Julia’s House Children’s Hospice makes a splash with new Give A Little Champion App
Julia’s House Children’s Hospice, which provides practical and emotional support for families caring for a child with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition, has been using Give A Little to collect contactless donations since the beginning of 2023. As soon as the charity heard about the pilot for the new Give A Little Champion App, which allows groups of supporters to fundraise using their smartphones, they jumped at the chance.
23 June 2025Sally Woodford, Julia’s House Database Manager explains:
“When we heard about the Give A Little Champion App pilot, we wanted to be part of it straight away. I was particularly excited about the level of control the app gives us and the ease of managing and allocating income. We were also keen as a charity to show that we’re not afraid of embracing new technology and could see the many benefits of giving people more freedom in the way they can take donations rather than just sending them to JustGiving.“
The charity has already used the Give A Little Champion App in a myriad of ways. Sally continues:
“We are trying to use the Give A Little Champion App wherever we can. We started with collecting donations for maps for The Great Tail Trail, a series of 40 giant mermaid tail sculptures situated across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. One of the tails is called the Wave of Love which allowed people to buy names in memory of people supported by the hospice to go on the tail. We used the app to take donations for that.”
Sally lists the other types of fundraising and campaigns the charity is using the Give A Little Champion App for:
“Our CEO, Martin Edwards is taking part in a challenge called 20/20 to celebrate his 20th anniversary at the charity. The challenge involves 20 people nominating a challenge and Martin will join in with all the challenges. We have created a supporter group in our Give A Little account to use for the challenge and Martin is one of the supporters invited to use the Give A Little Champion App to use for people sponsoring him. One of the challenges involves both Martin and James McVey from the Vamps having a tattoo of the Julia’s House logo!”
“Martin will be doing a series of talks about the challenge and he will take the app with him to collect donations on that. We are also inviting a group of staff from one of our corporate supporters to use the app as they are doing a trek for us. And anyone else doing talks for us, including our volunteers, will have the app with a general donations campaign on their phones so they are ready to take donations.”
On how staff, volunteers and supporters have found using the Give A Little Champion App, Sally said:
“It’s all been very easy - we have had no real issues at all. Everyone at the charity is really excited about it and the potential. Donors have found it really easy to donate as well.”
“There are so many ways that we can use the Give A Little Champion App - it’s so easy to set up really professional looking campaigns and invite groups of supporters - we are really excited to get the most out of it!”