donated goods, charity shops collect donors' details. As Gift Aid is only available to voluntary cash donations from tax payers, the charities legally need to inform donors of the amount raised once the goods have been sold and offer them the opportunity to keep their money. Eproductive's internet-based EpR system enables this process on behalf of clients, which include many of the UK's leading charity chains, such as Sue Ryder Care, Barnardo's, Help The Aged and British Heart Foundation.
The system now supports over 2,100 shops and has had a million donors signed up to Gift Aid the money raised from their donations. Gift Aid on the sale of donated goods represents a significant revenue opportunity for charity shops with over £3.2m of Gift Aid-able sales entered via EpR alone each month. Sue Ryder Care is entering its fourth year of collecting Gift Aid in this way and is expecting a 35% conversion to Gift Aid this year, generating more than £2m additional revenue for the charity.
Recent analysis of the notifications sent out via the EpR Gift Aid system has shown that in a 12-week period, of 79,000 donors who were sent letters detailing the value of their donations, just 70 (0.1%) asked for their money back. Eproductive is now further simplifying the process of collecting Gift Aid on the sale of donated goods for clients with the introduction of a service to send donors e-mail notifications of the amounts raised.
Chris Cowls, CEO of Eproductive, said: "It's great to see that charity shop donors are willing to help their chosen charities make the most of a key revenue opportunity for their shops. Our system simplifies the process for them, meaning that charity staff can easily collect the essential data on how much Gift Aid they can claim and from whom. Charity chains of all sizes can benefit from this opportunity, and we are currently working with 40 clients who have between 4 and 600 shops each."
Together with its clients, Eproductive is now looking at additional opportunities to better understand the relationship that charity shops have with a key constituency - donors, with whom they previously had minimal contact. Cowls said: "Clients are looking at a variety of ways in which they can use the data we collect on their donors, and all the indications are that donors are more than willing to help in this."
Eproductive was proud to once again part-sponsor the Help the Hospice Retail Conference in March. This year’s conference was held at Boots Headquarters in Nottingham where a record number of delegates discussed a wide range of topics concerning charity retail.
Eproductive’s CEO Chris Cowls and Project Manager Jo Collins attended the conference and were on hand to discuss the wide range of services that Eproductive offers the sector.
The company now has over 30 hospice clients with over 400 shops between them – see the EpR clients section of this website.
The Martlets Hospice is based in Hove, East Sussex, and has seven shops in the local area. EpR Gift Aid was introduced into the chain on 1st August 2008 and has already proved to be a fantastic success.
So far, the Martlets stores have signed up 3,500 donors to the Gift Aid scheme.
Kevin Souter, Retail Projects Co-ordinator said: “Our shop teams were really motivated following the excellent training given by Eproductive, and we have been delighted by the response from our supporters, especially within our two specialist furniture stores that sell far higher value items.
“The results have so far exceeded our expectations – after seven months of using EpR Gift Aid, we have already claimed £42.5k from HMRC, and we’re now hoping that we will be able to make that £100k within our first year.”
Eve Collins, Retail Manager, said “Claiming Gift Aid on the sale of donated goods through our shops has been a tremendous success. The additional revenue raised from Gift Aid will help support Hospice services through these uncertain financial times. Looking ahead, we are confident that Gift Aid from donated goods will be one of the major income streams for The Martlets.“
Eproductive's EpR Gift Aid clients enjoyed a very busy and successful year in 2008, with around £7.5million Gift Aid claimable from the sale of donated goods going through the system.
With the current financial climate, even more shoppers are becoming 'chazzers' (charity shoppers), and as long as the chains can keep up with demand, we expect that our clients will be claiming even more Gift Aid from the HMRC in 2009. We are certain that St Peter's Hospice - the latest chain to start using the EpR Gift Aid system - will also ensure it is a great success, adding considerable value to the donations made by their loyal supporters.
St Peter's Hospice is Bristol's largest charity retailer and the UK's most successful hospice retailer. They have almost 50 shops across much of greater Bristol and raise in excess of £1.3 million towards patient care at Bristol's only adult hospice each year. We are delighted to have them on board as the largest hospice chain in the UK, and hope that they and all our clients thrive in 2009.
EpR Gift Aid was launched as a pilot in one area in Sue Ryder Care in September 2006. Eproductive is pleased to announce that since this time, clients have raised well over £5,000,000 Gift Aid claimable on the sales of donated goods between them. Eproductive Chief Executive Chris Cowls said: "This is a truly remarkable milestone for our clients to have achieved between them in such a short time - and we predict that they could make at least double that next year alone."
