Corporates

Payroll Giving

Do you own your own company or manage a firm with a sizeable number of employees? If so, you probably receive many requests for charitable funding every year. Why not take a more strategic approach to this situation and involve your employees in a new payroll giving scheme. It is a great way to support projects in the local community and to make a significant contribution to other larger charity organisations.
Payroll giving programmes are also a great way to expand a firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme and to involve employees in ‘making a difference in society’. Partnering with The Community Foundation for Ireland is a particularly good way to give.

How it works

• Make contact with The Community Foundation for Ireland and our partner – Payroll Giving in Action – an experienced payroll giving agency with expertise in this area and we will make a presentation to your key people in e.g. HR and payroll to outline the idea and later make a presentation to staff outlining the benefits of giving by payroll deduction. Your firm may decide to survey staff for their opinions. Help in relation to this is available from our staff.
• If you go ahead and start payroll giving, a special fund is then set up in your company’s name at The Community Foundation. Your company could pledge to match in part or in full the employee contributions – this is known to greatly improve the take-up.
• You can ensure that the tax relief issue is much more efficient when channelling all of your employees’ donations through a single entity such as The Community Foundation for Ireland. By channelling money to charities and community groups through The Community Foundation your staff will receive maximum tax advantage e.g. their €250 could then be worth €423 – even if it goes to a number of organisations. If your company is making matching donations it will also receive corporation tax relief.
• Staff can choose from a selection of charities from a broad cross section of the most impactful charities in Ireland. The Community Foundation can also identify smaller, more local projects for you from our database of over 2,000 organisations if you wish.
• Payroll Giving in Action handle the initial administration and sign-up and The Community Foundation handles all subsequent administrative details in relation to tax reclaim, issuing grant cheques in the name of your fund, handling the follow-up, seeking receipts where relevant and compiling reports from supported groups. We will provide periodic report updates to your company as per the agreement with your firm. By working with us, you can support many organisations but only need to deal with one organisation. Even if you support different causes or organisations each year, you can retain the single administrative channel through The Community Foundation which greatly simplifies things for your company and greatly reduces your administrative overheads.
• Some firms could also consider using a percentage of funds raised to establish a permanent endowment fund. This can be an excellent and more consistent way to respond to the needs of the community... in good times and bad. This is often of interest to family run firms and those with a long term commitment to their local community.

To find out more contact Niall O'Sullivan, Head of Fund Development on 01-874 7354 or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)