STAGE 5: RECRUITING AND SUPPORTING YOUR PARTICIPANTS
How to pay a gift of thanks and participant expenses
This guide covers both gift of thanks payments,
and expenses as there is overlap in these processes
to consider.
Please also read our page on accessibility to fully consider expenses.
Some definitions:
Gift of thanks – an ‘honoraria’ payment to compensate for time to participate and incentivise wider participation. This can be made as a direct payment or in vouchers. We use this terminology instead of a ‘payment’ to differentiate between paid employment and remunerated voluntary time.
Expenses – reimbursement for costs incurred in taking part in engagement.
Why?
As an issue of inclusion and to ensure everyone can participate, you should always consider your participants’ needs, especially those around expenses. This can include travel, childcare, respite care or other expenses your participants may incur. These can be covered by booking in advance for participants (especially if overnight accommodation or long train journeys may be required), reimbursement after the cost where the participant is able to pay in advance, or through provision of a group service such as a minibus to the venue or childcare.
If your engagement activities involve any kind of online participation you should also consider how to meet any costs associated with that. This could include buying data packages, loaning a laptop, or buying an essential kit such as a webcam or microphone to enable online group participation. Please note: sometimes this involves technical support, which is something we discuss when talking through onboarding. Please click here to find out more.
Paying a gift of thanks and participant expenses incentivises participation from diverse groups, enables participants to overcome financial barriers, and demonstrates that the council values the public’s input.
You should decide on participant expenses when you are developing your engagement brief.
Pause and Think
- Do you usually pay a gift of thanks to engagement participants?
- If you do not – what are the barriers to you doing that and what effect do you think that has on your engagement?
- If you do pay a gift of thanks – who do you think has participated in your engagement that would not have done without a gift of thanks? how did that change your engagement, your findings, and your participants?
What is the purpose of a gift of thanks?
Paying participants a gift of thanks is different to employment. It is a payment to thank them for offering their time, expertise, and insights to contribute to the decision-making process.
Providing a participant payment:
• Supports people to engage, and remain engaged throughout the process, which leads to greater legitimacy of the process.
• Supports participation where there are financial barriers and/or where taking part means they will miss out on paid work.
• Acknowledges the value of their contributions.
• Secures participation from diverse people when selected by a process of Sortition.
• Provides an incentive to engage in the process. This is essential to supporting ongoing participation for people with multiple demands on their time.
Gift of thanks and different types
of engagement and recruitment
Paying participants a gift of thanks is different to employment. It is a payment to thank them for offering their time, expertise, and insights to contribute to the decision-making process.
When you randomly recruit a defined sample of participants by sortition or market research
In this instance a gift of thanks should always be paid. You know in advance how many participants you will have so you can budget accordingly. You should detail the gift of thanks on invitation materials to increase the pool of respondents from which to select your participants (or in the case of market research recruitment, increase uptake).
Part of the participant onboarding process should include collecting information on how they would like to receive their gift of thanks.
When you recruit a defined number of participants who self select
When participants self-select you should consider how to ensure a fair process to ensure your participants are not just comprised of people who would normally engage anyway. Offering a gift of thanks can remove barriers to participation from groups who might otherwise self-exclude. You should outline the gift of thanks on the invitation materials to increase the diversity of people who might respond to the advert or invitation. You should clearly outline the amount, when and how they can receive the gift of thanks in these materials.
For drop in engagement
If you do not know numbers of participants in advance it is hard to budget for this. However you could budget to provide an incentive for a higher than expected level of participation, or consider other incentives suitable for the topic. For example, if engaging on energy use, energy saving light bulbs could be given to people who take part or there may be an independent advisor available. This could influence who attends the engagement. It is good practice to provide refreshments at engagement events; this can increase attendance levels.
In this case, without knowing who is attending in advance, you cannot prepare to send out payments in advance. If you were able to budget for a financial gift of thanks you could take information on the day but this can be time intensive alongside the delivery of your engagement. You could consider collecting email addresses to securely send a voucher.
Another option could be to provide physical vouchers that you have available on the day. This can be a good option if you have a rough but not exact idea of expected numbers, and your process is adequately well resourced.
Guidelines for providing participant payments
If you’ve decided to pay a gift of thanks you need to set up the payment process in advance.
This will include:
- Setting up a form to collect the information such as a Google form or Survey Monkey.
- Asking participants whether they would like to receive a bank transfer or voucher. If a bank transfer securely collect and store the details. If a voucher, ask what they would like. You could offer a choice from several options or just let the participant choose what is most useful to them.
- Being clear on process and actions after the engagement to ensure timely payment. Often expenses are paid at the same time as the gift of thanks. Key to a timely payment therefore includes having a streamlined process for expenses (see below). Additional tasks in advance to ensure a timely payment include clarifying responsibility for confirming who was in attendance and who will make the payments.
Below are some considerations with questions to help your thinking and tips to remember.
📩You can download this as a printable table here.
Fair Compensation
❓Have you budgeted for the gift of thanks (GoT) at the real living wage?
✴️ Payment should be at the same rate as the real living wage.
Consistency
❓Have you ensured all participants are paid the same regardless of expertise etc?
✴️ Apply the same criteria and compensation rates to all participants regardless of expertise, qualification or job role, to ensure fairness and transparency.
