Charity Governance

KindLink is a holistic solution for charities to help you run your operations. With KindLink your non-profit has access to a fundraising platform, project management system, charity CMR and much more. KindLink will help you engage with your supporters and make your impact more transparent.

With Virgin Money Giving announcing its closure, many charities are looking for alternative fundraising platforms. 

The clock is ticking. Non-profit organisations need to find cost-effective, user-friendly solutions ahead of the 30th November 2021 when Virigin Money Giving will cease to operate. Without a new platform, their fundraising efforts are at risk of being impacted, disadvantaged (or even grinding to a halt.)

What is a Donor-Advised Fund (DAF)?

A Donor-Advised Fund, or DAF, is a philanthropic giving vehicle hosted by a registered charity (KindLink Foundation). It allows individuals or organisations (DAF account holder) to establish a foundation account and instruct donations without having to register a charity themselves. This scheme can save cost and time while it is much more flexible and easy to manage than a regular registered nonprofit organisation.

Every year charities claim more than £1 billion back from the HMRC as part of the Gift Aid scheme. The scheme has proved to be hugely successful as an additional income stream for non-profits and is a way to give donors a clear say on what their taxes (or at least part of them) should be spent on.

With a steady rise in small charities indicating likelihood of closure, sustainability is a growing issue. If governments fail to recognise the real value of the services delivered by small charities, if they continue the momentum to engage with larger private business to deliver wide scale contracts, they will fail to invest sufficiently in the small charity sector.

For the second year Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) and the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) have produced the Social Landscape report. The aim of their research is to gain a unique insight into the voluntary sector from the perspective of its Chief Executives – to understand any challenges faced, and to assess the impact such challenges have on the sector’s ability to meet the needs of its beneficiaries.

When you aim to solve big problems, you need to have the right tools. Even better if they are free, and absolutely amazing. 

Many nonprofit organisations in the UK struggle with migrating to online digital solutions, usually because of two reasons:

Young people are very enthusiastic about charity and want to do more to support good causes, but only 2% of charities currently have a young trustee. This is despite research showing that 85% of people aged under 35 would consider becoming a trustee.

In 2015 CAF launched this Young Trustee Guide in order to try and address this trend, and ensure that both young people and charities are able to access the information necessary so that we can create the next generation of young trustees.

In 2015, I teamed up with the Charities Aid Foundation to compile a best practice guide about young trustees.  

The publication covers a whole range of potential solutions to the 'problems' that both I and other young trustees have identified (and in many cases, personally experienced).

I spoke at two events during ‘fundraising week’ in April 2016. And at each event, I was asked about how operational staff can get trustees more involved in what they're doing without crossing the lines of governance.