How a Leeds Digital Company is Protecting Yorkshire Kids’ Futures
Leeds-based digital company, Charity Box has been working with local childrens’ charities to help kids in the region have a brighter future.
The business has been set up exclusively to help charities and has built up a portfolio of small charities it has worked with that help children.
Entrepreneur, Matt Saunders set the business up at the end of last year, and already has several local success stories under his belt. His goal is to help get small charities that have a limited budget due to cuts in recent years.
Charity Box do this by providing various charities with websites, which are designed to engage and enable online donations for improving their fundraising objectives. However, Saunders has specifically started off his venture by focusing the majority of his work on childrens’ charities.
Two of these charities are LEAP and Pace. The former helps young people between the ages of 14 and 19 set up their own business for an academic year, raising share capital, writing a business plan and eventually presenting their results to a panel of Business Advisors. This helps them gain skills to increase their success for University or employment.
The latter, meanwhile, works with parents and carers of sexually exploited children – or those at risk. It provides advice and training to professionals on how child sexual exploitation can affect the whole family – and helps to demonstrate the role of safeguarding and working towards bringing perpetrators to justice.
Saunders, who is from Leeds, explains: “We work with charities who work in a variety of sectors, however both LEAP and Pace both strongly appealed to me as their objectives are helping to shape a stronger and more positive future for children within Leeds.
“There are so many small and medium-sized charities in the Yorkshire carry out invaluable work on a daily basis. But they don’t get the exposure and support they need, so we are here to fix this.
Research has shown that only 20% of charities are on the cusp of achieving full “basic digital skills”.
Furthermore, the data shows that charities who are digitally engaged are more likely to increase donations, grow their supporters and save costs.
Skills Platform also have research, which shows that 45% of charities don’t have a digital strategy and digital strategist Zoe Amar, writing for the Guardian, indicated there is a growing awareness within the sector to urgently “get to grips” with digital technologies in order to keep valuable supporters, as well as staff.
Charity Box work with many smaller charities who may not have large budgets and tech savvy, so can see a big improvement through the adoption on online fundraising. “Why should the largest charities be the only ones to benefit from intuitive design and the latest web technology?”, he says.
The service, which offers website design, consultation and support plans to be serving hundreds of small-medium sized charities across the UK within three years.
About Charity Box:
Charity Box is a social enterprise providing cost-effective web design and online fundraising solutions to UK charities.
