Mind was founded in 1946 and has over 160 shops across England and Wales which raise money to fund vital mental health support services.

Eproductive have been Mind’s Gift Aid software supplier since 2008. In 2018 Eproductive started implementing digital donor sign-up across all of Mind’s shops, using tablets at the counter.

Advantages of tablet sign-up

Amanda Day, Head of Finance and Central Services at Mind, talks about their move to digital Gift Aid in 2018: “The digital sign-up on tablets is really easy to use and has adjustable fonts. It has a completely transparent step-by-step process so donors know how far through the process they are. The validation is terrific – over 20 validations have to be met at the point of entry, which ensures the accuracy of the data being inputted. The system uses a postcode address file lookup, which both simplifies donors’ entry of their address and, again, ensures accuracy.”

“The database is updated immediately, which means items can go out for sale straight away. No data is stored on the tablet, which reduces our concerns over GDPR. The digital solution is hardware-independent – it will work on any tablet with an internet connection so the charity can supply their own tablets. There are no software downloads necessary, so there is no need to get our IT team involved, which reduces the workload for them and makes things easier for us – we can access the system via a secure URL.”

Customised for Mind

“In addition to all of that,” Amanda said, “it was configured to have our branding, our logo, and we could provide the text we wanted to be on it, as well as the marketing opt-in options – I could go on and on about how good this solution is!”

The Email effect

Eproductive sends out thousands of thank you and gift aid notification emails each year on behalf of their charity clients and one of the benefits of digital sign-up is the decrease in the email bounce rate. Due to this, Mind has seen a great improvement in their donor engagement. On this subject, Amanda said: “Donors inputting their own data has made a huge difference. The email conversion rate is up by 37%, and the error/bounce rate has fallen by 64% – a really significant decrease. We’re delighted!”

Over 90% of donors now signed up digitally

Since implementing digital Gift Aid across all their shops, Mind has seen big increases in gift aid revenue. Amanda said: “Over 90% of all our Retail Gift Aid donors are now signed up digitally, and gift aid sales are already up 14% year on year!”