We are always extremely grateful when churches choose to support our work.  While the process for donating as an individual rarely requires explanation, there are a number of different ways of doing so as a church. This guide aims to help Ministers, Treasurers, or Stewards understand the options.

When choosing how to donate, we ask that you keep the following in mind:

• It is very useful to know where money is coming from, and what it was given in response to. This helps our monitoring and planning.
• The less staff time we need to dedicate to processing donations on our end, the more time and resources can be spent on other charitable activities.
• Of donations that are eligible for gift aid, we want to maximise what we can claim so we can provide more support to our local partners.

Collecting Donations

Service Collections

The most common way of raising money for All We Can is through collections from church services. This is the ideal process for doing so:

• Ahead of your service, order our bespoke giving envelopes and put these on chairs before the service or hand them to people on their way in. These easily allow people to sign up to a regular gift as well as a one-off donation, allow us to collect gift aid information, and can be kept available for people to respond outside of a particular service. 
• At the relevant point in the service, encourage people to (a) place any cash donations in the envelopes or fill in their bank details and (b) fill in the personal details section to enable us to claim gift aid.
• After the service, collect in the envelopes and either (a) post them to us unopened, or (b) count the cash yourselves and send it to us in one lump sum in one of the methods outlined below, while still posting us the filled-in giving envelopes to enable us to claim gift aid and process card donations.

In the absence of giving envelopes, you could still print out a gift aid declaration form that those who donate can fill in. This can then be posted or scanned to us alongside a lump sum donation.

Fundraising Events

If you are undertaking a fundraising challenge as a church, or are fundraising for us throughout a year, it may be beneficial to set up a JustGiving Page for your fundraising efforts at justgiving.com/AllWeCan to make it easy to accept online donations and track your donations.

If you are holding a one-off fundraising event, the same principles apply as for a collection, but a gift aid declaration form will generally be more practical than giving envelopes if your interactions with people are likely to be shorter.

Keep in mind that gift aid cannot be claimed when a service is received in return for a donation (e.g. tickets/admission cost for a fundraising event) but can be claimed when voluntary donations are made at an event.

Sending Donations

Bank Transfer

This is the preferred method as it requires the least admin 

If you do not already have our bank details, please email info@allwecan.org.uk to receive them and then store this information for future reference.

Please also email us with the name of your church, how much you have transferred, whether the donation is restricted (e.g. for an emergency appeal) and - if possible - the reason for the donation (e.g. responding to an ask made in an email, using an All We Can resource, spoke to a team member at an event).

Cheque

Please make cheques out to 'The Methodist Relief and Development Fund' and post them to Methodist Church House, 25 Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SF 

As above, alongside the cheque, please let us know the name of your church, how much you have transferred, whether the donation is restricted (e.g. for an emergency appeal) and - if possible - the reason for the donation.

Cash

This is the least preferred option but we understand it is necessary and convenient on occasion. Please securely post the cash to the address above with the same relevant information.