Results/MS-UK
Ten pence in the pound, and what replaced it.
The same room, the same wallets, one year apart. The only thing that changed was how the money was taken.
£1,300 kept
MS-UK’s silent auction was run by an outside company supplying a catalogue of lots. Those lots are supplied on consignment: the company invoices the charity its cost plus a margin out of the hammer price.
Ten pence in the pound reached the cause.
all of it kept
The outside lots were still present but no longer the centre of the evening — that auction grossed around £3,500. In their place sat a live pledge, designed into the night and delivered from the stage.
Every penny of the £8,300 went to the charity.
Where the money came from
The pledge money did not appear from nowhere, and it was not a bigger, more generous room. It came out of the same wallets, in the same building, from people who had arrived willing to give.
The only thing that changed is that they were given a way to give it as a gift instead of as a purchase, so there was no supplier invoice to pay out of it, and the charity kept the lot.
That is the whole argument, in one room, one year apart.
This is not an accusation
The company that ran the first auction did nothing wrong. They are a business, they are paid out of the hammer price, and a high reserve protects their margin rather than the charity’s cause. That is simply what the model is.
The point is not that anyone behaved badly. It is that a purchase is structurally worth less to a charity than a gift, and with Gift Aid, HMRC has written that difference into tax law.
No obligation, and never a percentage of what you raise
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