An extra boost for charities - with digital pens

April 2008

Payroll Giving in Action, the organisation that helps people to make tax-free charitable donations direct from their pay - has chosen Destiny digital pen technology to help speed up the process of signing up new donors.

The new system will reduce by up to two weeks the time taken to process each of the 30,000 new pledge forms secured every year by the organisation's fundraisers in the field, who enable individual employees of major companies such as Royal Mail and Whitbread to make a regular payment to the charity of their choice.

The introduction of the new technology has the potential to generate up to an additional up to 8 % per year increase in charitable donations through faster implementation of new pledges.

"In the past," said Jeremy Colwill, Director of Payroll Giving in Action, "we had to manually scan and input the forms to our database, which was very time-consuming. It took up to two weeks to get new donors onto the programme. Now, with Destiny digital pens, the data from each new form is instantly transmitted from the field to our database. This means that we can start sooner on an earlier pay run, and charities can benefit faster. Once people have made their decision they want to begin straightaway - and this helps them do it."

Once a fundraiser has completed a new pledge form, now redesigned as a digital paper document, they simply have to tick a SEND box for the data to be sent via a Bluetooth phone to Destiny's secure servers, where it is instantly converted and sent on to Payroll Giving in Action as a pdf and as a data file. Administrators here can access a dedicated portal to check and verify each form. Details are then immediately forwarded to the donor's company payroll and to the receiving charity so that payments can start.

An important factor in the choice of technology was the need to keep it simple, and not give the wrong impression by using expensive-looking hardware. "A pen is just a pen," said Jeremy Colwill. "The difference is just that this one's really clever."

Another key factor was the way in which Destiny technology helps Payroll Giving in Action to ensure an eco-friendly working environment, by significantly cutting down the paper consumption that was previously involved in copying and scanning.

The daily spreadsheets supplied by Destiny in CSV format also make it far quicker and easier for Payroll Giving in Action to provide regular summary data to the organisations they work with.

Edward Belgeonne, CEO and founder of Destiny, said "It's great to be associated with such a worthwhile initiative. Many charities rely on payroll giving as a regular and long-term source of revenue, and we're glad to be able to help provide an additional boost."

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