Money matters

Online giving

Virgin Money Giving

To sign up, visit Virgin Money Giving - St John Ambulance and select the ‘Start fundraising’ option. All you have to do is select the event you are raising money for, and select St John Ambulance as your chosen charity. Nice and easy!

JustGiving

To set up a JustGiving page click on the ‘make your page’ option. JustTextGiving also allows people to make donations from their mobile phone. Your individual JustGiving page allows you to create a unique text code - your supporters can then text this and the amount they want to give you to 70070 to pledge their support.

Handy hints:

• • Make your blurb personal – go into detail about why St John Ambulance’s work is important to you, and why you’re raising money for us
• • Add photos and progress reports to keep people coming back to your page - they might even donate more money
• • Send out thank you messages to your donors
• • Set yourself a high target on the page this is statistically proven to increase donation amounts
• • Make sure people Gift Aid their donations.

Gift Aid

Gift Aid is a very simple and effective way of giving money to charity. St John Ambulance can recover 25p from HM Revenue and Customs for every pound you give, on the condition that you are a UK tax payer. This is at no extra cost to you. For example:

• You donate £20.00
• Gift Aid £5.00
• Total value of donation £25.00

‘Gifts’ including individual donations and sponsorship can be gift aided.

Gift Aid cannot be applied when an individual donor cannot be traced (for example, funds raised in a bucket collection) and cannot be used to boost fundraising totals (such as when an event has charged an entrance fee or a person has entered a competition).

In order for St John Ambulance to claim Gift Aid it is vitally important that a Gift Aid declaration is completed by the donor via a sponsorship form.

In order to claim Gift Aid your sponsors need to:

• • complete their name (minimum surname and initial), full home address and postcode on your sponsorship form (NB St John Ambulance will not contact your sponsors)
• • Ask your sponsors to write or print all their information and clearly tick the Gift Aid box on the sponsorship form or online giving page.

Rules: if your supporter is gaining a benefit from giving you money (i.e. if they attended an event or if they partook in a raffle) you cannot claim Gift Aid on their donations. If you have any questions, get in touch.

Read our Gift Aid FAQs for more information.

For more help or information please contact the events team at events@sja.org.uk or call 0207 3244168.