E-vouchers and printable vouchers are charged at the face value of the voucher/s plus a handling fee of £1.20 per voucher.
Posted voucher-cards are charged at the face value of the voucher/s plus a printing/handling fee of £1.95 per voucher. There is also a one-off fee of £1.15 per order for postage and packing. Note: We cannot post orders to addresses outside the UK.
Our fees help us to cover our costs. This means we don’t need to take any commission on voucher donations when they are sent to charities. As a result, when vouchers are redeemed, 100% of the value of the voucher is given to the charity. We are a not-for-profit company which means we pass on as much money as possible to the charities we were set up to help. For more information about how we cover our costs, please see the FAQ question in the ‘General Questions’ section : “How is the Charity Vouchers service funded?
We offer a wide range of vouchers from £15 upwards: £15, £20, £25, £30, £35, £40, £50, £60, £70, £75, £80, £90, £100, £150, £200, £250, £500. We regret that we are no longer able to offer vouchers in denominations below £15, even for large orders.
You can order online using this website, or by calling us on Freephone 0800 652 3185 or 01328 730530.
Our office hours are – Monday to Friday: 9am – 5pm
E-vouchers and Printable vouchers can be ordered at any time and are issued automatically.
E-vouchers are the same concept as our standard vouchers but are for sending by email to the recipient. The email is sent to the buyer first, to add their own message and then they ‘forward’ it to the recipient at the time of their choosing.
The email displays the occasion-image chosen by the buyer from our range, for example a ‘Happy Birthday’ image, and below that is the image of the Charity Voucher. All the recipient needs to do in order to redeem it is to click on the link below the images. The link takes them to the online-donation page of our website. The voucher number and value are automatically filled in.
To see an example e-voucher click here.
E-vouchers have several advantages over our posted vouchers and cards:
- E-vouchers can be ordered at any time – not just during our office hours
- E-vouchers are usually issued immediately after the order has been placed. (The voucher will usually come immediately but, occasionally, can take a few minutes).
- You can add your own message to the recipient onto the email, which means that the voucher keeps that ‘personal’ feel
- Easy donating means that vouchers can be given to the charities very quickly, so they can start ‘making a difference’ very quickly too.
- For friends and family overseas, e-vouchers are both faster and cheaper to send than our posted vouchers. Then, coupled with our online donating, anyone anywhere in the world can donate the voucher to a UK charity straight away.
- E-vouchers are a truly sustainable, green gift because, of course, almost no physical resources are consumed.
- Last but not least, because we don’t have any printing and posting costs, e-vouchers work out significantly cheaper than vouchers sent by post.
To buy e-vouchers, simply go through the normal steps to buy a voucher and you will be asked which format you would like to order: posted voucher, print-your-own voucher or e-voucher.
Printable Vouchers are the same concept as our standard vouchers except that we email you a voucher (in an A4 foldable ‘card’ format) to print out yourself.
To buy printable vouchers, simply go through the normal steps to buy a voucher and, at the end, you will be asked which format you would like to order: posted voucher, printable voucher or e-voucher.
The voucher is sent in an Adobe ‘.pdf’ format – so almost all computers will be able to open it very easily. To see an example printable voucher, or to confirm that your computer can open ‘pdf’ files, please click here.
Printable vouchers have some real advantages over our standard vouchers-cards:
- Printable vouchers can be ordered at any time – not just during our office hours
- They are great last-minute gifts because orders are usually processed, and the vouchers sent out, as soon as the order has been placed. This means they can be printed out and given to the recipient straight away! (The voucher will usually come immediately but, occasionally, can take a few minutes).
- You can still write your own message inside the ‘card’ which means that the voucher keeps that ‘personal’ feel
- The finished, folded voucher and ‘card’ look great and, if you have photo-quality paper and print at ‘photo-quality’, they look and feel better still.
- They are a truly green and sustainable gift because, of course, almost no physical resources are consumed.
- Last but not least, because we don’t have any printing and posting costs, printable vouchers work out significantly cheaper than vouchers sent by post.
Posted Vouchers
We process most orders on the day we get them. All standard orders are sent by Royal Mail 1st Class post.
