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For businesses

When a business wants to fundraise through their sales, they are known as 'commercial participators' and they must have a legal agreement in place with each charity they want to support. This is called a Commercial Participation Agreement (CPA), and sets out terms for both parties to agree to. Find out more about the Commercial Participation Agreement and how you can create one with the charity you wish to support.

Once you have created your Commercial Participation Agreement with your chosen charity, as part of the Commercial Participation Terms and in line with charity law, you must add a Commercial Participation statement at the point of sale (e.g. on the product page of your website). This statement must match the information you entered on the donation form and should mention that the campaign is being facilitated via Work for Good.

To make this easy, Work for Good generates this statement for you when you create your agreement.

There are no sign up or membership fees for businesses using Work for Good.

We deduct 5% (exc VAT) from donations to support our work to raise even more funds for charities.

When you donate by credit or debit card, there is a small charge (1.4% + 20p, inc VAT) which goes directly to our third party payment processing provider.

See a full breakdown of our fees.

Yes, absolutely. You just need to make sure you have a Commercial Participation Agreement set up with each charity you are raising funds for.

If you would like to fundraise for a charity not currently registered with Work for Good, you can nominate a charity and our team will reach out to them to try and get them signed up.

All of the charities on Work for Good are UK registered, so any donations you make through us are tax deductible against profits in your business. This is not the case on all other giving platforms. Whether it’s more tax efficient to donate to charity from your business or individually is a complex question as there are so many factors to consider. However, our analysis shows that in the most common scenario, it costs a business less to donate direct to charity than for a business owner to take out money from the business via salary or dividends and then donate personally. If you’d like to discuss your individual circumstances, please get in touch.

The transaction with your customer should continue to be treated exactly as it would be without Work for Good. So if VAT is payable, it will still be payable, and so on. Any tax relief will be available to the business whose income is being donated to charity.

It's recommended by the code of fundraising practice that pledges are related to sales rather than profits, as profits can be ambiguous and less reliable. There is a commercial advantage for linking sales to charitable support, and in the instance that sales are made but no profit, the charity does not receive anything. Therefore, pledges based on sales ensures that when a business makes a sale, there will be a donation made.

It is also necessary at the point of transaction/sale that you make a Commercial Participation Statement so the consumer knows a portion of their purchase will be donated to charity. When related to sales it makes it clear how much will be donated to charity. I.e 50p of every meal sold. However, if you'd like to base your support on profits you would have to state at point of sale, how much you think you'd be raising from profits - making it a little more complicated for your business.

However, we do understand that some businesses may only feel comfortable linking to the profits of the business and you can do this through the donation form by:

Choose the option 'sales from a specific product or service', rather than 'every sale'. 

You will then see a freeform box where you can state that you will be donating a % of the business' profits. Be as transparent as possible in this section as the charity will see this and plan their forecasting around these figures.

Only UK registered charities are able to sign up to Work for Good, so you are unable to fundraise for CIC's or other worthy causes currently.

Once you have created your Commercial Participation Agreement with your chosen charity, you are not able to change the details of how you will be raising funds for them, or change the charity you are supporting.

When you come to pay your donation, you will be given the chance to edit the donation amount to reflect how much you have raised.

It’s important to keep in mind that if you have promoted sales based on a promise to donate to a certain charity, then you must honour it.

If you are a sole trader or part of a partnership (rather than a registered company), it may be possible for Gift Aid to be claimed by the charity. However, you must be registered as a UK taxpayer and meet the necessary criteria.
 When you sign up to Work for Good (and if you confirm you are not a registered company) you will be asked if you are eligible for Gift Aid.

If so, you will have the option to complete a Gift Aid declaration, which Work for Good will send to the charity on your behalf.

Please note: it is your responsibility to ensure that the information within the declaration is accurate, and to update Work for Good if your Gift Aid eligibility changes. If you have any doubts, we recommend you seek advice from your financial accountant or HMRC.

If necessary, you can make a one-off donation (or a donation not linked to sales) by choosing 'No' to the question 'Would you like to publicise this support?' when you pledge a donation.

However, we would really encourage you to publicise your giving due to the many benefits to both your business and the charity:

- It allows your businesses to support the charities you care about in a legally compliant way, while also helping to boost your business' profile.

- Choosing not to publicise your donation means that you can not talk about your donation in connection with your business, as you will not have a CPA in place with the charity. It can't be mentioned on your social media channels, website, emails/email signature or on any other physical or online premises.

