I had a plan.
Our church treasurer says it can’t work. However, let me share the idea anyway.
- Get everyone in church to gift aid their weekly food shop money to church.
- Church gets 25p extra for every £1 given
- Church buys food from Tesco
- Church distributes all food bought to families who have given. The extra food goes to feed the poor.
I even planned to write to Tesco and say “I’ve got 40 families, which is about 100 people who have gift aided in the region of £5000. Gift aid rebate makes this £6250. We’re planning on coming to Tesco to buy food, to feed our church and to feed those who are struggling to make ends meet this Christmas. Can you support our endeavours in any way?”
BTW – numbers are approx, but to illustrate the idea.
Our Treasurer says that gift aid law won’t let this work, but I’ve heard of other churches doing clever things with gift aid. So I asked if I wrote to the PM (who’s big on the Big Society) and got his thumbs up whether he’d go for it. He just laughed… which I did too!
Still, I’ve written to my MP to ask. The best thing that could happen is that Mr Cameron writes back to say he supports the idea. Such a thing would look quite cool when writing to the Tesco store manager.
Here’s what I sent my MP:
Dear Mark,
I hope you are well and that the summer has been a nice change from the business of Parliament.
I attend St Annes Baptist Church and in a recent meeting with our Treasurer I thought of the following scheme to serve our community:
1) Everyone in the church gift aids their weekly food shop money
2) The church buys food from one provider, hopefully getting an additional discount due to the amount spent to increase the quantity of food
3) The church distributes all the food bought to the church membership and the extra food goes to individuals or families who are struggling to make ends meet (some ideas below*)
I was anticipating this could be an event around Christmas. However our Treasurer wasn’t sure if it was legal to interpret gift aid in this way. Would you be able to give any guidance? I know gift aid has come up in debate occasionally in the Commons and that there are changes coming in 2013.
Being a “Big Society” idea I dreamt that the Prime Minister might lend his backing and write me a permission slip!
Kind regards,
Dave
* – Supporting Fylde Families, Pierpoint Rehabilitation, and other possibilities are listed on http://www.fyldeextendedservices.lancsngfl.ac.uk/index_files/Page1626.htm but open to all ideas.
(Jokes regarding feeding the five thousand on bread and fish not required!!)