Labs 

When you donate money to a charitable cause, do you ever really know where your money goes? 

That's the question we've set out to answer with our Donations Platform.

• Browse a library of projects submitted by verified nonprofits registered with the UK Charity Commission

• Choose a monthly amount to donate e.g. a cappucino-a-month (£3), a cinema-ticket-a-month (£10), and spread your donation across the projects of your choice

• Each project has a monthly goal and you can see who else is helping you reach it

• Every month you receive updates from the charity staff & volunteers running those projects, telling you the difference your donation is making on that specific project.

Experiment timeline:

• Built 2013 - 2014

• Launched 2014

• Closed 2015

Key learnings

• Donor CPA is high and as a platform with a 5% commission on donations, there isn't enough capital to invest in marketing when compared to the large charities.

• The Brand & The Cause - donors need to believe that the marketplace is in of itself changing the world, rather than just being a marketplace. Convenience isn't enough of a motivator.

• The Data Journey - decisions around restricted v unrestricted funds need to be pragmatic and impact-sharing obligations on charities need to be proportionate and easy to implement

As a small charity, how do you get yourself seen without investing heavily in website design?

That's the question we've set out to answer with The Website Engine.

• Generate a simple one page website for your charity using a dedicated template that lets you add information that's relevant for charities

• Other website building platforms (wix, squarespace, godaddy) are typically set up with businesses in mind and have a variety of hidden costs

• The Website Engine cuts through all of that with one simple template that's easy to use and designed specifically with charities in mind.

Experiment timeline:

• Built 2016

• Launched 2016

• Closed 2017

What if your Theory of Change was more than a PowerPoint document? What if it could become an interactive dashboard?

As a charity, you know the importance of having a Theory of Change, but the problem is that once it's created, it usually becomes an obsolete document. Our product solves this problem.

• Convert your Theory of Change into a Logic Model 

• Itemise your outputs, outcomes and indicators

• Link them together in a way that represents your thinking around how you create impact

• Record the number of outputs and indicators you achieve by posting 'stories' tagged with the impact metrics they relate to

• Now all your impact data can live in one place

Experiment timeline

• Built 2016

• Launched 2017

• Closed 2019

Are spreadsheets the best way to manage all the work you do to change people's lives?

That's the question we've set out to answer with our case management system

• Create your own beneficiary forms, surveys, outcomes and logic models

• Create, edit, view and share beneficiary records

• Fill-in surveys about individual beneficiaries and see change over time

• Create appointments and track attendance 

Experiment timeline:

• Built 2021

• Launched 2021

• Closed 2025

Key learnings

• Onboarding is time-consuming because 

  • impact measurement is inherently complex 

  • staff at charities that run several projects (in several ways) are already stretched to the limit and often lack the capacity to standardise their data collection processes. As such, onboarding support is needed, but onboarding is time-consuming and therefore expensive. 

  • Therefore a case management system that combines impact measurement needs to be designed from the ground-up with easy onboarding built-in from the outset

• Reporting requirements are constantly evolving. 

  • Different charities require different reporting requirements due to their different focuses, their different funders and the different strengths within their workforce. 

  • This means that standardised reports will always fall short of requirements, because there will always be a new reporting requirement - in terms of format. Therefore, a system needs to build in highly customisable reporting that is nevertheless extremely easy to customise, given that most charities don't employ data scientists.