Let’s be honest: the best CiviCRM learning happens when real people share real workflows. Last Thursday’s CiviCRM Scotland meetup did exactly that, bringing charity, public-sector and non-profit teams together to swap notes, simplify the tricky bits, and leave with steps you can use on Monday morning.
Watch it all unfold here:
What we covered (in plain English)
1) Gift Aid in CiviCRM — the end-to-end workflow (with Mads)
Mads walked through how to run Gift Aid properly inside CiviCRM using two UK-specific extensions:
- UK Gift Aid extension — adds the building blocks you need: Gift Aid declarations, eligibility flags, and the ability to mark which financial types qualify (e.g., donations—and, where applicable, memberships or other custom types). It also ships a declaration profile you can add to contribution forms so supporters can opt in without duplicate data entry.
- UK Gift Aid Online Submission extension — plugs CiviCRM into your HMRC Charities Online account so you can validate, submit, and track claims directly from CiviCRM (no spreadsheet shuffle).
Highlights from the demo:
- Frictionless forms: Copy the default declaration profile, remove duplicate name/address fields if your form already collects them, and keep the supporter journey tidy.
- Stay audit-ready: Each contact shows active declarations, start dates, and any uploaded scan/notes (e.g., to record and confirm phone/verbal declarations via a quick templated email).
- Batching that catches errors: Build a Gift Aid batch, run validation, and fix anything HMRC would reject before you submit. If a few records are stubborn, remove them from the batch and keep the rest moving—no more all-or-nothing delays.
- Submission, status, done: Validate → submit → receive HMRC confirmation → funds land in your account. The extensions keep a trail so you don’t double-claim by accident.
The upshot: once set up, Gift Aid runs like a calm conveyor belt, clean declarations in, validated batches out, faster money in your bank, and fewer spreadsheet gremlins.
2) Tag Sets: tidy data, faster decisions
Marcus then did a quick, super-useful tour of Tag Sets, a native CiviCRM feature that many teams overlook.
Why Tag Sets?
Regular tags often turn into a bottomless soup: “volunteer”, “VIP”, “arts”, “warm lead”, “loves biscuits”… Tag Sets let you group tags by theme and present them as neat, colour-coded pickers on contact and activity screens.
Practical examples from the demo:
- Sectors (e.g., Education, Health, Culture) in one set, all the same colour—so at a glance you know what world your contact works in.
- Attitude/Engagement (e.g., Positive, Neutral, Needs follow-up) in another—useful for supporter care and comms tone.
- Activity topics (applies to activities too): label phone calls, meetings or emails by theme (Fundraising, Membership, Press) so you can search and report without creating a nest of custom fields.
Why we like them:
- They appear top-right on contact records—so the most helpful context is front and centre for your team.
- They’re searchable in Advanced Search as their own fields.
- They reduce custom-field bloat and make data entry genuinely faster for staff and volunteers.
Why CiviCRM meetups matter
We love that these sessions are by the community, for the community. Agencies, users, and developers all in the same (virtual) room—sharing what’s working and where the paper cuts still are. It’s not about shiny features; it’s about saving time for small teams, staying compliant, and making CiviCRM friendlier for the humans who log in every day. That’s very Pooka.
Our promise is to keep things useful, human, and no-jargon—because that’s how busy comms and fundraising teams actually get things done.
Quick takeaways you can action this week
- Gift Aid:
- Install the two UK extensions; configure eligible financial types.
- Add the (tidied) declaration profile to your donation/membership forms.
- Run a test batch, use the validation report to clean addresses, then submit.
- Tag Sets:
- Create Sector and Engagement sets; colour-code them.
- Enable Tag Sets on contacts and activities; train staff to use the dropdowns.
- Add Tag Sets to your saved searches and dashboards for quick segmentation.
A big thank-you
Huge thanks to everyone who came, both online and in person. Your questions, stories, and “here’s how we do it” moments are what make this community special. And a nod to the maintainers behind the open source Gift Aid extension: community work that keeps real-world fundraising moving.
What’s next
We’ll be back in 2026 with the next CiviCRM Scotland meetup. If there’s a topic you want us to cover, or a mini-show-and-tell you’d like to run, drop us a line. We’ll keep the kettle on and the demos practical.Until then, we’ll share clips and how-tos in our usual people-first, plain-English style across the blog and socials, because learning sticks when it’s friendly and useful.
Get In Touch
We’d love to hear what you’re up to. Please get in touch using hello@pooka.co or through the form linked below. Don’t be shy!