St Giles’ Hospice in Lichfield started using the system in September 2007. Nursing Director, Sarah Riches said: “The extra money that has been raised so far through claiming Gift Aid on donated goods will fund 2 nurses per year. Caring for sick and terminally ill people is what we are here for and any additional revenue is a huge benefit. By adopting EpR Gift Aid, the shops have increased the funds available to us, which will really make a difference to the care that we can provide.”
But that’s not all - well over 500,000 donor’s names and addresses have also been collected by Eproductive clients in this time. Collecting warm supporter details in this way has been really important to many clients, who are now making the most of this new marketing stream opportunity.
Gerard Cousins, Barnardo’s Director of Retail & Trading says: “Being able to communicate with our supporters has always been important to us, and using the EpR Gift Aid system has allowed us an additional way to do this.”
BBC Radio 4’s well renowned Money Box programme broadcast a feature on Gift Aid on donated goods sales on Saturday 22nd March. Recorded at Sue Ryder Care’s Muswell Hill shop, Director of Retail Alan Hodges spoke about how much of a difference the innovative scheme had already made to the charity.
“It means for us at the end of this financial year an extra £1m that we wouldn’t have had”, he said.
Sue Ryder Care Business Manager Sam Leahy pointed out that the initiative has enabled the shop teams to cement their relationships with their donors and is convinced that it has also helped to increase both the quantity and quality of goods received.
“I would say I’m at least 10% up in terms of the number of bags I get through the door now”, she stated on the show.
British Heart Foundation launched the scheme in September 2007 and told the programme that they have already raised an extra £700,000.
Chris Cowls, Chief Executive of Eproductive said, “It’s great to see that our EpR Gift Aid clients are getting the recognition that they deserve for maximising their fundraising efforts by claiming gift aid on the sales of donated goods.”
You can listen to the full programme at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/moneybox and the segment starts at 19 minutes.
You can also read the full article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7307703.stm
Eproductive was proud to part-sponsor the Help the Hospices retail conference on 5th March.
The conference, held at St Mary’s Hospice, Birmingham was fully booked, with staff from approximately 60 hospices attending.
Staff from Eproductive also supported a workshop on EpR Gift Aid, run by representatives from St Giles Hospice and St David’s Foundation who have been using the system since September 2007.
Chris Cowls, Chief Executive of Eproductive said, “The Help the Hospices retail conference was an upbeat, informative and enjoyable day with some really positive messages. It was also a great opportunity for clients who are already benefiting from the EpR Gift Aid system to inform their fellow hospice representatives as to the rewards it could bring them."
Lynwen Truesdale of St Giles Hospice has said "After only a few months claims total over £28,000 which will pay for a nurse in our Hospice this year. It’s an extremely easy and effective way to raise additional funds"
Help the Hospices are the hospice movements’ national charity in the UK and give a voice to the interests, views and concerns of over 200 local charities that provide the majority of hospice care across the UK.
£1million EXTRA is now reclaimable from the 'tax man' by Sue Ryder Care, through its groundbreaking scheme to link Gift Aid to donations of goods brought into its shops.
By offering its donors the opportunity to Gift Aid the 20,000,000 items handed over to its shops each year, the charity has helped develop an innovative way to add 28% to the value of every donation, be it a dress, ornament or book.
Now, the charity has secured its first £1million from the scheme, two years earlier than predicted.
Sue Ryder Care has pioneered tax efficient giving on donated items, becoming the first charity in the UK to develop a system that could satisfy Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs that an audit trail could be established, alongside internet-based systems company Eproductive. The scheme picked up a Third Sector Award for Enterprise, in September.
Several other charities have now also followed suit and adopted the EpR Gift Aid system, which could mean an additional £30million for the charity sector as a whole.
Alan Hodges, Director of Retail at the charity said: "We are obviously delighted. To secure an additional £1million from the scheme two years earlier than predicted demonstrates how powerful an income generator this could be, not just for us but the sector as a whole. It is not an exaggeration to say it could revolutionise the way charity shops operate.
"One of the additional benefits is more contact with our donors. Staff are meeting with them face to face in store, we then write to donors to tell them how much their donation has raised and, crucially, we can engage them in finding out more about what Sue Ryder Care does. We want to give people a clear and simple message, through our 'Sign On The Line': awareness campaign, that with a simple signature, their donation can generate 28% more funds to be converted into care."
