Glossary · A–Z

Plain-English definitions.

Quick definitions of the charity, Gift Aid and tech terms our brief notes assume you know.

API: Application Programming Interface — the defined way two software systems talk to each other, used to connect a website, CRM and payment gateway.
Alt Text: A text description of an image, used by screen readers and search engines when the image can’t be seen.

Backlink: A link from another website to yours. Quality backlinks are a signal search engines use to judge authority and trust.

Charities Online: HMRC's online service for submitting Gift Aid repayment claims. Charities can submit using approved third-party software.
ChR1: The Charities Online Repayment claim form — the standard format for submitting Gift Aid claims to HMRC via approved software.
Charity Commission: The regulator for charities in England and Wales. Maintains the public register of charities and sets governance standards trustees must follow.
Charity Number: The unique registration number issued to a charity by its regulator, used to verify charitable status and on Gift Aid claims.
CRM: Customer (or Constituent / Donor) Relationship Management — software for tracking donors, donations and interactions.
CTR: Click-Through Rate — the percentage of people who click a link, ad or result out of those who saw it.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a donation or submitting a form.
Canonical URL: The tag that tells search engines which version of a page is the authoritative one, avoiding duplicate-content problems.
CDN: Content Delivery Network — a global network of servers that caches a site close to visitors so pages load faster.

Direct Debit: A recurring payment a donor authorises a charity to collect from their bank account via Bacs, commonly used for regular giving.
Donor Stewardship: The ongoing practice of thanking, updating and building relationships with donors to encourage continued support.
Donor Portal: A secure area where donors can log in to view their giving history, manage recurring gifts and download Gift Aid records.

Fund Accounting: An accounting method that segregates income and spending by fund (restricted, unrestricted, designated) so a charity can prove money was used as intended.
Fitrana: Also Zakat al-Fitr — a small obligatory donation each Muslim pays before Eid al-Fitr prayers, often collected in fixed per-person amounts.
Fidya / Kaffarah: Compensatory payments in Islam for missed or broken fasts, typically used to feed those in need. Usually tracked as their own donation categories.
Frappe / ERPNext: Open-source enterprise resource planning framework. We use it for logistics and education-sector deployments.

Gift Aid: A UK tax relief that allows registered charities to reclaim 25p from HMRC on every £1 donated by an eligible UK taxpayer.
Gift Aid Declaration: A donor's written or recorded confirmation that they are a UK taxpayer and want their donation Gift Aided. Required to claim Gift Aid.
GASDS: Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme — lets charities claim a top-up on small cash and contactless donations of £30 or less.
Google Ad Grants: A free $10,000/month of Google Ads spend for eligible registered charities. Comes with compliance rules around CTR, keyword quality and account structure.
GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation — the UK/EU data protection law charities must comply with when storing donor data.

HMRC: His Majesty's Revenue and Customs — the UK tax authority that administers Gift Aid claims and maintains the approved software supplier list.

Legacy Giving: A donation left to a charity in a person’s will. A significant income stream for many charities and often exempt from inheritance tax.
Lillah: Voluntary charity given purely for the sake of Allah, which — unlike Zakat — can be spent on a wider range of causes such as building mosques.
LCP / CLS / INP: Core Web Vitals — Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift and Interaction to Next Paint. Page-experience metrics Google uses for SEO.

Meta Description: The short summary of a page shown under its title in search results. It doesn’t affect ranking directly but influences click-through.

Open Graph: Metadata tags that control how a page’s title, description and image appear when shared on social platforms.

Payment Gateway: A service that securely processes card and online payments between a donor, the charity and the banks — e.g. Stripe or PayPal.
PCI DSS: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard — the security rules any system handling card payments must meet.
PPC: Pay-Per-Click — paid search advertising (e.g. Google Ads) where the advertiser pays only when someone clicks the ad.

Qurbani / Udhiyah: The ritual sacrifice of livestock during Eid al-Adha, whose meat is distributed to those in need. Often sold as fixed-share donation products.

Restricted Funds: Donations a charity must spend only on the specific purpose the donor gave them for — tracked separately in fund accounting.
Recurring Donation: A donation set to repeat automatically on a schedule (e.g. monthly). Predictable income that improves a charity’s planning.
Reconciliation: Matching the donations recorded in a charity’s system against the money actually received in its bank and gateway accounts.

SORP: Statement of Recommended Practice — the framework charities in the UK follow when preparing their annual accounts.
Standing Order: A fixed recurring payment set up by the donor with their own bank — unlike Direct Debit, the amount and schedule are controlled by the donor.
Sadaqah: Voluntary charitable giving in Islam, not subject to the same rules as Zakat.
Sadaqah Jariyah: Ongoing or "continuous" charity in Islam — giving that keeps benefiting people over time, such as a well, school or orphan sponsorship.
SCA / 3D Secure: Strong Customer Authentication — an EU/UK requirement adding an extra verification step (e.g. a bank prompt) to online card payments.
SaaS: Software as a Service — software hosted and maintained by a provider and accessed over the web, rather than installed and run in-house.
SEO: Search Engine Optimisation — improving a site so it ranks higher in unpaid ("organic") search results for relevant queries.
SERP: Search Engine Results Page — the page of results a search engine returns for a query, where ranking position affects clicks.
Structured Data: Machine-readable markup (schema.org) added to pages so search engines understand the content and can show rich results.
SSG: Static Site Generation — building pages ahead of time into fast, cacheable HTML rather than generating them on each request.
SSL / TLS: The encryption behind HTTPS that secures data between a visitor’s browser and a website — essential for taking donations safely.

Trustee: A person legally responsible for governing a charity and ensuring it meets its purposes and obligations. Trustees usually serve voluntarily.

Unrestricted Funds: Donations a charity can spend on any of its charitable activities, at the trustees’ discretion.

Waqf: An Islamic endowment — an asset donated and held in trust so its ongoing returns fund charitable causes in perpetuity.
Webhook: An automated message a service sends to another system when an event happens — e.g. a gateway notifying a CRM that a donation succeeded.
WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — the standard for making websites usable by people with disabilities.

Zakat: An annual obligatory charitable payment in Islam, calculated at 2.5% of a Muslim's qualifying wealth. Often handled through restricted funds in charity CRMs.

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