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Ideas for charities to encourage your key audiences
to donate their money back to your charity

The secret source of charitable donations

Join thousands of people who've discovered how Cleversquirrel can get you money back on your pensions, investments, life insurance and healthcare policies, for free. Then do something clever and give some or all of it to charity. Find out how it works at www.cleversquirrel.com/moneyback.

The free way to donate money to charity... if you follow this simple plan

If you want to give money to charity, you'll love Cleversquirrel. With Cleversquirrel, you can donate money, for free.

Cleversquirrel unearths money you may not know you had. There's literally tens of millions of pounds of it available each year.

Hidden in many pension, investment, life insurance and healthcare policies are charges that can be claimed by an adviser. But if you don't have an adviser for your policy, you're paying for something and getting nothing in return. Your money stays with the financial institution and cannot be cancelled or refunded. Cleversquirrel reclaims these charges and gives you the money back. All it takes is one signature from you.

In these difficult financial times, Cleversquirrel gives you a fantastic opportunity to support your favourite charity, without having to put your hand in your pocket. You can give some or all of your money back to charity, either directly through your charity's website, or through one of the major donation collection agencies such as JustGiving, Bmycharity or Virgin Money Giving.

Your donation can be boosted by Gift Aid. That increases your money by 25% and until 2011, the Government will add a further 3%. If you donate money back of £80, your favourite charity will receive £102.56. And if you pay tax at the highest rate, you'll qualify for a tax rebate worth £20. Truly 'money back for charity' and 'money back for you'.

It takes a great deal of time and effort to make Cleversquirrel work. So it might surprise you to learn that Cleversquirrel gives you 75% of all the money back it claims from your provider. Not just this year. For as long as you maintain your policy, which could be very many years. It could add up to quite a tidy sum. And that's got to be good for charity too.

Please go to www.cleversquirrel.com/moneyback. See how it works. Request a claim form and list your policies for checking. And if you're one of the lucky ones to get some money back, please think about giving some or all of it to charity.

Here's a basic article for editing

If you want to give money to our charity without having to find any more cash, the Fundraising team may have found the answer. Cleversquirrel unearths money you may not know you had and there's literally tens of millions of pounds available each year. In exchange for a few minutes of your time, you could be eligible for money back, not just now, but for years into the future as well.

Hidden in many investment, pension and insurance policies are charges that can be claimed by an adviser. If you don't have an adviser for your policy, this money stays with the financial institution and cannot be cancelled or refunded.

All it takes is one signature from you. You tell Cleversquirrel which policies you'd like checked and they contact your provider to see how much money is hidden in your policy. They claim it from now on and give 75% of the money back to you, with the balance being retained to fund the cost of their service.

Obviously, this is 'free money' and you can give some or all of it to our charity. Gift Aid will boost your donation by 25% together with an additional 3% until April 2011.

It's all explained at www.cleversquirrel.com/moneyback. We think this is such an innovative and cost-free fundraising scheme, we'll be placing banners on our existing web pages and social media accounts (list in here Facebook, MySpace etc if you have them) to raise awareness of this new fundraising tool to as wide an audience as possible.

For those of us using social media, it would be great if we could do the same on our own pages. Cleversquirrel provides some free banners we can all download from their website.

This might seem too good to be true but it isn't really. The key point is the money has already been paid for the advice. Where advice isn't being given, Cleversquirrel is simply recovering it, and by informing our key audiences, we'll be doing them a favour. In turn, they may choose to favour us.

We've taken a good look and believe it could help us to secure the future of the services we provide. (You may want to describe a specific project or service here, or simply mention it'll help us secure the future of the services we provide, if it's more relevant.)

But, it won't work unless we as team members get behind the idea and can show our supporters we're leading from the front. After all, if we can't spend just a little time claiming money back on our own policies to generate some free donations, why would anyone else?

Actual case studies - each one represents a different policyholder with one or more policies

Here's a summary of the potential donations available from a personal pension

Here's a typical example showing money back available from a Personal Pension that could be converted into donations. It generates long term income for no extra money.

pension

Here's the technical bit. In some pensions, money back can be generated monthly, based on the amount saved or the value of the fund. In almost all pensions, a one-off adviser charge is levied when the fund is exchanged for an annuity, to provide the retirement income. That produces more money back. Donations of £6,300 are generated from a 35 year old earning an average wage of £24,000, saving under £30 per week before tax relief, retiring at 65. The savings rise at 3% per year and the fund grows at 4% per year net.