The online shops pay your cash donation to TheGivingMachine™. We then ensure it is distributed on your behalf to your specified beneficiaries.

All of the participating online shops on our site have agreed to pay a commission in the form of a cash donation every time you click on their link and buy a qualifying product from them. If you do not access the online shop via our links on TheGivingMachine™, then the donation will not be triggered and your nominated charities and/or schools will not get their donation.

Typically, an online shop will be donating in the region of 3-5% of the total bill to participating charities and schools. A small charge for administration will be incurred on each transaction to facilitate, collect and re-distribute the cash donations Givers generate to their chosen charities & schools. Our promise is to ensure that these costs of fundraising (currently 25% of commissions received) are comparable to the UK charities average. As we grow we will be able to reduce these charges to well below the UK average.

As an example, if you purchased an item at £100 via a link on TheGivingMachine™, we would expect to receive between £3 to £5*, 75% of which would be re-distributed on your behalf to your chosen schools and charities.

*(Please remember that that online shops set what commissions/donations they are prepared to pay so these numbers may go up or down in practice)

You can nominate a beneficiary either from the drop down lists that we provide or, in the event that your beneficiary is not listed, by filling in as much information on your beneficiary as you can. Every organisation that has charity status can be included as a beneficiary and this includes most schools and of course any charity registered with the Charities Commissioners. We will review the beneficiary that you have suggested and let you know if it is acceptable. We do not charge our participating charities and schools for joining or using TheGivingMachine™.

If you represent a charity or school that would like to participate please use the beneficiary area to register your charity or school.

Our systems are updated twice a week - Typically Monday and Thursday. Usually, all purchases made since the previous update will show up as pending. However, some retailers may be slow in posting their transactions. Therefore, we recommend waiting for two updates of our systems between your purchase before contacting us with any queries. We have found that this resolves almost every query.

It can take between 2 and 6 months or so for the monies to come through to us as most shops have a 28 day returns policy and also online shops generally specify that their payments will take between 30 and 60 days to reach us after the 28 day period, these donations are received monthly. We distribute donations TheGivingMachine has received at the end of every month by Bank transfer for all balances over £15.



Some shops are faster than others at paying their partners. Unfortunately some of the most popular ones can also be the slowest. However, once donations are showing on your Giver account, they are being tracked by both the shop and TheGivingMachine™.

We can provide you with half yearly reports via email if you require them. We are constantly looking to provide more detailed information via the website, so please check back often.

Alternatively many of the charities and schools have said that they would like to send out ’thank you’ messages to everyone who supports them at least once a year.

One reason that the online shops take so long to pay commissions is that it provides for returns of any faulty goods. In the event that a sale is reversed, the online shop can deduct a previously paid or pending commission off the next month’s payments to TheGivingMachine™. We will do likewise.

In the unlikely event that we cannot immediately match a donation with a specific Giver and their Account, we will investigate the transaction and use our best endeavours to allocate it correctly.

From May ’07, we allocate funds to whatever beneficiaries are assigned by each individual giver at the time of the transaction with the retailers. Prior to this time, we allocated funds based on whatever beneficiaries were assigned by each individual Giver at the time we ran our monthly donation report.

Although we are often adding retailers to the site, some retailers change their marketing strategies from time to time. We therefore have to remove them from our site at these times.

All special offer codes provided to you from TheGivingMachine will work. However, if you use an offer code that you obtained elsewhere, it is likely to cause the shop to cancel any commission payable to TheGivingMachine and therefore donations for your beneficiaries.

The only details that TheGivingMachine uses are the ones you provided for your Giver account (email address, post code etc.).

When you make purchases viaTheGivingMachine, you are buying directly from the shop and TheGivingMachine does not have any involvement with that purchase or the information you provide to an online shop.

TheGivingMachine receives a data report from the online shops that enables us to match up donations to the Givers that generated them.

We will always try our best to resolve any problems that have arisen in the course of the correct use of our website. If you have contacted us already, feel that we have not dealt with the issue appropriately and would like to take further action, please contact us and ask for our Complaints Procedure to be forwarded to you. This procedure follows guidelines which are set out by the FRSB (of which we are a member) and explains what to do next.