Lancashire Women make the most out of Give A Little’s “ingenious tech!”

The charity provides support to all women across Lancashire and seeks to work alongside particularly vulnerable women or those at risk of significant harm. Services include mental health support and advice on managing money, benefits and debt. The charity also has a Justice & Safety team who work with women in the justice system or women who might face homelessness or domestic abuse. 

Adele Helm, Lancashire Women’s Business Development Manager explains how the Give A Little Champion pilot came about at the right time:

“When I saw that the Give A Little Champion App pilot was supported by Mastercard and would allow us to try out the new technology for six months for free, it was easy to get it over the line.  We knew we were doing our Race Across Lancashire fundraising event and thought it would be great for helping the teams fundraise in advance of the event. As a charity, we love to embrace trying new things and we couldn’t be without Give A Little now.”

“We could see the potential of using the Give A Little Champion App to empower our 120 staff to be able to take donations from those who are benefitting from our services. And we have put lots of internal training in place to help staff who are not part of the fundraising team feel comfortable in taking donations and explaining how a donation can support the next woman going through the service. We intend to  roll out the Give A Little Champion App to all staff work phones so they can take donations really easily and quickly. The app takes away the barriers to making a donation - all you have to do is tap on the phone and there you go.”

On how the charity is using Give A Little for its flagship Race Across Lancashire fundraising event, Adele adds:

“Race Across Lancashire is modelled on the popular BBC Show, Race Across the World, so there will be 15 challenger teams of two who compete to travel around Lancashire to reach 8 checkpoints, complete challenges and be the first to finish – all whilst only using public transport and limited budgets. 

As they won’t have their phones and will all be relying on paper maps, their wits, and the generosity of the local communities to get them to the finish line, we wanted to provide them with QR codes to help them take donations during the event. It’s great that we can create one Give A Little campaign and then specify QR codes for each team and assign unique tags to each to track how much each team raises. During the whole weekend they will have the QR codes which we are printing out and laminating and they are challenged to raise a particular amount. They have also been invited to use the Give A Little Champion App to collect donations beforehand. One team has had a lot of success doing this at a car bootsale.”

On what the team particularly likes about Give A Little, Adele continues: 

“We really like how you can separate out different campaigns and track how much each one has raised. The branding looks fantastic and I find it super easy to use even though I’m not very good with tech. We’re using

now and that’s triggered quite a few donations which is great.”

“We used the Give A Little Champion App at our charity ball for all the games we did. For example, we took donations for a raffle and also for a 50/50 split game where people donated a tenner. The app has also been really useful to have at our business networking events. I had someone say to me, I can’t come to the ball but would like to make a £100 donation. I was able to get my phone out and he could simply tap and give £100 as you can enable a handy ‘other’ amount when you set up the campaigns in Give A Little.”

On how Adele feels about having access to so many new features, she sums up with:

“I did get very excited when we got to be part of the Give A Little Champion App pilot and try out all of Give A Little’s features - I think the tech is ingenious!”