Although the usual idea of gifts at Christmas brings up the awful spectre of the annual office sweep ("Oh no, I'm buying for her again…!") it is a very useful time of year for the PA with a charitable turn of heart. This is because Christmas causes a lot of minds to turn, however briefly, to charity – and the PA is in the best position to influence her employer to work on corporate giving.

British business is not as charitable as we may like to think. The top 100 companies on the London stock exchange give only 0.97 per cent of their pre-tax profits to charities and community projects, according to the Guardian's annual survey of corporate responsibility for 2004.

Fourteen of the top one hundred companies give less than one-hundredth of a percent.

Don't believe it? That's not surprising. A poll by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations shows that most people think that 24 per cent of charities' income comes from generous corporates, and workplace gurus say: "Companies feel that involvement in charitable work contributes to their public image, improves staff morale and strengthens links with the local community". But they don't really do it!

People Power

It is individuals who support charities, and for the kind-hearted PA who wants to pursue it at work, there are two possibilities – push the employer into corporate giving, or set up a Payroll Giving scheme for individuals, and then challenge the employer to match what staff give.

Fortunately for the PA, there is some very practical help from a relevant source, one of the top secretarial agencies – at Eden Brown, managing director Ian Wolter is extremely keen on workplace charity, and will dispense advice and guidance freely.

"We are often asked about it, because we have a long-established tradition of corporate and employee giving," he says. " We've had a team in the London Marathon for the past nine years, and I hope that next year we will top £100,000 given to various charities.

"The way we operate it is that our staff vote through our intranet for what will be the year's charity. We think of it as a 'corporate value' that goes beside honesty, ethics, and mutual support. We introduce it at induction stage, when we tell people that they have joined a remarkable company full of remarkable people, and the majority of our staff join up."

This doesn't simply apply to their own full-time staff – temps registered with the agency can do it as well.

Not too taxing

What is helpful is that the UK has an increasingly generous system of tax relief for charitable donations. If you are a UK taxpayer, Payroll Giving increases the value of your gift by allowing you to authorise your employer to make the donation from your wages before deducting any tax – after deduction of National Insurance Contributions, but before deduction of income tax. That means you don't pay any tax on cash you've given.

The Home Office now has a grants programme to encourage employers with fewer than 500 employees to set up a Payroll Giving scheme. The Payroll Giving grant programme, which is administered and promoted by the Institute of Fundraising together with Business in the Community, will give employers a cash incentive of up to £500, and will match the first £10 donated by each employee, every month, for a period of six months. Grants are available to qualifying employers who set up a scheme before December 2006.

Not surprisingly, a very major source of expertise is the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), who have no end of help programmes for employers. These include Volunteer Awards programmes, which a cynic might suggest encourages employers to get some of the glory for what their staff have done, even if the bosses didn't really do anything by themselves.

For help and advice, contact the CAF Corporate Services team. CAF is also the major source of guidance on how the employer can make their donations tax-effective.

PAs can take control

So, is the PA in a good position to drive this? "I think the PA is in a fantastic position to drive this, so long as the director to whom she reports is interested," says Ian Wolter. "Historically, my own PA has done so within Eden Brown. But it's one of those things that needs support from both ends – if the chairman has a hobby-horse charity and the staff aren't interested, it won't work. Equally, if the staff have an interest in something and the Board doesn't, that probably won't work."

Where staff decide on their own charity to support, what are the popular causes? Eden Brown reports that from its intranet polls among staff, animal charities seem ever popular. However, this year's choice seems to fall between Cancer Research and Save The Children.

Elsewhere, it is reported that doubts over the value of high-profile charity campaigns continue to affect the prospects of small charities doing vital work. These charities never quite recovered from the arrival of the Lottery, were dealt a powerful whack by the BBC's annual Children In Need appeal, and even the Live8 project came in for criticism. Now, it is said, the British public is growing increasingly sceptical about where their money goes – a reader poll in The Daily Telegraph (June 4) showed that 83 per cent of givers are worried that their money will end up in the hands of "criminals and corrupt governments", and a poll on Sky News returned virtually the same result.

This is not all down to suspected fingers in the till overseas – the British public doesn't even like the idea that their gifts may go to fund the petrol expenses of well-paid marketing managers in famous charity organisations.

Small is often beautiful

There has never been any shortage of Great Little British Charities, and a typical one which offers absolute transparency of reporting, and management expenses which have sometimes dropped as low as a fraction of one per cent of donations received, is Health Help International. This organisation, run by a retired managing director in Newport, South Wales, provides healthcare for people in parts of the world where even adults may never in their lives have met a doctor, and he has just published his "alternative gift catalogue".

The idea is that the gift is delivered to a community in Zambia or south-west India, while the charity supplies a card which you send to a friend or relative, explaining that you have financed some charitable work in their name. Typically, a pack of fruit and food for malnourished children costs £5, while building an entire village for elderly Zambian people is a snip at £1,500.

But however you choose to approach it, the festive season is an excellent time to get people in the office thinking of others whose need is far, far greater than ours – and with any luck, that sentiment will last year-round.