What’s more, the first £10 of each employee’s monthly donations will be matched, pound-for-pound, for a period of six months (up until March 2007). That’s up to £60 extra per employee going to their chosen charity.

Payroll Giving enables employees to give to any UK charity straight from their gross salary (before tax is deducted), giving immediate tax relief on those donations. This means that £10 donated each month costs only £7.80 for employees paying standard rate tax (£6 for higher rate taxpayers) and will be worth as much as £20 to the charity (courtesy of the Government matching scheme for the first six months of your donations).

If your organisation has less that 500 employees and signs up to Payroll Giving any time before the end of December 2006 your business will be eligible to receive a grant of between £300 and £500. Grants are tiered according to the number of employees, as below:

Organisation size

• 1 - 199 employees - £300
• 200 - 249 employees - £400
• 250 - 499 employees - £500

You can either keep this grant or donate all (or part) of it to charity. Grants (and the matched donations) will be backdated to those that have signed up since 06 April 2004.