How long does Payroll Giving take to set up?

Most UK Payroll Giving Agencies onboard a small employer in 1–2 weeks. The longest part is usually waiting for payroll to slot the deduction into the next pay run.

Can employees change their donation amount whenever they like?

Yes. Employees can increase, decrease, pause, or cancel their donation at any time by contacting the Payroll Giving Agency or HR. Changes take effect from the next pay run.

What happens to the donation if the employee leaves?

Donations stop automatically with the final payslip. Some agencies offer a personal continuation option so the donor can carry on giving by Direct Debit if they want to.

How Payroll Giving Works in the UK (Step by Step)

Payroll Giving (also called Give As You Earn, or GAYE) is the simplest, most tax-efficient way for an employee in the UK to donate to charity. It’s been around since 1987, it’s run jointly by HMRC and a small number of approved Payroll Giving Agencies, and it works almost identically across every UK employer that offers it.

Here’s how it works, end to end.

Step 1 — The employer signs up with a Payroll Giving Agency

To offer Payroll Giving, an employer registers with one of the HMRC-approved Payroll Giving Agencies (PGAs). The big four in the UK are:

Charities Trust
Charitable Giving (CAF Give As You Earn)
The Charities Aid Foundation
StC Payroll Giving

Sign-up is free for the employer. Most PGAs charge a small monthly admin fee per donating employee — typically 25p to £1 — which the employer can choose to absorb (so 100% of the donation reaches the charity) or pass on.

See our comparison: Best UK Payroll Giving Agencies.

Step 2 — The employee chooses a charity and an amount

The employee picks any UK registered charity (or several) and how much they want to donate per month. Most schemes accept fixed monthly amounts from £1 upwards, with no upper cap.

The donation comes out of gross pay — that is, before income tax is calculated. This is the bit that makes Payroll Giving meaningfully better than a Direct Debit:

Donation	Cost to a basic-rate (20%) taxpayer	Cost to a higher-rate (40%) taxpayer	Cost to an additional-rate (45%) taxpayer
£10/month	£8	£6	£5.50
£50/month	£40	£30	£27.50

The employer doesn’t lose anything — National Insurance is calculated after the deduction too, but the employer pays employer’s NI on a slightly lower base. Net cost to the business: zero (or marginally positive).

For more detail on the maths, see Payroll Giving tax relief in the UK.

Step 3 — Payroll deducts the donation each pay run

Once the employee fills in the agency’s authority form (paper or digital), payroll adds them to the deduction list. From the next pay run onwards, the donation appears as a line on the payslip — usually labelled Payroll Giving or GAYE — and is paid across to the Payroll Giving Agency along with any other employees’ donations as a single bank transfer.

Step 4 — The agency pays the charity

Within a few weeks of receiving the bulk transfer, the PGA splits the funds out to the charities the donors named. Most agencies confirm receipt to the donor by email or via a portal.

Step 5 — Reporting and the Quality Mark

Most employers report participation rates internally as a CSR metric. The Payroll Giving Quality Mark is a recognition scheme that rewards employers based on the percentage of staff who participate — bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and the gold-standard Diamond award.

Where Payroll Giving fits in your wider giving programme

Payroll Giving is often the cornerstone of a workplace giving programme, but it works best when paired with:

Matched giving — the company doubles employee donations
Paid volunteer leave — the time half of giving
A Charity of the Year programme — focuses fundraising effort

If you’re starting from zero and have under 50 staff, our advice is: launch Payroll Giving first (lowest effort), add 1–2 paid volunteer days next, then layer matching on top once participation is healthy.