Communication at the recruitment stage
❓Have you clearly communicated the purpose and terms of payment during the recruitment process, ensuring informed registration?
✴️ Clearly communicate the purpose and terms of the payment to participants before they commit to the process.
✴️ Address any questions or concerns they may have regarding compensation, and try to communicate in Plain English.
✴️ Ensure that team members working with participants are aware of the rate and the timetable for payment. When people have more specific questions you can signpost participants to places like citizens’ advice.
Communication at onboarding stage
❓Have you shared information about the frequency and form of payment?
❓Have you communicated how this fits with claiming expenses?
✴️ If you are recruiting participants in advance,share information with them about the level of payments and their frequency in an easy to access resource. This could be on a webpage or a participant handbook.
Visit our onboarding page here.
Alternative payment options
❓Have you offered different ways to receive the GoT that meet the needs of your participants e.g bank transfer, voucher?
✴️ Offer alternative methods of payment. Some people find it useful to be offered alternative forms of compensation, such as vouchers, or non-monetary incentives.
Participants should be provided with information so that they can make an informed decision about whether they want to receive the payment as a bank transfer or voucher. You should ask how they would like to receive the payment, including securely recording bank details so that payments can be made without delay.
Timely payment
❓Have you been clear about when you will pay GoT and expenses? Is the timeline timely to maintain people’s trust in the process?
✴️ Make the payments promptly after each event or stage of the process rather than waiting until the end of the whole process. Delays in payment can diminish the perceived value of the honorarium and undermine people’s’ trust in the process.
You only need to pay people for the parts they attend, but if there has been an element of preparation required, and they do not attend they should be recompensed for their preparation time.
You should set up the payment process in advance. (see above)
Expenses
❓Have you clearly outlined what expenses can be covered and how they can be claimed?
✴️ Expenses for travel, childcare, respite or other expenses incurred by being part of the process is separate to the payment offered as a gift of thanks for taking part, though is often paid at the same time when not paid in advance.
Participants should have the option to receive expenses in advance, and you should offer to book travel for people if appropriate. This can include having a transport offer such as a minibus, or booking specified train travel in advance.
If you are paying a gift of thanks by voucher you should consider how this will impact on payment of expenses. It could mean that you need to separately make a bank transfer for expenses only, or you may reimburse on the day. For example, we have delivered an engagement process where on arrival participants showed travel receipts and we reimbursed in cash, which they signed for. We asked participants to let us know travel costs in advance so we could pre-prepare envelopes of cash but it was also important to have additional cash to spare if the expected costs varied. We took photos of tickets as participants required these for return journeys.
If reimbursing for mileage you can calculate distance from the participants home address rather than requiring a receipt for fuel.
Again, preparation is key.
Reimbursements when recipes aren’t available
❓Have you outlined what happens if receipts aren’t available for expenses, for instance if someone has a babysitter rather than a registered childcare provider?
✴️ Sometimes participants cannot easily obtain a receipt. Two common instances of this are where they use a babysitter rather than a registered childcare provider (and registered childcare is not always flexible enough or suitable to the needs of attending an engagement process), or where they travel on public transport with tap on/tap off payment.
To maximise participation and ensure against inequity, (particularly in instances of child care that cannot be met with a registered provider), where receipts cannot be obtained we recommend asking for confirmation of cost and payment based on trust as long as the expense seems reasonable.
Benefits
❓Have you comminuted how people receiving benefits might be affected by the Gift of Thanks?
✴️ Offering a financial gift of thanks may have implications for people in receipt of means tested benefits.
You do not need to know if your participants are impacted by this but you should share information about this to all participants so that they can make a decision about whether to receive the gift of thanks, who they may need to notify, and what potential implications they may face.
You can read more about this in detail here, but below are some of the main points to consider and share with participants are:
- In respect of benefits, payment for a person’s time is always considered earnings regardless of how it is described.
- Out of pocket expenses are not considered payment and therefore do not have an impact on benefits. The out of pocket expenses need to be clearly documented so they are not accidentally considered payment.
- Most benefits have a maximum earning allowance that if not exceeded won’t affect benefit payments.
- Vouchers and other forms of compensation are usually considered payment by DWP.
Tax
❓Have you communicated how GoT might impact people’s taxable income?
✴️ For tax purposes, a gift of thanks is generally considered taxable income in the UK, just like any other form of income. People who receive a gift of thanks are responsible for reporting it to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and paying any applicable taxes on it. Everyone has an allowance of £1,000 ‘self employed’ income, only payments that means a person exceeds that allowance would need to be declared.
Asylum Seekers
❓Have you communicated how people claiming asylum might be affected by the GoT?
✴️ Most asylum seekers are not permitted to work whilst their application is being considered. Where people seeking asylum have been given permission to work, they are not permitted to be self-employed. Asylum seekers who wish to contribute voluntarily must speak to their case owner to ensure there is no detrimental impact on their claim.
Non-UK Citizens
❓Have you communicated how non-UK citizens might be affected by the GoT?
✴️ Non-UK citizens (excluding those from the Republic of Ireland) who do not have settled status or leave to remain are likely to require a visa to work legally in the UK. Visa restrictions may affect a person’s ability to be paid for their participation, and advice should be sought from the Home Office.