Encourage and grow regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme
The Parish Giving Scheme is an excellent way to encourage greater generosity within your church. PGS offers significant benefits compared to other forms of giving:
- Givers can choose to automatically increase their giving by the rate of inflation every year if they wish. This tackles the problem of ‘static giving’, where people’s giving ordinarily remains the same year on year, while the costs of the church rise continually, due to inflation.
- Gift aid is automatically processed every month, reducing admin for church volunteers and improving cash flow.
- Givers can choose to give anonymously, if they would like to.
- Adopting the scheme as part of a generous giving strategy often leads to an increase in giving.
As at January 2021, over 320 parishes in our diocese, from across both rural and urban backgrounds, have signed up to the scheme – more than any other diocese in the country!
To find out more about how the Parish Giving Scheme could help your church, watch the two films below – or scroll down to the Further Information section at the bottom of this page where you can also find the registration form for your church to join the scheme.
If you are an existing donor wanting to make changes to your direct debit, please contact the Parish Giving Scheme directly on 0333 002 1260 or by email on info@parishgiving.org.uk
Introducing the Scheme
Case study: implementing the Scheme
Case study: St Luke, Erleigh Road
Telephone registrations
From Monday 27th April PGS will be launching a telephone registration service. This will allow new donors to ring PGS directly to set up their Direct Debit over the phone instead of having to post a physical form (paper forms will remain an option).
The new number for this service is 0333 002 1271.
When someone rings to set up their donation they will need to make sure they have their bank details to hand. They will also need the name of their church and the church’s PGS registration number. This is the number which you would normally include on the paper forms and which starts with 2706…
Calls will usually last around fifteen minutes and donors will still be able to set up Gift Aid (if they want to) and will still have the option to increase their gift by the annual rate of inflation.
Read the full PGS press release here.
PDF Donations Forms
As well as the new telephone registration service PGS have also released a PDF version of the Direct Debit form. This new form can be uploaded to your website or emailed to your congregants, allowing them to print and fill-in the form at home without the need for you to get a physical form to them. The form will still need to be posted to PGS.
You can see an example of the form here. If you would like a copy please email generosity@oxford.anglican.org to request one.
Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) Eligibility
In any tax year GASDS eligibility is 10 times the amount of donations for which the church submits a Gift Aid claim to HMRC. This excludes donations received through the Parish Giving Scheme so to be eligible for GASDS all PGS churches will need to submit at least one direct Gift Aid claim each tax year.
To be able to claim the maximum amount of GASDS (£8,000) the church will need to submit a claim for Gift Aid on £800 of donations (800 x 10 = £8,000).