Help centre / Giving & Gift Aid / Add your supporters
Add your supporters
Go to Giving, then Supporters, and select Add supporter. Enter their name, contact details and address. On their page, tick the ways they've agreed to be contacted. Adding a record sends nothing to anyone, so you can tidy your list without worry.
Add a supporter
- Go to Giving, then Supporters.
- Select Add supporter.
- Choose Individual or Organisation. A supporter can be a person or a grant-making body, and they don't have to be a member or trustee.
- For a person, enter their First name and Last name. These are the names that go on Gift Aid claims, so use their real ones. For an organisation, type its name.
- Add an email address or phone number if you have one.
- Fill in Address (for Gift Aid) and Postcode. HMRC needs a house name or number and a postcode before you can claim Gift Aid on someone's gifts. You can add these later.
- Note how they found you, and anything worth remembering, if it helps.
- Select Add supporter to save.
Adding a record contacts nobody. For example, Meadowbank Community Trust adds Margaret Hale after she gives at their summer fair, and Margaret hears nothing until they choose to thank her.
Record what they've agreed to
Open the supporter and find the Communications & consent card. Tick the channels they've agreed to: Email, Post, Phone or SMS. Only ticked channels count as safe to use, and the Mailchimp sync follows the Email tick.
You can also pick a lawful basis. In plain words, that's the legal reason UK data protection law gives you for keeping in touch:
- Consent means they clearly said yes, for example by ticking a box on your form.
- Legitimate interest means contact they would reasonably expect from you, weighed against their rights.
- Soft opt-in means they gave you their details while supporting you and you offered a way to opt out. If you pick this, the card asks how they gave their details and the date you offered the opt-out, so you have the evidence on file.
If someone asks you to stop
Select Suppress all contact on their record. A "do not contact" badge appears and nothing is sent to them, whatever the channel ticks say. Suppression always wins. If they change their mind later, select Lift suppression.
Their data stays theirs
At the bottom of each supporter's page there's a Data protection section. From there you can download everything you hold on them (a subject access request) or remove the record if it's a duplicate.
There's also Erase permanently (GDPR) for right-to-be-forgotten requests. If their gifts are in a Gift Aid claim, HMRC requires the records to be kept for six years, so erasure is refused until then. Suppress them instead, and nothing more will ever be sent.