Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity Expands Contactless Giving with the Give A Little Champion App

As part of its evolving fundraising strategy, ECHC has expanded its contactless giving programme with

, building on its existing use of CollecTin contactless donation boxes and QR code donations powered by the platform. The charity is now extending this further through the Give A Little Champion App, which uses Tap to Pay technology to enable supporters to fundraise and collect donations directly on their own smartphones, without the need for additional card readers or hardware. By combining mobile technology with traditional fundraising methods, ECHC is making it easier than ever for people to support its work wherever they are.

Expanding contactless giving with the Give A Little Champion App

When the team first explored the Give A Little Champion App, they immediately saw the potential, although getting started required a little internal persuasion. As Fundraising Manager Fiona Brian explains, “It took me a wee while to get agreement from the team to use the app. It just took a bit of understanding from everyone about what it was and how safe it is to use. But to me, it was a no brainer.”

Once the team adopted the platform, the impact was clear almost immediately. Within a few months of launching, ECHC had already created 29 Give A Little Champion App campaigns, involving 17 different fundraising groups including corporates, community supporters, sports participants, and charity staff.

“The feedback has been brilliant,” Fiona says. “Everyone’s loved it. And I expect us to use it more and more as people realise how easy it is.”

One of the biggest advantages has been the flexibility it offers supporters. Whether fundraising at events, hosting bake sales, or collecting donations on the go, volunteers can now accept contactless donations directly from their smartphones using Tap to Pay technology through the Give A Little Champion App. Powered by Stripe, the app enables supporters to turn both iPhone and Android devices into secure donation points, removing the need for additional card readers or hardware.

“Staff members have it on their phones” Fiona explains. “So if they’re out and about and someone wants to make a donation that they didn’t expect, you can just say, ‘Oh yes, we can take that.’ It’s really handy.”

A flexible alternative to card readers for charity donations

The ease of campaign creation has also been a key benefit. Fundraising partners can quickly request the set up campaigns for different activities.

“We’ve had corporates use it multiple times,” Fiona says. “They’ll say, ‘We’re doing a bake sale this time,’ and we just set up another campaign for them. No problem. It’s done in minutes.”

Because donations go directly to the charity, it also removes a lot of the administrative burden that typically follows community fundraising events.

“They’re not having to send money to us afterwards,” Fiona explains. “It comes straight to the charity, which makes everything so much easier.”

Supporters have been enthusiastic about using the technology as well.

“We had university students fundraising for us and they were over the moon to use it,” Fiona recalls. “That’s how they live their lives now, everything’s on your phone.”

One memorable example came from a supporter who used the Give A Little Champion App at her 21st birthday party. Instead of asking for traditional gifts, she encouraged guests to donate using contactless giving.

“She raised £379 from 21 donations!” Fiona says. 

Corporate partners have also embraced the flexibility of the platform. In one example, a hotel partner ran a fundraising activity that raised over £1,000 through the Give A Little Champion App.

Events remain a key part of ECHC’s fundraising strategy, and the Give A Little Champion App now works alongside the three CollecTin More portable devices they already used at events.

“We still love our CollecTins,” Fiona explains. “But it’s nice to be able to say, ‘Take one CollecTin device and also have a phone as a backup.’ If anything happens to the machine, we know we’ve got another way to collect donations.”

The Give A Little Champion App uses Give A Little’s Magic campaign template, which is specifically designed to support blended app and web fundraising campaigns that scale across different screen sizes and devices. This makes it ideal for supporter-led fundraising, allowing the charity to invite unlimited supporters and allocate access to individual campaigns. Each campaign includes a dedicated web link and QR code, enabling donations to be collected through both Tap to Pay and online giving. Whether donating directly via a volunteer’s smartphone or by scanning a QR code displayed on posters, fundraising materials, and event signage, all donations feed into the same campaign in real time.

Digital tools for modern charity fundraising

For ECHC, using smartphones alongside traditional contactless devices has provided greater flexibility for supporters and volunteers.

In some situations, the app has even helped the team rethink how they manage equipment altogether.

“When we were discussing getting more collection devices, I said, ‘No, we don’t need more machines, we just need to start using the Give A Little Champion App.’ It saves us having to drop devices off, pick them up, and manage them.”

Growing contactless giving through events and community fundraising

Looking ahead, ECHC plans to continue expanding the use of the Give A Little Champion App across its fundraising activities. Sports challenges such as the Edinburgh Marathon and the Kiltwalk are expected to bring even more campaigns onto the platform as participants look for simple ways to collect donations.

“We’re already seeing more people signing up for events,” Fiona says. “So we’ll definitely be encouraging them to use the app.”

The growing usage has already been reflected in the charity’s Give A Little subscription tier, which is based on how much is raised by the charity through the platform in a rolling 12-month period.

“We actually moved up a band in the pricing recently,” Fiona explains. “And that’s a good sign, it means we must have smashed it!”

For the team at Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity, contactless giving has become a powerful addition to their fundraising toolkit, helping them make it easier for supporters to donate through tap to donate, QR code donations, and flexible mobile donation tools.

“Setting up and using the Give A Little Champion App just so simple,” Fiona says. “A few clicks and a campaign is set up. It doesn’t feel like a chore, it just works.”