Cash for Kids
Shortlist – Transforming With Digital
About the Charity
Cash for Kids is a grant-giving charity that aims to improve the lives of disadvantaged children and young people who are affected by poverty, illness, neglect or have additional needs. The charity works to ensure that all children are able to express their individuality, achieve their potential and live life to the fullest.
In 2023, Cash for Kids raised more than £23 million to support nearly 600,000 children across the UK.
Charity number: 1122062 | CashForKids.org.uk
Disadvantage Young People | England – North East | 26-100 paid staff
What the Board Achieved
Cash for Kids embarked on a transformative journey to harness the power of digital innovation. The charity needed to invest in and scale up its donation processing procedures to match the enthusiasm of its audiences during live on-air campaigns. Recognising the limitations of traditional payment methods, the board championed an ambitious in-house development of GivingIsEasy™. This bespoke, cloud-based platform aimed to securely process donations, streamline administrative processes, and eliminate costly service fees. Digital transformation was chosen as the solution to achieve improved financial stewardship, operational efficiency, and impactful giving aligned with the charity’s mission.
GivingIsEasy™ transformed the charity’s day-to-day operations, transitioning from manual to digital processes across its 23 regional fundraising teams. By digitising expenditure processing and enhancing fundraising capabilities, GivingIsEasy™ empowered regional charity teams to fundraise more effectively and enabled the centralised finance team to support those efforts more efficiently. The GivingIsEasy™ platform enabled the charity to respond rapidly when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020. One month later, Cash for Kids had launched one of the first response campaigns in the UK to support families in crisis – even before the Government’s Emergency Appeal went live. The charity distributed more than £2 million in emergency grants as a result. In 2023, Cash for Kids raised more than £16 million and the annual Mission Christmas campaign generated record-breaking donations, ensuring more than 312,000 children woke up to a gift on Christmas Day (reaching 15% more children than in the previous year).
The development costs of the bespoke platform were covered within 12 months, and the charity is now equipped with an affordable and effective long-term solution, without being tied to a system with expensive fees and unpredictable development costs. The charity has become more responsive to evolving needs, and is better able to take advantage of emerging opportunities. A key principle of transformation at Cash for Kids’ has been to always value user feedback, and the GivingIsEasy™ development pipeline is heavily influenced by charity team requests, with the primary goal being to empower them to fundraise to their maximum potential.The platform now supports large-scale, integrated digital fundraising campaigns; facilitates peer-to-peer fundraising initiatives; and allows for bespoke integrations with global businesses such as Amazon, Strava, Google, PayPal and Apple. User feedback drove continuous improvement.
The board played a pivotal role in guiding Cash for Kids’ digital transformation, conducting rigorous analysis of opportunities, risks, and investments. Trustees interrogated the business plans, conducted a cost-benefit analysis, and explored alternative solutions. After performing due diligence on the large investment required for a bespoke solution, the board committed to the project and empowered the management team to move forward, leading to the creation of new roles and teams dedicated to digital development and support. Through effective communication and collaboration across the organisation, trustees monitored progress, provided encouragement and fostered a culture of innovation. A healthy partnership between board and management led to successful digital outcomes aligned with the charity’s mission. Their phased, analytical, and collaborative approach ensured buy-in and accountability across the wider team and were able to leverage expertise to realise the impactful and sustainable transformation they sought. Moving forward, Cash for Kids and its board remain committed to leveraging digital innovation to maximise impact, empower communities, and transform the lives of disadvantaged children across the UK.
Why the Board Was Shortlisted
Without a doubt, the bespoke platform developed by Cash for Kids is a market-leading and innovative solution to facilitating large-scale fundraising campaigns and supporting a dispersed national team of charity workers. Judges appreciated how the mission-driven project was delivered through a collaborative development process that empowered all of the charity’s stakeholders to maximise their impact through the charity’s grant programmes, and has led to a culture of ongoing evaluation, innovation and improvement at the board level and throughout the organisation. While the pandemic may have served as a catalyst, the entry demonstrated that the charity’s board learned to effectively assess risk, harness opportunity and respond to a crisis by embracing change and creating lasting impact.
