Give A Little ‘Invaluable’ to Weston Park Cancer Charity

Weston Park Cancer Charity, which supports patients with cancer both in the community and at their Sheffield based support centre, recently started using Give A Little to collect cashless donations.

Written by Vicky Hewlett February 15, 2024

The charity provides services, advice, therapies and support for those affected by cancer, helping everyone to live with and beyond cancer. From their free transport service for patients travelling to hospital appointments and complementary therapies, including massages, to help ease the side effects of cancer treatments. The charity also funds life-saving research and clinical trials.

Darren Hayes,

’s Head of Fundraising, explains: 

“We were looking for a digital solution for fundraising and after carrying out some research, we chose software platform, Give A Little and one of their hardware partners, CollecTin, who make an innovative contactless donation box, which can be used portably or in a fixed location. After a trial period, we were happy with the system, which has worked for us since day one, and began a roll out. Give A Little is reliable at all times and consistent - we’re really happy with it. 

We’ve raised well over £16k in the past 12 months and we are confident that we can raise even more this year.”

“When we first started, we used the 11 CollecTins at events including our annual race day event in Doncaster and football matches. Give A Little allows us to create really eye-catching campaign screens that are displayed on the CollecTin and the visual element of it attracts people - they tend to make a beeline saying, “can I donate on that?!” We have used the system at Gala Balls to make taking payment for auction items easier. We will often have 300 people on 30 tables who are taking part in a raffle and we set our Give A Little campaign to a preset amount and then people can just tap to donate and that’s worked really well. We even set a CollecTin up to take suggested donations for branded flip flops - we just left it on a table with a message saying “please donate £5” and it was a real success. We’ve been quite open to trying different things.”

On how the charity sets up their CollecTins for events, Darren says: 

“We always tailor the Give A Little campaigns displayed on the CollecTins to the events. It’s so easy to switch campaigns over and our Fundraising Assistant sets them up. We just say we want five CollecTins and a background for a particular event and then we can select the campaign we need either on the device or remotely through the Give A Little admin account, which is great.”

Darren is about to initiate the next phase of Weston Park Cancer Charity’s cashless fundraising strategy:

“By the end of this month, we are moving the CollecTins to fixed sites in a mixture of locations including our Cancer Support Centre, large football arenas, a local leisure centre and local businesses. We also have our Big Purple Bus, which brings our cancer support services directly to the local communities, across the region. The bus already has a CollecTin integrated so people can get support and make donations there. The CollecTins in Weston Park Hospital will have really eye- catching signage to make sure they get seen and people know what they are for. We will do a three-month trial in each location and make sure the campaign designs are engaging to attract donors. We are then keen to try Give A Little’s new Tap on Phone service for our events. We are also planning to invest in some more CollecTin contactless donation boxes - I’m keen to have 30 out on-site - and we’re going to keep an eye on all the new features that Give A Little releases.”

On what he likes about Give A Little, Darren adds: 

“The reports we get are really helpful for our finance team and the information we get is invaluable. One really important feature is the ability to see how much you have raised at events in real time so that it can be announced on the night, and not having to count cash is a real bonus! It’s great that Give A Little is innovating and releasing new features like Tap on Phone - we are planning to trial this at a football match where we have 25 volunteers helping out on the day. We are also planning on using the Gift Aid and marketing opt-in features more too.”

For more information about the fantastic work of Weston Park Cancer Charity, visit

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