Counting and Banking Charity Event Takings Safely
Raffle sales, gate donations, tombola and a bucket collection can leave a small committee holding several hundred pounds in loose cash by the end of an evening. What happens to that cash in the next few hours matters as much as raising it.
Published July 2026Cash handling problems at community events are rarely dramatic theft; far more often they are honest confusion, an unrecorded float, or money left in an unlocked car boot overnight because everyone was too tired to deal with it properly after a long shift. The point of a cash handling procedure is not to imply distrust of volunteers, but to remove ambiguity about how much money there was, where it went, and who is responsible for it at each stage, so that an honest mistake never gets mistaken for something worse and no single volunteer is left carrying an unfair burden of responsibility for a large sum of cash on their own.
Starting and counting the float
Every cash point — a raffle table, a tombola stall, a gate collection — should start with a recorded, counted float: a fixed, written-down amount of change handed over at the start of the event and checked back at the end, so that takings can be calculated as closing total minus opening float rather than guessed. Two people counting the float together at the start, both signing or initialling a simple sheet, takes two minutes and removes any later dispute about what a stall began the day with. This is standard practice at any well-run village fete or fundraiser, and it is worth treating as non-negotiable even at a small stall run by long-trusted volunteers, precisely because it protects those volunteers from being wrongly blamed later just as much as it protects the charity’s funds.
Counting takings at the end
End-of-event counting should always involve at least two people, counted together in one sitting rather than by a single person alone, with the total written down and both counters signing off on the figure before the cash is moved anywhere. Counting in a private, reasonably secure space rather than in view of the general public reduces both the temptation for casual theft and the practical risk of being targeted while visibly holding a large amount of cash. For an event the scale of a typical Dorset charity fundraiser, this need not be elaborate: a locked committee room, a simple count sheet, and two trusted volunteers is entirely sufficient, and matches the basic controls suggested in wider guidance on managing risk at community events more generally.
Getting it to the bank
Large cash sums should not sit in a volunteer’s home overnight if it can reasonably be avoided, both for the volunteer’s own security and to avoid any ambiguity about custody of the money between the event ending and it being banked. Where same-day banking is not possible — most events finish after banks have closed — the safest realistic option is depositing into a night safe where the charity’s bank offers one, or splitting responsibility so that no single individual is the sole custodian of a large sum overnight, with the amount and custody arrangement recorded in writing at the point of handover. Banking should happen as promptly as reasonably possible after the event, both to reduce the security risk of holding cash and to keep the charity’s own bookkeeping and Gift Aid records current rather than backlogged.
Writing the simplest version of this down
None of this requires a formal finance department; it requires a single-page written procedure — float counted and signed at the start, takings counted by two people and signed at the end, cash banked promptly through an agreed route — that every volunteer running a stall or collection has actually seen before the event, not just assumed everyone already knows. The Charity Commission publishes guidance on managing a charity’s finances, including basic internal financial controls appropriate to organisations of every size, and it is a sensible reference for any committee putting its own cash handling procedure into writing for the first time.