Rules and Regulations | 2018/19

Rules and Regulations Charity and Not-for-Profit Newsletter | Winter 2018/19

Best in Class Technology for Charity

Charities and Cyber Security

Technology tends to advance at a rapid pace, so we’ve covered some great tools and apps to help make your charity productive.

Statistics show that one in five charities suffered a breach this year.

Find out in our article tips for best practice on how to avoid these incidents.

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Funding for Charity Property Purchase and Improvements Are you struggling to obtain funding for your charity shop or place of work? A recent survey showed property is becoming a hindrance.

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Contents

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Welcome and Partners

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Special Feature Best in Class Technology for Charity

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Raffingers Foundation - Our Highlights

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Charities and Cyber Security

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Employee Spotlight

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Charity Annual Return Update 2018

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Budget 2018: What Your Charity Needs to Know

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Funding for Charity Property Purchase and Improvements

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Welcome to our WINTER Newsletter Welcome to the winter edition of our Charity and Not-for-Profit Newsletter. This quarter, we are pleased to bring you all of the latest news and insights from the sector.

At times, charities tend to fall behind when it comes to implementing new technology. These technologies have the potential to make a charity more productive, encourage collaborative working and even raise more funds. Most charities would blame the lack of time and resources to implement the technology, however on page 4 we’ve rounded up some great, valuable resources that you can start using.

Raffingers had the opportunity to collaborate with the Fraud Advisory Panel during ‘Charity Fraud Awareness Week’. We held an event which focused on how charities can improve their cyber security and have mentioned tips for best practice on page 8.

Reporting your finances to the Charity Commission shouldn’t be a pain, but with the release of the new annual return update, some charities may be confused as to what information is necessary to submit. We share the details on page 9.

That is all for now! We wish you a successful and prosperous 2019. Please feel free to contact us on any of the topics mentioned in this newsletter.

As always, if you would like to be featured in our next edition or have any suggestions for topics that you would like to see discussed, please get in touch with Ingrid on ingrid.beya@raffingers.co.uk.

The Partners at Raffingers

Raffingers Partners Gary Inglis Managing Partner gary.inglis@raffingers.co.uk

Andrew Coney Partner andrew.coney@raffingers.co.uk

Lee Manning Partner lee.manning@raffingers.co.uk

Adam Moody Partner adam.moody@raffingers.co.uk

Suda Ratnam Partner suda.ratnam@raffingers.co.uk

Barry Soraff Partner barry.soraff@raffingers.co.uk

Paul Dell Partner paul.dell@raffingers.co.uk

Roy Butcher Partner roy.butcher@raffingers.co.uk

Neill Staff Partner neill.staff@raffingers.co.uk

Your Business Our Passion

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Best in Class Technology for Charity SPECIAL FEATURE

In the last few years, there have been rapid advances in cloud accounting services, marketing automation, I.T, technology, and more that can make an impact on your charity and not-for-profit.

In this special feature we have concluded some of the best tools available that can make a great difference to your productivity, cyber security and fundraising efforts. Most of the tools mentioned are free to use or have a special discounted rate, especially for charities.

Fundraising

This online fundraising platform allows users to shop at multiple retail stores and raise free funds for charity.

‘Give as you live’ is free for charities to register with and there are over 4,100 retailers to partner with.

Accounting and Finance

GoodBox produces machines that accept contactless card payments. This makes receiving donations efficient and quick. The company has two machines which are portable and have an LCD screen to display branding.

This cloud accounting tool will make your charity compliant with Making Tax Digital (MTD). It gives a clear overview of finances and can even combine with payroll software to make paying your team easier.

Productivity

Office 365 is widely used and one great feature about this web-based subscription service is the fact that your charity can select only the programmes you need to be more productive. Charities also receive a huge discount.

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Google Drive is absolutely free and is a great platform to store work online.

Documents are automatically backed up, which is convenient when working on-the-go. It’s also great for collaborative work.

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Trello is a leading webbased project management application that can be used on a desktop, tablet or phone.

It has functions where you can assign member to tasks, set deadline reminders and upload attachments.

Marketing

Canva is an online design platform that enables users to create graphics. Your charity can make great images for social media and design banners for your social media channels. This platform is completely free.

Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that can post your content automatically.

It has its own ‘Analytics’ section built in, so you can see which of your posts are top performers. It’s free but 50% off premium plan.

Not only is Facebook a great platform for spreading your charity’s message, but it has functions dedicated to helping your organisation raise money. Facebook has a “Donate” button as well as other charitable giving tools.

This is a WordPress plug-in that helps to improve the SEO of your website and meta data. The tool is free to install and even allows you to see a preview of how your content will look like before publishing.

MailChimp is a great email platform that comes with pre-set templates for campaigns. It’s free if you have less than 2,000 subscribers (15% discount available after).

Can integrate with social media.

I.T Want to find out more about some of the great pieces of technology mentioned?

Go to our website and visit our ‘Knowledge Hub’ where we have a detailed description of these apps.

This is the UK’s only technology donation program where your charity can purchase heavilydiscounted I.T products.

Registration only requires your charity number and you get access to big brands.

Just search for the ‘Best in Class Technology for Charity’ document.

For more information, please contact: Suda Ratnam 020 3146 1608 suda.ratnam@raffingers.co.uk

Your Business Our Passion

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Raffingers Foundation Our Highlights

£20,000 We want to say thank you for your continued support in helping us to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund (PCRF) and Ovarian Cancer Action (OCA).

Raised so far

This year has been a fantastic one for Raffingers Foundation and we cannot express our gratitude enough to clients, team, family and friends.

In addition to our major events (Charity Ball and Golf Day) we’ve been able to raise money through smaller initiatives such as our Fantasy Premier League, selling pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and the World Cup sweepstake. We managed to raise £70 for our Christmas Jumper Day and £50 from our Halloween cake sale.

Our team has been great when it comes to getting involved.

In December, some volunteered their time during the weekend to collect money at train stations around London. Some colleagues will even be taking on the challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in 2019 to raise some funds.

If you would like to get involved or to donate, please visit:

www.raffingers.co.uk/community

You are cordially invited to our

Masquerade Charity Ball Saturday 2 November 2019 Woolston Manor, Chigwell, IG7 6BX 6.30pm - 11.30pm Tickets: £60 per person

£580 for table of 10

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Raffingers Foundation in Pictures We just wanted to share some of our best moments from fundraising and acknowledge all the people who have given their time, money and energy into raising money for a great cause.

December 2018

October 2018

September 2018

Everyone dressed to impress for our official Christmas Jumper Day.

The team getting their spook-on in their halloween outfits.

Our annual charity ball where we had a magician and live band.

July 2018

February 2018

Our annual Golf Day with some of our wonderful clients.

Mukesh frying some delicious pancakes for the team!

Raffingers Foundation has been able to achieve so much with your support, from being able to give away £15,000 at our cheque-giving last year to raising awareness through our events. The money raised will go far in helping those affected by ovarian and pancreatic cancer. One thing we’re very proud of is being able to offer support directly and we did that this year by donating funds to help a young woman whose father had passed from pancreatic cancer.

To purchase tickets, sponsor our events, donate items or advertise, contact:

Lauren Kelly, Marketing Manager 020 3146 1695 | lauren.kelly@raffingers.co.uk

Your Business Our Passion

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BLOG

Charities and Cyber Security

Charities are not safe from cyber criminals. The UK government highlighted the threat to charities, with the previous Digital Minister, Matt Hancock commenting: “Charities must do better to protect the sensitive data they hold …”

GDPR has gone some way to improve the processes surrounding data protection and, according to the Information Commissioner, people’s confidence in organisations that hold their data has increased slightly.

The British Airways attack may undermine this. The Information Commissioner will need to decide whether British Airways has conformed to the ‘data protection by design and by default’ requirement. This could be a landmark decision. The criminals who carried out the attack had set up specialist technology infrastructure that was tailored to exploit British Airways’ IT. If the Information Commissioner decides that British Airways should have considered this scenario and protected against it, then the bar for GDPR compliance will be raised significantly.

Charities are also not safe from insider threats. A study by Vanson Bourne on behalf of the data security company Clearswift found that 74% of cyber incidents happen within organisations. The most common successful attack is through emails containing malware. Training people within your charities about how to spot these emails is essential.