If you would like to publicise your donation, you are required to set up a CPA (link to CPA question) which is easy to do via our donations form.

As a sole-trader or even a hobbyist, if you are selling a product or service and donating any portion of your sales to a charity, then you need a Commercial Participation Agreement with the charity you’re supporting.

On the sign up form you'll see the option to select that you are not registered with Companies House

Your donation has to be paid through your Work for Good account. When your agreement comes to an end, you will receive an email with a link to your dashboard to pay your donation.

Alternatively you can log on to your dashboard directly and you will see the option to pay next to your current agreement. You will have the option to edit the donation amount to how much you have raised during the payment process.

When you donate by credit or debit card, there is a small charge (1.4% + 20p, inc VAT) which goes directly to our third party payment processing provider.

Both UK and non-UK registered businesses can join Work for Good to fundraise through their sales; as long as they are donating to a UK registered charity.

The business simply needs to click the little box that says 'I'm not registered with UK Companies House' upon sign up. 

If you have a complaint that you wish to raise with Work for Good, please contact us so that we can try to resolve it. You can expect a response within 72 hours and the response will contain an outline of proposed next steps (for example: further emails, a call or meeting with a team member and/or involvement from an external party) that is proportional to the complaint.

In the event you are unhappy with the outcome of our response, you can contact the Fundraising Regulator, the Scottish Fundraising Standards Panel, or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

If you'd like to close your account, please go to your account settings and follow the instructions provided on the 'General' tab.

Please note: if you have any pledged donations, you will need to donate any funds raised to date before closing your account.

If you'd like further information about setting up an online fundraising appeal, please visit the Fundraising Regulator's website on Advice for the Public. https://www.fundraisingregulator.org.uk/more-from-us/resources/setting-online-fundraising-appeal-advice-public

For charities

Small businesses want to support charities and raise money via the sales of their products or services. However, they can come up against multiple barriers and charities aren’t always able to accept the support; mainly due to the resource, time and cost involved in setting up a commercial participation agreement for each business.

Our fundraising platform digitally creates the commercial participation agreement (CPA) between your charity and the business and allows you to manage and track smaller cause-related marketing campaigns, whilst complying with charity law.

Once your charity has signed up to Work for Good, and accepted our terms and conditions, you agree to enter into a commercial participation agreement with any business who pledges or donates to you (the agreement is integrated into our T&C’s).

The business enters into their part of the commercial participation agreement when they pledge a donation to you and re-confirm they will comply with our T&C’s.

Within the donations form they have to include how they’re raising funds for your charity (i.e £1 per t-shirt sold), the time period of the fundraising campaign and the intended donation amount. Please see below for further information on undertaking due diligence of a business.

Any business which donates to charity through their sales, and publicises this to their customers or clients are a commercial participator and therefore, are legally required to set up a commercial participation agreement (CPA) with each charity.

Work for Good has been able to streamline this process for businesses and charities without any need for direct contact or negotiation, by integrating this into the donation set up process and our T&Cs which businesses and charities agree to upon registering.

You can start your free registration here, where you’ll be asked to fill in some information about your charity - you’ll need your registered charity number and charity bank account details to hand. Once you have done this and before you can be accepted onto the platform and receive donations, there will be a short delay while we do our due diligence (we aim to do this by the end of the following working day).

We’ll email you once your account has been verified and while you wait, you can start creating your charity profile page and also add your thank you message. If you have any issues signing up, please contact us and we’ll help you.

Yes, for now. In time, we hope to expand the range of recipient types to include other not-for-profit organisations (e.g. CIC’s).

With 5.8 million small businesses in the UK, there’s a huge potential for your charity to raise vital and sustainable income via the support of the small business community . The majority of small businesses are sole-traders (an individual who owns a business), so we’d encourage you to approach your small business supporters in a holistic way. Purposeful businesses genuinely want to give back and in a similar way to your individual givers; they are keen to support causes that align with their ethos and values.

We are here to help you embrace small business donations; whilst minimising the resource and cost usually required to set up Commercial Participation Agreements and steward these lower income relationships.

When you join Work for Good, you’ll have access to a Toolkit for charities, to help you engage your small business supporters in an effective and proactive way that works for you and your teams.

Our mission is to help charities raise funds from purpose driven small businesses and make it possible and easier for businesses to donate through their sales, in a compliant way.

