On 1 September 2024, the Countryside Alliance — a leading champion for the rural way of life — evolved into a registered charity, now known as The Countryside Alliance Foundation. This important change opened the door to Gift Aid, allowing them to claim an extra 25p on every £1 donated by UK taxpayers. More support, no extra cost — that’s a win for the countryside.
The Countryside Alliance and ESco go way back — nearly twenty years of working together to handle everything from renewals and member comms to BACS processing and full membership services. So, when it came to supporting their transition to charity status, we were ready to hit the ground running.
To get Gift Aid-ready, we brought all their customer data together into one clean, connected view across eCommerce, membership, and communications. We upgraded their systems to collect Gift Aid declarations at every opportunity and audited historical payment records to find every eligible penny.
Our in-house experts developed a custom process to review millions of historic transactions, built a monthly Gift Aid claims system, and now manage the full submission process directly to HMRC. That’s less admin hassle for The Countryside Alliance Foundation — and peace of mind knowing everything’s compliant and running smoothly.
With the data in better shape, we were able to fully audit our Gift Aid declarations and make our first formal submission to HMRC in years. This had previously been too complex to risk — but with ESco’s help, we could verify eligibility and ensure all data was formatted to HMRC’s standards. That’s now generating meaningful income for the Alliance — not only for past years but as an ongoing quarterly process we can scale.
Lawrence Tribe-Endt, Commercial Director The Countryside Alliance Foundation
The results speak for themselves: over 10,000 membership records now matched to Gift Aid eligibility, the first successful HMRC submission completed without a hitch, and a robust, scalable monthly Gift Aid process embedded into their operations. Plans are already underway to widen eligibility to future donations and legacy gifts, ensuring this valuable income stream keeps growing.
With this project, The Countryside Alliance Foundation is unlocking vital new funding to power their mission — and ESco is proud to play a part in helping them champion the countryside, rural communities, and field sports.
Smart thinking. Stronger results. That’s the ESco way.
