Give as You Live is a scheme in which retailers make donations to your chosen charity (the WCIT) every time you shop with them, online. By joining the scheme, and then just shopping, you can generate income for the WCIT Charity at no cost to yourself and with no hassle.

We are asking all our members to join up to generate income for our charitable fund. Keen online shoppers amongst us might spend SOME thousands of pounds online in the course of a year and retailers will pay A FEW percent to get that business, so each of us might get our favourite retailers make SOME contributions of A FEW TENS of pounds every 12 months. With 750 of us that could add up to MANY THOUSANDS per annum and if you could persuade your family, friends and colleagues to join in, who knows how much we could add to our charitable fund?

You can find more information, including retailers and donation rates, and join up at http://www.giveasyoulive.com/join/wcit/ 

If that all seems a bit too good to be true then you are probably asking yourself some of these questions:

Q. Why do the retailers make the donations?

A. They look at it as a referral fee: to them GAYL offers the same benefits as a comparison website; ie sending buyers to them. If they did not give the money to us it would go to someone like Comparethemarket or Supaprice.

Q. Do we pay more so they can give this money?

A. No, you pay the same price whether through GAYL or not.

Q. Can I use my favourite supplier?

A. Nearly 2000 suppliers are signed up including favourites like Amazon, M&S and John Lewis. See http://www.giveasyoulive.com/search/stores for the full list.

Q. I bet it’s a lot more hassle than just going straight to my favourite sites.

A. Not at all. If you use a standard PC with most browsers then, once you have installed the app, you won’t even notice that you are Giving As You Live. If you use Chrome, tablets or mobile phones, the app won’t suit you but you can still use a standard browser interface. These exceptions are being worked on and should be sorted out soon. 

Q. Do I need to give them loads of information about me and the WCIT?

A, No, it's very quick and simple to sign up and they will send the money throughto our bank account automatically. 

Q. Wasn’t there a trial last year that didn’t work?

A. Yes and there were some technical limitations then but, with the exceptions above those are fixed and loads more retailers, including Amazon, have signed up.

So then the obvious question is……

Q. Where does the money go?

A. In recent years the Academy has been the focus of charitable fundraising but our overall charitable mission is to be the No 1 source of strategic and practical ICT help to charities in the UK. That is, helping good causes with and through technology and, thereby, benefitting a whole range of people in need in diverse ways. Whilst the Academy has been our focus of late, we have continued to make major contributions to IT4C and in the past were instrumental in starting Lifelites. Our educational focus has not only been on the Academy, we have continued to provide funds and expertise to the Lilian Baylis Technology School. Details of some of our work is contained in the WCIT Charity’s Annual Report to Donors, which can be found on the ITC website at http://www.wcit.org.uk/staticc/charity.html  

Now the Academy is up and running, we need funds to do even more. Please help us get the online retailers to help by signing up at the GAYL website http://www.giveasyoulive.com/join/wcit/

If you have any problems with sign up or purchase, please contact the WCIT webmaster (jerry@gross.vispa.com).