The online shops pay cash donations to TheGivingMachine™. These donations come from the budgeted commissions that the retailers pay to increase their online sales. We then ensure that these donations are distributed to you on behalf of your supporting Givers.

All of the participating online shops on our site have agreed to pay a commission in the form of a cash donation every time they click on a shop’s link and buy a qualifying product from them. If Givers do not access the online shop via our links on TheGivingMachine™, then the donation will not be triggered and their nominated charities and/or schools will not get a donation.

Typically, an online shop will be donating in the region of 4-5% of the total bill to participating charities and schools. A small charge for administration will be incurred on each transaction to facilitate, collect and re-distribute the cash donations Givers generate to their chosen charities & schools. Our promise is to ensure that these costs of fundraising (currently 25% of commissions received) are comparable to the UK charities average. As we grow we will be able to reduce these charges to well below the UK average.

As an example, if a Giver purchased an item at £100 via a link on TheGivingMachine™, we would expect to get around £5*, £3.75 of which would be re-distributed on their behalf to their specified charities and/or schools.

*(Please remember that that online shops set what commissions/donations they are prepared to pay so these numbers may go up or down in practice)

If you represent a charity or school that would like to participate, you can join us quickly, easily and most importantly for free. Click on the left hand menu ’Setup Charity/School Account’ link.

The online shops generally specify that their payments will take between 30 and 60 days to reach us and these donations are received monthly. To keep our administration costs to a minimum, we plan to re-distribute all donations at the end of every month provided they exceed £25. Where donations are less than £25 we will hold them until the total exceeds £25 when they will be distributed.

One reason that the online shop takes so long to pay commissions is that it provides for returns of any faulty goods. In the event that a sale is reversed, the online shop can deduct a previously paid commission off the next month’s payments to TheGivingMachine™. We will do likewise.

In the unlikely event that we cannot immediately match a donation with a specific user and their account, we will investigate the transaction and use our best endeavours to allocate it correctly..

We allocate funds to whatever beneficiaries are assigned by each individual Giver at the time of the transaction with the retailers.

Although we are often adding retailers to the site, some retailers change their marketing strategies from time to time. We therefore have to remove them from our site at these times.

Gift aid can be claimed when a UK tax payer donates to their charity and the charity can claim back tax paid on the income being donated. However, in our case, the monies being donated are not originated from Givers (UK taxpayers) but are sales commissions that have been earned by TheGivingMachine. Therefore, it is TheGivingMachine Ltd. making the donations in accordance with the wishes of Givers and therefore donations are not eligible for Gift Aid.

On 25th June 2009 we upgraded our Charity Donation Report to give you a clearer picture of what donations are coming your way and how many Givers you have supporting you. You can now see donations pending payment from the retailers, along with your balalnce and what has been paid to you.

We know that this updated report took some time to complete. We were about to complete the work a few months ago and then one of our partners changed the way they sent us retailer data. While their report was now improved, it meant that we had to redesign what we were doing. Hey ho, these things happen and we’re pleased to be able to finally have this item complete.