Good Tax News for NZ Charities
4 April 2017
New Zealand tech startup Donation Manager is launching software which slashes the end-of-financial-year administrative burden for charities.
The cloud-based software launches tomorrow (April 5th) and can save charities thousands of bookkeeping hours every year.
It’s been designed by former Xero employees and integrates seamlessly with the popular accounting software.
Best of all; Donation Manager is a charity itself and totally free to use for registered New Zealand charities.
The software is the brainchild of Adam Clark who came up with the idea after volunteering his time as Treasurer for the
The Whangarei Youth Community Trust, which helps fund and facilitate youth worker support for people in need.
“Every person involved in charities has something they are passionate about, and it's rarely administration,” Clark
says.
That observation was confirmed during his three years at Xero where he talked with hundreds of accountants and
charitable sector employees.
“The same messages kept coming up time and time again.
“Hearing about the accounting issues they’re having fired me up to do something about it on a large scale so that I
could help as many charities as possible.
“It made sense to use my background in accounting to help them save time so they can use that time to continue making
New Zealand a fairer, cleaner, safer, and better place for all of us.”
From launch, Donation Manager allows charities to manage donor contact information and transactions, as well as design
and send rebate letters.
“This initial release could save charity administrators thousands of hours every year. Most have told me they don’t have
a system in place and for them it’s a horribly manual process.
“On average, it’d take me around seven minutes per donor to prepare and send their end-of-year letters. Multiply that by
hundreds or thousands of people and you quickly get an idea of the time wasted. Donation Manager can cut my entire
process down to 10 minutes total, no matter how many donors our charity has.”
Donation Manager will always have a free service for New Zealand charities. Clark plans to offer a paid but very
affordable version of the software to overseas charities in the future.
With future donations or funding, Donation Manager will extend its offering to include a donor portal for people giving
to charities. This will show them all their tax rebate details and track every one of their donations from one place.
The portal would also let donors easily volunteer their time, as well as money.
“We believe this part of the software puzzle is key. New Zealanders are philanthropic people and if we can decrease the
effort it takes for them to collect their receipts and claim their tax rebate they will claim more often and, in turn,
donate more often.
“That’s ultimately why we’ve built Donation Manager; not to make money but to help New Zealand charities keep the fabric
of our society strong.”
Clark is joined on the Donation Manager board by Jodi O'Connor, Johnny MacAvoy Damien Clark, and Nick Batkin.
ENDS