• Understand and assess the threats and risks to your business • Use Cyber Essentials 5-key defence tactics to implement a secure environment • Boundary firewalls and internet gateways in good working order • Secure configuration of hardware and software in use • Manage access control of devices and data • Ensure you have up to date Malware protection • Patch management and software updates are part of an automated and audited process • Secure your data both in the office and whilst on the move • Make sure data in the cloud is secure and that your cloud supplier has adequate security in place.

Consider availability of critical data held in the cloud • Regular back-ups supported by formal disaster recovery policies that are fully tested • Train your staff to be aware and alert to cyber threats • Stay alert!

• Ensure you have adequate service level agreements with third-party suppliers and internal providers of support

Other vulnerabilities include; weak passwords, personal mobile phones being added to an organisation’s network with inadequate screening and performing confidential work on public wi-fi networks.

By Guest Contributor

The whole philosophy of cyber-crime prevention has changed from building more complex defences to assuming attacks will come and making sure that organisations have the appropriate means of neutralising them or dealing with them quickly.

Tim Anderson is a Senior Consultant at Blue Saffron where they provide managed communications and I.T systems. Tim is responsible for the not-for-profit clients and has helped many charities to improve their funding and donation activity. For enquiries, contact Tim on tim. anderson@bluesaffron.com or 0844 560 0202.

So, what can you do to protect your organisation?

The ICO provides a useful 10 step guide toward cyber security which includes:

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Tim Anderson

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT

Charity Annual Return Update 2018 The Charity Annual Return update has now come into full effect.

Ingrid N. Beya Digital Marketing Executive In this slot we introduce you to a valued member of our team, allowing you to put a face to a name. This quarter we speak to our Digital Marketing Executive, Ingrid N. Beya.

Name: Ingrid N. Beya Email: ingrid.beya@raffingers.co.uk Career: I obtained an International Business degree from the University of Hull in 2014. One of my favourite modules was marketing and I really enjoyed creating strategic plans and researching trends, hence why I decided to make it a career.

After graduation I worked in sales and marketing for a security company in Canary Wharf, did some freelance work with SMEs, presented marketing workshops and eventually found my way to Raffingers in 2017. I would say my current role as a Digital Marketing Executive is fun, I get to be creative and I love the autonomy that I have over my work. To become better at my role, I’m studying a Digital Diploma in Professional Marketing with the CIM and hope to graduate in 2019.

Interests: I am extremely passionate about my home country, D.R. Congo, and have fundraised for causes including education for children, healthcare and activists that have been wrongly imprisoned.

In October I was also fortunate enough to be a speaker during ‘Congo week’ where I discussed how entrepreneurship can help with sustainability.

I’m a firm believer in doing activities outside your comfort zone for personal growth; this has led me to climbing (and nearly falling down!) Ben Nevis, travelling abroad alone, participating in a pageant and public speaking.

Partners Report: You will often find Ingrid gazing at one of the Partners on her computer screen, but fear not, she is simply editing Raffingers’ videos. Since starting at Raffingers Ingrid has taken on responsibility for raising the profile of Raffingers online and has done an incredible job - just check out our social media platforms. Ingrid is an integral part of the team at Raffingers and we are lucky to have her.

In a previous article I wrote about the planned changes in January. I highlighted that The Charity Commission had decided to ask about certain information such as salaries and benefits to increase accountability. The Charity Commission will not publish details of benefits given to the paid member of staff on the public register.

The Charity Commission has also decided to ask charities about overseas income and expenditure.

The reason behind this is “all money transfer processes bear risks, and it’s important that charities take appropriate steps to manage these”.

Some charities will need to make changes to the way they keep records to answer some of the questions relating to overseas income and expenditure. The Charity Commission is aiming to be more reasonable with this and made this optional for 2018 but mandatory from 2019. This will allow charities breathing space to make the necessary changes to their accounting system to answer these questions.

The Charity Commission had given charities and not-for-profits advance notice so that they can start preparing for the return beforehand. This is mainly because they have recognised that some of the questions require additional information which the charities may have to start collating during the year. Some charities will also need to make changes to their financial systems to collect and sort the information easily.

The good news is that The Charity Commission has now dropped plans to ask charities about whether they claim Gift Aid. To get a more detailed view on the new questions being asked, the Charity Commission has published a document, and this also includes information on whether information pertaining to that question will appear on the public register.

