The Association of Payroll Giving Organisations has challenged figures from the HR and payroll services company Equiniti ICS that showed a drop in charitable donations through payroll giving since 2008.
The company, which manages the payroll for 125,000 employees in 250 organisations, reported that the average monthly donation among a sample of more than 12,000 people had fallen from just over £19 to just under £14. It said that would indicate a drop of £27m in payroll giving as a whole.
But Janet Forster-Warnes, chair of APGO, said the report gave "completely the wrong picture of the current marketplace". She said: "Payroll giving has been seen to be very resilient even in the current climate, and official figures show an additional £2m increase in the past year compared with the previous year," she said.
The Equiniti figures showed there had been a 12 per cent fall in the number of employees making donations through payroll giving. The APGO statement said that official figures showed that there were 724,000 payroll giving donors in 2009/10 compared with 754,000 in the previous year.
This equates to a drop of just under 4 per cent.
Equiniti was unavailable for comment.
