Dementia Support Line
Payroll Giving information for employers
Are you an employer interested in setting up the Payroll giving scheme for your employees? Learn how to set it up and how to promote it with your staff.
How to set up Payroll Giving as an employer
- Register with a Payroll Giving Agency (PGA) – they will manage your scheme from employee sign-up to payment to us. The largest three PGA’s are: Charitable Giving, CAF and Charities Trust.
- Promote Payroll Giving to your staff using a Professional Fundraising Organisation (PFO). Promotions can be done either face to face or virtually. There are three professional fundraising organisations in the Association of Payroll Giving Organisations (APGO) – Hands on Payroll Giving, Payroll Giving in Action and StC Payroll Giving.
- Deduct employees’ donations from their salary using your standard payroll system.
- Send your employees names and donations to your PGA each pay run.
- We receive your generous donations each month and can continue to support people living with dementia.
Why give through Payroll Giving?
- It boosts staff morale and aids recruitment
- It boosts your CSR profile and public image
- You can win awards and recognition via Quality Marks
- It demonstrates community involvement
- It’s easy to set up and maintain It has potential to offset costs incurred in set-up against corporate tax
Payroll Giving at Royal Mail and Hospice UK
The aim – to generate £500,000 through Payroll Giving
Number of donors pre-partnership – 475
Number of donors post-partnership – 6123
During the three-year partnership, £690,000 was raised!
Matched funding
You could add even more value to your employees’ donations and boost your CSR by matching their donations. You could do it to kick-start your scheme or on a permanent basis.
Or you could cover the administration fee of your PGA so that it doesn’t come from your employees’ donations. Agencies are charities themselves and charge an administration fee for this service which can either be deducted from the donation or covered by the employer.
FAQs about PGA’s (Payroll Giving Agency’s) – the people who manage the scheme
FAQs about PFO’s (Professional Fundraising Organisation’s) – the people who come into your office and promote Payroll Giving to staff members
The set-up time is dependent on the you and can be very quick – the PFO moves as quickly as you’d like them to after contract sign-off.
If you are already registered with a PGA (e.g. Charitable Giving, CAF and Charities Trust), the PFO can help to promote the scheme immediately with very little input from you and online pages can be set up within a few days. Site visits will depend on availability but the majority of PFO’s have good UK coverage and can be flexible.
If you are not already registered with a Payroll Giving Agency, this will be what makes the set-up time with a PFO take slightly longer, however the PFO can guide you through these initial steps to speed things up.
There are no fees for you for the standard online and in-person PFO promotional services. PFO’s are funded by the charities that work with them.
No. You could promote Payroll Giving yourself internally however PFO’s are dedicated, experienced fundraisers who have been promoting Payroll Giving for 30 years as of 2023.
Using a PFO makes Payroll Giving much simpler to operate – by managing the end-to-end sign-up process, providing promotional material, answering any employee queries and reporting sign-ups to you.
Your only responsibilities when using a PFO will be to assist promoting Payroll Giving, to set up payroll to take donations from employees and send the lump sum of donations once a month to your chosen PGA.
75% of millennial’s are willing to take a pay cut to work for a responsible business and 83% will become more loyal when they can contribute towards social issues, so using PFO’s can help you to deliver these changes that your employees desire.
Do you want to set up your payroll giving donation?
This is dependent on you – it depends on how long it takes for the PGA receive everything they need from you and the type of set-up you require. Most PGA’s suggest to allow a lead time of up to three weeks – but it can be quicker dependent on your requirements.
It costs nothing to set-up with a PGA. They only begin to charge you on funds sent to them for distribution. Administration fees are deducted per employee donation but sometimes employers choose to pay this on behalf of their employees.
Fees are around 25p per donation per month regardless of donation amount OR 4% capped at £10 per donation per month – for Charitable Giving these prices have been fixed since 2011. Larger companies can choose either, but smaller ones will be 4%. Charitable Giving also charge extra if you decide to match your employer’s donations and this amount depends on the criteria.
Yes. Under HMRC regulations, an employer running Payroll Giving must come through a PGA, you cannot operate this yourselves. You can only manage yourselves if you actually become a PGA yourself.
It is very simple to set-up with a PGA and they make giving to charity easy. Each PGA has a multitude of resources on their individual websites detailing the simple set-up process for each one. Most ‘contracts’ are short and are incredibly easy to complete and return to the PGA to get the ball rolling.