We regret that we are not able to post orders to addresses outside the United Kingdom.
For last-minute orders, we can add your message to cards and then send them directly to the recipient on your behalf. To do this, just order in the normal way and then follow the instructions on the ‘Checkout’ page.
For higher-value orders we can offer express delivery services. Please contact us for details.
Printable and E-vouchers
Printables and e-vouchers will normally be issued to you by email within a few minutes of ordering. This is done automatically, so orders can be placed at any time, day or night.
Forwarding E-vouchers: In many email programmes it is clear how to change the subject line in a forwarded email. However, in some others, such as Gmail and Yahoo! it is not quite so clear.
Gmail: To forward the email, click on the three dots in the top right of the email (‘more’), and then click on ‘Forward’. To the left of the word ‘To’ there is a small down arrow. Click this to come to an option ‘Edit subject’. Click this to change the subject line of the email to your preferred wording.
Yahoo: To forward the email, click the large arrow pointing to the right at the bottom of the email. To the left of the word ‘To’ there is a small down arrow. Click this to come to an option ‘Edit subject’. Click this to change the subject line of the email to your preferred wording.
Usually, vouchers are issued immediately but occasionally they can take a little while to arrive. If you haven’t received your voucher within ten minutes of the order being placed it can mean that we the order has been issued but that our email to you has been filtered out by your email programme. Please check the Junk, Spam and Deleted folders. If the voucher is there it can usually just be ‘dragged’ back to the Inbox and used in the normal way.
If you have ordered more than one voucher, each one is issued on a separate email. Occasionally some vouchers will be delivered straight to your inbox immediately but one or more of the others may be delayed for a few minutes, or even get filtered to your spam – despite being identical to the ones which came straight to the inbox!
In the unlikely event that all the vouchers you ordered have not come through after ten minutes, and they are not in your spam or junk folders, please contact us and we will be glad to help resolve the problem.
We are glad to say that, in practice, these situations are rare, and most customers receive their vouchers as soon as their order is being placed, without any problems.
We want you to be happy with every aspect of with the Charity Vouchers service. In the unlikely event that you have any complaints or problems at all with your order, please contact us and we’ll always do our best to resolve them.
If you are still unhappy with your order or if you wish to cancel it for any other reason at all and no vouchers have been donated, simply contact us within 21 days of receipt, for a full, no-quibble refund. As long as any vouchers have not been used, we will cancel the voucher codes issued to you and refund the full value of the order back to the original payment card, including any postage and / or administration fees.
Regrettably, we cannot post orders to addresses outside the United Kingdom.
2 Donating Vouchers
Charity Vouchers can be given to any UK Registered Charity. Click here to see a list of just some of the thousands of charities you can choose from.
The vast majority of charitable organisations are registered but if you wish to check on a particular organisation please search the register for the relevant area using the following links: Charity Commission for England & Wales, Scottish Charities Register, Northern Ireland Register of Charities.
Regrettably, we cannot make payments to charities registered outside the United Kingdom. We are not able to make payments to charities in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. We also cannot make donations to Community Interest Companies (CICs) or other Social Enterpises which are not registered as charities. Regrettably, we are also not able to make payments through a personal fundraising page of a donation platform like JustGiving or CrowdFunder.
We will always try to make payment to a donor’s chosen Registered Charity if possible. Occasionally there can be problems doing this, for example where a charity no longer exists or where there is more than one charity with a similar name. Consequently, we advise all donors to provide contact details in case of any query about making the donation to their chosen cause. If there is a problem we will ask the donor for clarification and occasionally we may have to ask the donor to choose an alternative organisation. In the event that we do not have contact details for the donor, and we are unable to make a donation to the cause named for any reason, then our staff will use their discretion to make a payment to a Registered Charity whose area of activity seems the closest fit to the cause nominated.
Restrictions on use of Charity Vouchers.
Charity Vouchers are only for use as donations. They cannot be used in exchange for goods or services provided by charities.
Vouchers of £30 or over may be split between two charities, as long as the value of the donation to any individual charity is not less than £15. We restrict this to two charities because of the additional time it takes to process each separate donation and also to avoid making relatively small donations (i.e. £10 or less) to charities. We also ask that you make both donations simultaneously so that we avoid having ‘partially donated’ vouchers on our database.