Chris Cowls, Chief Executive of Eproductive, said: "Having worked successfully with Sue Ryder Care for a number of years, the charity was the natural partner to pioneer EpR Gift Aid. We are delighted by the success that Sue Ryder Care has experienced using the system and would like to give our heartfelt congratulations to the charity on achieving their first £1million in Gift Aid claims using the system."
Cowls added, "Sue Ryder Care is really leading the way claiming Gift Aid on donated goods, and if the whole sector were using the EpR Gift Aid system, the possible annual additional income to charities could be between £20-£30million."
Sue Ryder Care's Retail team were presented with the prestigious Third Sector Excellence Award for Enterprise in a special ceremony at London's Hurlingham Club last week. The team were chosen to receive this award as they were the first charity in the UK to pioneer a way of making donations of goods to its 379 shops tax efficient by applying the principles of Gift Aid.
Eproductive worked in partnership with Sue Ryder Care to develop the EpR software system which satisfies Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs (HMRC) that an audit trail can be created - a feat which had previously eluded the sector.
The judging panel, charged with deciding upon the organisation which had made the best use of its brand, knowledge or assets to increase income, was made up of David Emerson, Chief Executive of Association of Charitable Foundations, Sabina Khan, Director of Policy and Research, Social Enterprise London and Jeremy Swain, Chief Executive, Thames Reach.
The EpR system has helped the charity add £700,000 to its bottom line since the ground-breaking scheme launched last November, with a predicted income of over £1million by the end of the first year - this has smashed all previous expectations.
It is estimated that using this process, the charity sector as a whole could enjoy an additional annual income of £20m. Judge Jeremy Swain, said: "This project is really working to make change for the whole sector."
Alan Hodges, Director of Retail at Sue Ryder Care, said: "We are delighted to have received this award, particularly in light of all the hard work put in by our team and Eproductive. We are looking forward to reaping the benefits of the continuing success of Gift Aid and to helping others share in that success. It is no exaggeration to say that charity retailing has been revolutionised."
Eproductive's Chief Executive Chris Cowls said, "We are extremely pleased that this innovative idea has been recognised, achieving such a prestigious award. This has been a very exciting time for us, and our work with Sue Ryder Care has really helped pave the way for other charities to maximise their income potential through Retail. Sue Ryder Care is a worthy winner of this award and we are proud to have played a part in this achievement".
A ground-breaking scheme to claim 28% Gift Aid on goods donated and sold in its 400 shops is being pioneered by healthcare charity Sue Ryder Care.
The tax efficient EpR Gift Aid system could secure an additional £1m annually for the charity within five years from the sales of clothes and other items donated to Sue Ryder Care.
Alan Hodges, Director of Retail at Sue Ryder Care said: “Gift Aid is a tax efficient form of giving which adds 28% to the value of ‘gifts’ to charities and has traditionally been restricted to cash donations. Sue Ryder Care is the first charity to trial a revolutionary way of applying the same principles to donated items, which account for 80% of our sales. All that is required is permission from the person donating the goods for us to claim the Gift Aid. For example a dress donated to Sue Ryder Care is sold for £5 and then we claim back a further £1.40 making the total donation to the charity £6.40. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that this could revolutionise the way that charity shops operate.”
The scheme will be introduced in a rolling programme nationwide by Sue Ryder Care, which provides palliative and neurological care as well as community-based services, after a successful eight-week pilot scheme in 19 shops in Kent and East Sussex revealed some very encouraging results:
Charity supporters are asked to fill in a Gift Aid form when making a donation to state they are a UK taxpayer. The form has a unique number which allows the full audit trail required when claiming Gift Aid on donated goods to commence. The EpR Gift Aid system automatically prompts the charity to write to the donor when their items are sold, detailing the amount raised and requesting that the money be given to Sue Ryder Care and for permission to Gift Aid it. Donor ID cards will allow people to make subsequent donations using the same unique number.
The scheme has been devised in partnership with Eproductive, which offers creative technological solutions to the charity retail sector. The company spotted an opportunity to introduce an easily traceable audit trail and created the EpR Gift Aid system, trialed through Sue Ryder Care shops.
Chris Cowls, Chief Executive of Eproductive, said: “Having identified the opportunity for charity retailers to claim Gift Aid on donated goods sales, we developed the system. It manages the entire process. Having worked successfully with Sue Ryder Care for a number of years the charity was the natural partner to trial EpR Gift Aid.”
