The claim spreadsheet that takes a week
Every few months somebody at the charity, usually the finance officer or a fundraising assistant with a spare afternoon that never materialises, opens the Gift Aid spreadsheet. Donations from the bank statement go in one tab. Online gifts from the giving platform go in another. The declarations are in a third place: a box file of paper forms from the last community event, a column in the database that someone added two years ago, and a folder of scanned letters.
Then the matching starts. Is the Mrs J Patel on the paper form the same person as the J Patel whose standing order arrives on the fifth? Did the man who ticked the box on the website use the same email as when he gave by text? Anything that cannot be matched with confidence gets left out of the claim, and nobody records why, so the same doubtful gifts are checked again next time.
Why declarations and gifts drift apart
The declaration and the gift are captured by different people, at different times, through different routes. Nothing in a typical small charity's setup forces them into the same record.
- Paper declarations are collected at events and entered weeks later, if at all.
- Online platforms hold their own declaration data and send it in a separate export, or not at all.
- Bank references for standing orders are truncated, so the supporter's name on the statement is partial.
- Supporters move house, change surname or use a different email, and a new record gets created instead of the old one updated.
- Declarations that cover past gifts, future gifts or both are recorded the same way, so the scope is lost.
- Cancelled declarations, when someone says they no longer pay enough tax, are noted in an email and never reach the database.
The real gap is that the charity has no single place where a supporter, their declarations and their gifts are joined, with the evidence for each link kept alongside.
What the gaps cost a small charity
The obvious cost is Gift Aid that is never claimed because the matching was too slow or too uncertain. For an organisation living grant to grant, that is unrestricted money left on the table, and it tends to be the most flexible money a charity gets.
The less obvious cost is risk and time. Claims prepared by hand are hard to evidence if anyone asks how a gift was linked to a declaration. The person who understands the spreadsheet becomes a single point of failure, and when they leave, the knowledge of which forms were already claimed often leaves with them. Your own finance lead or accountant decides what goes into a claim; our job is to make sure they are looking at clean, traceable data.
How we build the declaration matching
- We map every route a declaration arrives by: paper forms, website donation forms, giving platform exports, phone and event scripts, and email.
- Paper forms are scanned and read by an extraction step that pulls name, address, postcode, date and the declaration wording, then a person confirms each one on screen against the scan.
- Each declaration is stored with its date, its scope as stated on the form, its source document and any later cancellation, rather than as a single yes or no flag.
- Gifts from the bank, the giving platforms and your database are matched to supporters using name, postcode, reference and email together, with a confidence level shown for each suggested match.
- Uncertain matches go into a review queue for a person to accept, reject or merge, and that decision is recorded so it is not asked again.
- A claim preparation view lists gifts with a linked, in-scope declaration, gifts without one, and gifts already claimed, so nothing is claimed twice.
- The confirmed list is exported in the format your finance lead uses for the claim, or written back to your CRM, such as Donorfy, Beacon or Raiser's Edge, through its import or API.
| Situation | What the system shows | Who decides |
|---|---|---|
| Gift matched to a declaration | Linked, with the source document one click away | Finance lead reviews the claim list |
| Gift from a supporter with no declaration | Listed as unclaimable, with a prompt to ask | Fundraising team decides whether to ask |
| Two possible supporters for one gift | Held in the review queue with both shown | A person picks or merges |
| Declaration later cancelled | Gifts after the cancellation date excluded | Recorded automatically, visible to finance |
The system does not decide eligibility. It keeps the links and the evidence straight so the person who does decide can see exactly what they are signing off.
A normal claim round afterwards
Paper forms from the weekend's fun run are scanned on Monday and confirmed by Wednesday. Gifts land in the matching view as the bank and platform files come in. When claim time comes round, the finance officer opens a list that is already mostly matched, works through a short queue of doubtful cases, and exports. Each line can be traced back to the scan or the online record that supports it.
The fundraising team also gets something useful: a list of regular supporters with no declaration on file, which is a far better starting point for a polite ask than guessing from memory.
Does this sound like your charity?
- Gift Aid claims are built in a spreadsheet that one person understands.
- Paper declarations sit in a box waiting to be entered.
- You are not confident which gifts were included in the last claim.
- Online platform declarations never reach your own database.
- Doubtful matches are left out of claims rather than resolved.