If you would like to split a voucher in this way please call us on our Freephone number (0800 652 3185) instead of using our online service, and we will be glad to take all the information required in order to process your request.
The vast majority of payments are made by direct bank transfer as it is fast, easy, secure and cost-effective. Charities are then notified by email of any payments made in this way, including telling them when the voucher was redeemed and the unique voucher number the donation relates to. (The donor’s details are not passed on to the charity, unless this has been specifically requested by the donor).
If it is not possible to make the payment by bank transfer we will usually go to a charity’s website and use the method for donation recommended there – usually either an in-house donation service or one using a third-party donation platform. However, we avoid doing this wherever possible because, even though we are making a payment to the charity for 100% of the value of the voucher, the charity usually incurs fees/charges in receiving the donation which reduces the final value to the charity. Very occasionally, in the absence of more suitable options, payments may be made by cheque.
Most payments to charities for donated vouchers are made within ten working days of a voucher being donated, and often much quicker. As soon as payment has been made our Check a Voucher database is updated so that the donor can see that the donation has been sent to the charity chosen.
The standard Charity Vouchers are valid for one year from the date of purchase: a ‘valid until’ date is printed on the front of each voucher. However, the sooner vouchers are used, the sooner the money can be put to good use by the charities!
If you have an unused voucher which has expired, please contact us as we are usually able to reset the expiry date for you, although we cannot guarantee to be able to do so in every case.
If you were given a voucher but have misplaced it, we are will always be happy for you to ask the person who gave it to you to contact us and we will normally be able to reissue the voucher. There is no charge for doing this.
As with all gift vouchers, some Charity Vouchers we sell will never get used – sometimes they get lost or forgotten about. However, we do everything we can to keep this number to a minimum by making it as easy as possible to donate vouchers by offering: online redeeming (via a mobile phone, tablet or PC), a ‘Freephone’ number to redeem by phone, and options to donate by post or by giving vouchers direct to the chosen charity, so that they can redeem the voucher themselves. Our posted vouchers and printable vouchers also include a QR code to take users straight to the donation page of our website.
For Charity Vouchers which do expire without being donated, their cash value is used to help fund the running of the not-for-profit Charity Vouchers service, alongside income from our processing fees. Without these sources of income it would not be viable to run the company and, in turn, would not be possible to make the money for charities which the Charity Vouchers service generates, and which is so badly needed in these challenging times.
16/12/22 – Expiry date error
A small number of posted vouchers issued before 13th December had an incorrect expiry date on them. If the vouchers you ordered are affected, please accept our sincere apologies, and contact us about resolving the issue. No e-vouchers or ‘print-at-home’ vouchers are affected.
Very occasionally we can’t pay a charity which has been chosen by a donor. This can happen for a variety of reasons. For example, the organisation may not be a UK Registered Charity, or it may not be clear which charity is intended if the name can refer to more than one, or the charity may have been removed from the register and so on. Whatever the reason, the first thing we will do is attempt to contact the donor and seek their clarification on how they would like us to proceed. If, however, the donor has not left any contact details, we will use our discretion and judgement to identify a charity which appears to have aims and objectives as close as possible to what we think the donor would have wanted.
When vouchers are donated, the donor has the option to give their email address. Once the donation payment has been made, if we have the donor’s email address, we will send them an email to confirm that the payment has been made as well as the time it was made and the method of payment used. If we have a donation reference from the charity we will include this in the email, together with a message of thanks from the charity if one has been provided. Regrettably, we can only send out confirmations of payment by email and not by post.
No details of the donor are given to the charity. If a donor wishes to have their details shared with the charity they need to request this by email to us or by filling in the contact form on this website.
If a donor donates their voucher anonymously but subsequently decides that they would like the confirmation of payment email which they would have had if they had left their details at the time when they originally redeemed the voucher, we will always be happy to retrieve the payment details and send an email with full details of the donation.
The easiest way is to donate it online via our website. Alternatively call us on 0044 1328 730530.
