Harambee Schools Kenya

The Chronicle Sunshine Fund provides specialist equipment for children with disabilities living in the North East of England.

As a small local charity, they were seeing a drop in the effectiveness of traditional community fundraising, as more and more people were carrying less cash on them. They were losing out on a significant amount of donations by not having a card-based collection system.

Having read about some of the UK’s largest charities having success with contactless donations, they saw Tap for Change as an opportunity for solve their donations problem and – as one of the first charities in the region to introduce contactless – increase public awareness of the work that they do.

Now, the Sunshine Fund has a Tap for Change contactless donations box at a fixed location inside intu Eldon Square in Newcastle city centre, as well as a number of other boxes regularly being used at events to take payment for charity raffle tickets, charity auctions and games, at challenge events to pay for registration fees and they go along to all of our bucket collections and bag packs to reach our cashless donors.

“We have noticed a steady stream of income from this box which is amazing! It’s as though we have a permanent fundraiser 7 days a week!”
– Lauren Thompson, fundraiser for the Sunshine Fund

The Tap for Change contactless donations boxes have enabled the Sunshine Fund to increase their bucket donation average from £1-2 of loose coins to a preset recommended minimum of £3 – and people are happy to give it.

What the Sunshine Fund and other organisations are discovering is the more charities who adopt contactless donation boxes into their fundraising efforts, the more familiar they become to the public – making them far more likely to donate.