Public Funding for If Give Ltd

IfGive is a novel digital toolset and disruptive fundraising model aiming to maximise fundraising income for charities by increasing donor's agency and control in charitable giving. Charities across the sector are challenged with a series of issues related to fundraising: A decline in the number of individuals giving to charity, the need to provide timely feedback, maintaining engagement, reducing the overheads of collecting donations and, especially in the case of disaster relief, reducing the time taken to raise money in response to a crisis. While the number of donors in the UK fell by 1.6M in 2020 (CAF,2021), the demand for charity services has increased in recent years. In particular, the need for humanitarian assistance caused by climate change has risen by 40% in the last year alone (UNOCHA,2021). We respond to the immediate need for innovation in disaster fundraising and address major challenges fundraisers face more broadly. IfGive is a recent spin-out from Lancaster University, emerging from the ICURe programme. We developed a platform (TRL7/8) and fundraising model for charities that use novel data-driven technologies to facilitate an entirely new, rule-based model for charitable giving. We enable donors to create rules using pre-specified payouts in response to real-world triggers to create a modern, interactive and highly personalised experience for donors that encourages regular engagement with their chosen causes. For example, Sarah could help to mobilise a humanitarian response by pledging funds each time a disaster strikes, or provide immediate support to her local RNLI base by donating £3 each time a lifeboat launches. Market research has evidenced that higher levels of agency and control in charitable giving delivered by our technology can increase donor engagement and their willingness to give. IfGive brings together a highly experienced team around a scalable business operation providing the necessary resources, know-how and commercial plan to exploit IfGive services to establish a market position in the fundraising sector. The main deliverable of this project will be near market-ready (TRL9) software tools and managed software platform (D7 and Technical Service Testbed (D8) to deliver significant social and economic impacts soon after project completion. As a highly innovative startup in the fundraising space, we aim to support efforts to maintain the UK's leading position in digital innovation and technology solutions for the global fundraising market.