The Charity Voucher scheme was set up to raise money for UK Registered Charities and we regret that we are not able to donate to charities outside the UK. (However, many UK charities work partly or primarily outside the UK so it is often possible to find a UK charity working in a part of the world that you are interested in).
Most payments to charities for vouchers are made within ten working days of a voucher being donated. During busy times such as the Christmas period it can take slightly longer.
The vast majority of payments we make to charities are made by direct bank transfer. However, if we are making a payment through charity’s website and it directs us to use a donation platform to make the donation to them, there is often a delay between us making the payment and the donation service passing it on to the charity. This is because the platforms usually put multiple donations together into a single payment to reduce administrative and transaction costs for themselves and also for the charity. However, from the moment we make the payment, it will normally show on the charity’s account with the online payment service, so that the charity can see that a payment is imminent.
Customers on our website are invited to use our ‘Check a Voucher’ facility to see instantly whether we have completed processing the payment for any individual voucher.
We no longer include Freepost envelopes with posted vouchers. Anyone who prefers to post us newly-issued vouchers can still do so, but they will now need to put a stamp on the envelope. Anyone who has already been given a Charity Voucher which came with a Freepost Envelope can still use it in the normal way, right through to October.
3 General Questions
Anglia Giving, the company which runs the Charity Vouchers service, is a not-for-profit organisation. Much of the day-to-day administration for Anglia Giving has always been done on a voluntary basis, which greatly reduces the costs of running the company. Nevertheless, there are still significant costs to running the business and, like any company, it has to be viable to survive.
The service is funded in a several ways. When it was set up, in 2002, the service benefitted from generous private financial support, which has supplemented its other income. Most of our remaining income is from unused, expired vouchers (see FAQ: ‘What happens to any unused vouchers?’). The next biggest source of income is the processing fees charged on the sale of vouchers.
As a result of operating under this business model, we remain able to guarantee donors that 100% of the value of all donated vouchers goes to the charities chosen, which we see as an essential part of providing the Charity Vouchers service. In addition, the model allows us to continue to be able to donate to over a hundred thousand UK Registered Charities, rather than having to restrict donors to choosing from perhaps just a few hundred – which would be much cheaper to administer but which would, we feel, would lose a significant part of the value of the service we offer. Lastly, this model allows us to continue operating without the need for sponsorship or carrying advertising or in any way compromising the independence of the company.
Fundraising Solicitation Statement
Anglia Giving (company number 04441647 – a non-charitable not for profit company) operates Charity Vouchers. It solicits funds for charitable causes generally, and not for the benefit of any particular institution or institutions. Although Anglia Giving does not fundraise for a known named charity, as a professional fundraiser, it nonetheless wishes to be clear that:
- A Recipient of a Charity Voucher may select any UK Registered Charity to receive the value of the voucher (see our Terms and Conditions on what happens where it is not possible to give to a particular charity).
- Anglia Giving will pay 100% of the face-value of the Charity Voucher donated before the expiry date stated on the voucher to the nominated Registered Charity.
- Anglia Giving charges an administration fee which is charged in addition to the value of the Charity Voucher at the time of purchase. For our Standard Service, this is £1.20 for printable and e-vouchers, and £1.95 (plus £1.15 for postage and packaging) for posted vouchers and for our Tailored Services, this will be a sum agreed with the Purchaser.
As with all gift vouchers and gift cards, some do not get redeemed. Anglia Giving, which runs the Charity Vouchers service, is formally constituted as a not-for-profit company. As a result, money from unused vouchers can never be withdrawn from the company as ‘profit’. Instead we use it, alongside income from our processing fees, as an essential source of funds to help cover costs involved in running the Charity Vouchers service itself. This includes the costs of our ongoing programme of service development and innovation, in order to be able to raise even more money for charities in future. Any surplus funds the company has after its costs have been covered, are donated to a variety of the charities most commonly supported by donors.
The Charity Voucher service is run by Anglia Giving, a not-for-profit company, Limited by Guarantee, set up in 2002 specifically to run the scheme to encourage charitable donations to UK Registered Charities. See About Us.
Anglia Giving is not a Registered Charity itself because its purpose is fund-raising for charities and it does not have its own specific ‘charitable purpose’, i.e. a particular cause it raises money for.