It is free for charities and businesses to sign up and there are no annual membership costs. To enable us to grow and continue to raise even more money for charity, we deduct 5% (exc VAT) when a donation is paid.

The legal requirement of commercial participation agreements can be resource heavy for both the business and charity in time and cost. However by working with us, and relying on our donations form which captures the correct information from your business supporters, and creates the commercial participation agreement in line with our T’s & C’s, charities are able to welcome all sized donations and businesses to support them.

There are no processing charges for donations paid by Bacs bank transfer. If a business pays a donation by credit/debit card, the donation will be subject to a charge by our payment processing provider, of 1.4% + 20p.

The fee (plus VAT) and any payment processing charges will be automatically deducted from the monthly payment Work for Good makes to your charity.

We aggregate all donations made to you on a monthly basis and pay these to your charity via Bacs from Work for Good Ltd, on the first business day of the following month. So no more invoicing!

Yes. You can download a CSV of your donation data from your dashboard. The fields include: Date paid by Business, Name of Business, Type of donation (one-off; via sales), Date paid, Donated Amount, WfG Fees, Card processing fee, VAT, NET donation, Gift Aid.

There are a few reasons why you may not yet have received your pledged donation:

1. Donations are paid on an aggregated basis at the beginning of the month following the date of receipt by Work for Good so, depending on timing, your donation may be pending and on it's way to you next month.

2. The pledged donation may not yet have been paid by the business to Work for Good. Businesses are sent an email on the day the donation is due and we perform regular follow-ups to chase overdue donations and encourage businesses to pay them.

3. There are times when a business may need to delete a pledged donation (for example: their campaign was unsuccessful and they didn’t sell any products). In this case, you will receive a notification via email and on your dashboard. We do emphasise to businesses that if they have promoted sales based on a promise to donate to a certain charity, then they must honour this commitment.

Work for Good can be used to facilitate both UK and non-UK registered businesses, who are fundraising through their sales; as long as they are donating to a UK registered charity.

The business simply needs to click the little box that says 'I'm not registered with UK Companies House' upon sign up. 

Unfortunately not. To be legally compliant any donation that is pledged by a business via the Work for Good platform also needs to be completed and paid to the charity via their Work for Good account. This is a requirement of the Commercial Participation Agreement that a business enters into when accepting our Terms and Conditions upon registration.

Thanking a business for their generous support is a huge part of Work for Good and we know it’s equally as important for you.

You can add a thank you message to your profile, which is automatically sent to a business when they pay a donation to you. We encourage you to include information on the impact their donations have.

We want fundraising to be a rewarding experience; so not only will your supporters see your thank you message, they'll also be showered with lots of digital confetti!

To set up your thank you message, click here (for registered charities only).

We know how important it is for you to be able to communicate with your supporters, so we’ve given businesses the choice to hear from you directly. If the business has consented, their marketing data will be available for you to view and download via your charity dashboard.

Going forward, these businesses will need to update their marketing preferences directly with you and it is the charities responsibility to ensure that you use and update this data compliantly.

For further information, please reference section 11 of the charity T&C's.

You can keep your supporters up to date with the impact their donations are having, your most recent campaigns, latest appeals and articles of interest via your Work for Good charity profile page.

We recommend you update this on a monthly basis or when you have some news to share and as a thank you for updating your profile and engaging your supporters, every time you update your page you’ll be moved up to the top of our charities page!

You’ll receive a notification via email and on your dashboard when a business pledges a donation to you.

It is at this point that you can undertake any due diligence and if following this you would prefer for the business not to support you, please let us know and we’ll ask them to redirect their funds.

Whilst we cannot give tax advice, we are advised by Bates Wells, the specialist charity law firm that there is no VAT payable by charities on donations as your logo will not be used (a logo is a VATable supply).

If you have a complaint that you wish to raise with Work for Good, please contact us so that we can try to resolve it. You can expect a response within 72 hours and the response will contain an outline of proposed next steps (for example: further emails, a call or meeting with a team member and/or involvement from an external party) that is proportional to the complaint.

In the event you are unhappy with the outcome of our response, you can contact the Fundraising Regulator, the Scottish Fundraising Standards Panel, or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

If you’d like to close your account, please go to your account settings and follow the instructions provided on the ‘Personal’ tab.

Please note: should you have any pledged donations, we will discuss these with you.