Donate

To help fund our work click the button and you can donate online. Please note that this doesn’t mean we are about to start charging. At the moment everything we do is free to people who need our services, and this is likely to continue. But the generosity of funders both small and large is what enables us to offer free services.

As an alternative to donating online at our page at specialist UK charity fund-raising site Just Giving, you can send in a cheque by post, made payable to The Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise (PRIME).

If you donate by post please also take the time to print out and complete this form, as it allows us to claim an extra 28 per cent on most donations from government coffers.
Download Gift Aid declaration form

Donations raised for PRIME will go towards services that support self-employment choice among the over 50s and the work PRIME carries out on behalf of older people including:

• Workshops
• Business coaching
• Business and social networking
• Supplying business starter packs
• Maintaining web sites

Bidding for formal service contracts only takes PRIME so far – it only let’s us do what we have been able to persuade a funder to let us do. The income we get as voluntary gifts from individuals and firms of all sizes gives the charity much greater flexibility to respond to change and meet unmet needs.

Good news: Gift Aid makes £10 worth £12.80 to us

Gift Aid is a government scheme that allows PRIME to reclaim tax on every gift you make to us. So for every £1 you donate, we can claim back 28p from HMRC – at no extra cost to you! If you pay tax at the higher 40 per cent rate you can also claim partial tax relief yourself on the donation, eventually retrieving a similar amount.

All that is required is a simple, one-off declaration. If you are using the online system you can make it there, otherwise we need a signed paper form. You can of course donate without involving Gift Aid, which in any case we can only claim when the gift comes from a UK taxpayer.

Good news: Matching may boost the value still further

This something we can usually do without any further input from you. Many of our larger projects are financed under a system called “match funding“, where the funder (usually a public body) grants us money – but on condition that we also get money from somewhere else. So a maximum sum is allocated, which we can then draw on as matching funds come in from other sources.

This means that often we can use your gift to free up more money on one of these match-funded projects. So there can be a hiden bonus to the charity when you donate or volunteer.