Instead, the organisation is formally constituted as a not-for-profit, social enterprise company (belonging to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations – NCVO and also to Social Enterprise UK). Anglia Giving is also registered with The Fundraising Regulator.
Any surplus funds, after covering operating costs, are used to improve and develop our service, or else are donated to UK charities.
No. When a voucher is donated, the full face-value of the voucher is sent to the charity which the donor has chosen to support.
However, as with all gift-vouchers, some Charity Vouchers don’t get used and eventually expire. Anglia Giving, the company which runs the Charity Vouchers service, uses the majority of the money which results from this, to help cover its core costs (see FAQ: ‘What happens to any unused vouchers?’). This is in addition to income from the processing fees charged to buyers, and is also in addition to generous private financial support which the organisation has received since it was established in 2002. The Charity Vouchers service has also been able to run at very low cost because it has been able to rely heavily on volunteers to do much of its day to day administrative work. It is in this way that we are able to guarantee donors that 100% of the value of donated vouchers goes to the charities chosen. We see this as an essential part of providing the Charity Vouchers service.
Regrettably, Charity Vouchers fall outside the government’s Gift Aid Scheme at present and no tax can be reclaimed, either by the voucher buyer, ourselves or by the receiving charity.
Anglia Giving takes the privacy of both the voucher purchaser and the voucher recipient very seriously. Vouchers can be donated completely anonymously by the recipients if preferred. Anglia Giving has not had a single data breach since it’s establishment in 2002 – and continues to take active steps to maintain this record. We are certainly not complacent about the, very real, risks. Our policy is that we do not pass user details on to any third parties at all, including charities, except on the very rare occasions when we are specifically asked to do so by a user. This continues to be our policy. Please click here to see our privacy, cookies & data protection policy in full.
Anglia Giving takes all reasonable steps to treat users of its service fairly and with respect.
Our Frequently Asked Questions page is written in plain English and explains to all service users how the business operates, including how it is funded. It also explains in detail the methods we use to make donations on behalf of users, and how we protect their personal data – it is only ever shared with charities if we are explicitly asked by the donor to do so.
Anglia Giving takes into account the needs of any potential donor who may be in a vulnerable circumstance or require additional care and support to make an informed decision. We encourage people to contact us if they have any queries at all, and we provide a ‘Freephone’ (0800) number to call. We answer most calls in person and immediately and without complex ‘menus’ to work through.
Anglia Giving aims to respond appropriately to the individual needs of all customers and donors and to adapt its offer to suit the needs and requirements of different service users. For example, Anglia Giving makes it very easy for all its users, including any vulnerable users, to donate their vouchers. This is done by offering four easy methods to redeem vouchers. It is very quick and easy to donate online using our website, or donors can call us on our ‘Freephone’ number, or they can post their voucher back to us, or they can simply pass it on the their chosen charity so that they can redeem it directly. It’s whatever is easiest for the individual donor.
When donating vouchers there is a deliberate policy of not recommending or promoting any particular charity or charities so that users who may be more easily inflenced are left completely free to make their own choice of charity to donate to.
Anglia Giving will never exploit the credulity, lack of knowledge, apparent need for care and support or vulnerable circumstance of any user of its service at any point in time. If we know or have reasonable grounds for believing that an individual lacks capacity to make a decision to purchase vouchers we will not accept the order. Any order placed by someone who is subsequently found to have lacked capacity at the time of purchase will be refunded immediately and in full.
Finally, there is a link to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions on every page of our website and a link to our Terms and Conditions is also included with every order issued or they are printed out in full in the case of posted vouchers. Wherever possible we aim for a straightforward and open approach to providing the Charity Vouchers service.
Anglia Giving has been operating since 2002 and is proud of the care it has always taken over all users of the service and is 100% committed to ensuring that this quality of service continues in the years ahead.
If you would like any further information about this area, please contact us on our ‘Freephone’ number between 9am and 5pm any weekday or use the Contact Us page to find an alternative method that is convenient for you.
In the event that you have a complaint about any aspect of the Charity Vouchers service, we want to hear about it and we want to put things right. Similarly, if we’ve made a mistake in anything we’ve done in our day-to-day operation, we want to resolve it as soon as possible.
