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306,756
2020-06-01 to 2021-08-31
Study
The UK general public is well aware of big-name charities due to recent scandals, however, smaller charities and their locally impactful activities are virtually silent. Indeed, our smaller, local charities struggle to obtain resources (e.g. financial donations) to maintain their activities, as the largest UK charities -- 1.5% of the total -- access 70% of the sector's income. Although a number of foundations provide grant opportunities aimed at charities, these are difficult to find and time-consuming for small charities to access. At the same time, businesses (small medium enterprises to large corporates) recognise the importance of giving back to their community and are thus increasingly looking for local charities to support. However, the majority of charities in the UK are poorly visible. Identifying and comparing local charities is thus highly time-consuming and demanding. As a result, both charities and companies find it difficult to match their needs, and charities spend vast resources on fundraising. Further, the difficulty to obtain useful impact reports can somewhat reduce companies willingness to donate. An advocate for transparency founded in 2016 (see [https://vimeo.com/341628588][0]), DoBook Ltd has developed WhatCharity: the minimum viable product (MVP) of an online platform that aims to empower the whole charity sector and to re-equilibrate the imbalance in resources, by giving local charities an opportunity to be seen and heard while pointing businesses willing to donate to them in their direction. Currently, the platform is using data from the Charity Commission to provide a location-based search engine for donors to identify charities by keyword/local radius; and provides charities with the possibility of creating requests for specific resources. Its contribution to the market is already recognised (see [https://about.whatcharity.com/in-the-press][1]) The aim of project MATCHarity is to explore the methods through which charities can be intelligently and more accurately matched to donating businesses while delivering automated impact reports of their donations. As a result, this solution will bring exposure to smaller charities and give them access to funds they were previously unaware of while helping companies to give back to their local communities and communicate their charitable activities to the wider public. By doing this, whatCharity expects an increase in the number of businesses donations to charities, and this will be monitored during the project. [0]: https://vimeo.com/341628588 [1]: https://about.whatcharity.com/in-the-press