For more information, contact: Barry Soraff 020 3146 1603 barry.soraff@raffingers.co.uk

Your Business Our Passion

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Budget 2018 What Your Charity Needs to Know On Monday 29 October 2018, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the Budget. Whilst there had been some effort to announce changes that could ultimately benefit different areas of the charity and not-for-profit sector, it appears that there is a lack of any longterm strategy surrounding investment.

Here is a summary of what was mentioned in the Budget.

Charity Taxes

funding in England available to them.

The government will also introduce an exemption for the purpose-built vehicles operated by Blood Bikes from April 2020.

Food waste There is also a commitment to eradicate food waste. 50 million meals’ worth of edible food is wasted annually and so the government will provide £15million to charities to distribute the excess food.

The government aims to reduce the administrative burdens on charities by introducing new measures, effective from April 2019. One change is the increase in the upper limit for trading that charities can carry out without incurring a tax liability. This means that for charities whose turnover is under £20,000, the upper limit will now increase from £5,000 to £8,000. For charities whose turnover exceeds £200,000 the upper limit will increase from £50,000 to £80,000.

Community

Another change is that charity shops using the Retail Gift Aid Scheme will only have to send letters to donors every three years when their goods raise less than £20 a year, rather than every tax year.

There is also £10million available to support the mental health of veterans. This funding will be available during the centenary of the First World War Armistice, in memory of the men and women who made sacrifices.

The government also aims to increase the individual donation limit under the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme to £30. This will mostly apply to small collections where it is impractical to obtain a Gift Aid declaration.

Emergency Services The government aims to extend its support to air ambulance trusts by making £10million of capital

The chancellor announced that it will aim to support communities to help them with local assets and commemorate the First World War and the Holocaust.

The three main areas of interest include Village halls, Miners’ Welfare facilities and Armed Forces organisations’ facilities. The government will provide up to £8million to help with the cost of repairs and alterations.

For more information, please contact: Lee Manning 020 3146 1604 lee.manning@raffingers.co.uk

Many of our nation’s village halls were built to commemorate the sacrifice of WW1 and many are being refurbished to commemorate the centenary.

- Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond

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Funding for Charity Property Purchase and Improvements A recent survey of 474 charities surveyed for Charity Property Matters paint a disappointing picture. More than a third of the charities (36%) surveyed believe that property possesses a high risk to their organisation. 30% of charities surveyed have said that property is a barrier to delivering their charitable objectives.

The report also highlighted the fact that 2/3 of the charities do not have a strategic property plan.

Unfortunately, this finding confirms our experience working with the sector. We find that the charities we work with don’t have the expertise either at the trustee level or within the organisation. Often the charities relied on help from outside sources. The survey found, 41% had no one specifically responsible for property within the organisation, 27% have experienced unforeseen property costs and 44% do not report regularly on property to trustees. The survey also found, nearly a third do not have complete records of the property they own or rent.

The big change this year, compared to the previous surveys, is the higher proportion of charities now leasing property from private landlords or a commercial body.

This creates additional problems to charities when renovating or upgrading a leased property. The lenders are reluctant to lend for upgrades or renovation. Recently a charity which had a 25-year lease found it very hard to borrow to upgrade its centre, the charity eventually raised the finance by organising fundraising events and donations.

Caron Bradshaw, CEO of Charity Finance Group, said “The findings make for sobering reading, with property being an increasing concern for our members, both financially and in terms of the risk it poses to their organisation”.

Antonia Swinson, CEO Ethical Property Foundation, commenting on the survey results said, “Property can make the difference between effective social mission delivery and a miserable time for everyone”.

Our experience working in this sector is that charities with a property loan have had issues with both obtaining additional funding for improvements and moving to a better loan funding than the current agreement. We have seen instances where charities were tied into a longer-term agreement than an equivalent commercial lending agreement.

The Charity Property Matters survey was undertaken by the leading property advice charity, The Ethical Property Foundation in partnership with the Charity Commission.

It is a bi-annual survey that has been published since 2012.

For more information, please contact: Roy Butcher 020 3146 1607 roy.butcher@raffingers.co.uk

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