If, on the other hand, there is anything we do routinely which you believe we should be doing differently, for example if you believed we were not being clear about some aspect of how the company operates, or if you believe the instructions on a particular page of the website are unclear, we want to hear about that too; we will always take suggestions on board if we believe they will improve what we do. If we don’t think the suggestion would help, we will provide a thorough explanation of why we do something the way we do.
If you are a member of the public, or you represent a company, or you represent a charity… we want to hear from you. If it’s a problem, we can’t solve it if we don’t know what it is and, if it’s a suggestion for a possible improvement, we would really like to consider it.
We aim to deal with any complaints on the same day we receive them, and to look at any other suggestions no later than 2 working days after receiving them.
Anglia Giving, the company which operates the Charity Vouchers service, is registered with the Fundraising Regulator. In the unlikely event that you have a complaint and are not satisfied with our response, the regulator can be contacted on 0300 999 3407. Alternatively, you can visit their website by following this link. The regulator covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. For any issue relating to Scotland there is the Scottish Fundraising Standards Panel, 0808 164 2520, which also has its own website.
To contact us, simply email support@charityvouchers.org or call us on call us on our Freephone number 0800 652 3185 or on 01328 730530 and we will always be glad to do our best to help. If you are ringing and it’s not during our normal working hours (Monday to Friday : 9 – 5), please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as the office re-opens. (Occasionally we pick up on urgent issues outside office hours as well and, if so, will work to try to resolve the problem straight away).
Alternatively, you can write to us at: Anglia Giving, 5-6 The Pightle, Burnham Thorpe, King’s Lynn, PE31 8HT
Charity Vouchers are only to be used as a donation to charity. They may not be used for payment of goods, services, school fees, discharge of debts or as a payment under deed of covenant. Presentation of vouchers will be taken to signify agreement to these conditions.
Anglia Giving (Charity Vouchers) is working hard to be as environmentally friendly as possible in every aspect of its work. We list some of the ways we’ve been doing this shortly.
However, the biggest way in which what we do is ‘sustainable’ is that Charity Vouchers are usually given in place of physical gifts. Because the vouchers are either virtual or else are basically just a few small pieces of paper or card, their environmental impact is extremely small compared to what the alternative might have beeen. For example, in one instance, a large company which had previously been giving its employees plastic games compendiums as gifts, switched to using Charity Vouchers. Not only did the vouchers use up far fewer resources to produce, but few will have ended up in landfill. We wonder whether the same could be said for the plastic games compendiums! (And that’s not to mention all the money that those employees were then able to donate to their favourite charities!)
Some of the specific changes we’ve made over the last few years are
- Introducing ‘virtual vouchers’. These are our e-vouchers (which replace the physical card with an email voucher) and our print-your-own vouchers (which replace the physical card with a single sheet of A4 paper which the purchaser then folds into a ‘card’ to give to the recipient).
- Switching to using compostable protective bags when issuing our posted vouchers. We are also currently trialling use of paper ‘card-catchers’ which could enable us to reduce use of protective bags altogether.
- Switching to use of ‘all-in-one’ voucher-cards for our posted vouchers. Some time ago, we switched from using plastic corner ‘pockets’ to hold the vouchers into cards, to using glue dots. But we have even stopped using these on our posted cards because the vouchers are now printed directly into the cards themselves. This also saves the voucher paper
- Switching to only using paper, card and envelopes certified by the FSC (the Forestry Stewardship Council) as being from a mixture of materials from FSC-certified forests, recycled materials, and/or FSC-controlled wood.
- Using used paper whenever possible when we do need to print information for internal use.
- Stopping issuing Freepost envelopes with every posted order. The vast majority of vouchers are now donated via our website so almost all of the Freepost envelopes we were issuing were ending up going straight in the bin, hopefully the recycling bin at least!
- Reducing the size of our order-summary letters which are posted out to purchasers, from A4 to A5
- Our office is located within a building partially run using solar power and is now heated using an air-source heat pump for maximum energy efficiency. Our electricity supplier only uses renewable energy sources (sun, wind, and sea) to generate its energy.
… and we are always looking for new ways to improve further.