Donape
Fundraising web platform to crowdsource payments
A scalable, charity-agnostic fundraising platform, enabling individuals and organisations to launch campaigns, accept donations, and maximise contributions with minimal admin overhead.
"Codevate are a very easy company to work with – and they do it right (not just quickly). The team are extremely knowledgeable and understand that their clients may not be. They took the time to explain the process, problems and solutions in a way that I could understand, and I’d absolutely recommend them."
Developing a bespoke web platform to fill a market need
Donape began as an idea to let people give charitable donations on behalf of friends and family as gifts, but early research revealed a bigger opportunity. There was a clear gap in the market for a charity-agnostic donation platform that developers, organisations, and individuals could integrate into their own websites or apps. Before the gift-giving concept could become reality, we needed to solve the larger problem of enabling fast, secure, and automated donations to charities.
Working closely with our client, we pivoted the concept into a full-scale web platform designed from the ground up. Our approach combined technical feasibility studies, legal and compliance research, and brand strategy development to ensure the platform could launch quickly and start generating revenue from day one. With scalability and low administrative overhead in mind, we built a solution that not only served individual donors, but also gave campaign organisers the tools they needed to manage and grow their fundraising efforts.
The resulting platform allows anyone to create fundraising campaigns, accept one-off or recurring donations, and embed donation widgets into other websites or mobile apps. Campaign organisers can customise branding, track progress, and export ready-to-use Gift Aid claim spreadsheets. Donors benefit from a simple, secure checkout, optional anonymity, and the ability to boost contributions through Gift Aid. With Donape, fundraising became more accessible, integrated, and impactful for both charities and their supporters.
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Services delivered
Technologies used
- PHP - Symfony
- TypeScript - Angular
- PostgreSQL database
- AWS cloud infrastructure
- PayPal payment integration
Highlights of the bespoke web platform
Payment & recurring billing integration
- PayPal integration provides a familiar and trusted secure payment option to increase donor confidence
- Recurly integration provides recurring payments to enable automated monthly giving, providing continuous revenue
- Payments directly within the embedded donation widget reduces friction, increasing one-off and repeat donations
Embedded donation widget
- Embeddable widget lets campaigns take donations directly from any website or app, improving convenience and conversion
- Responsive design ensures that the widget is easy to use on desktop and mobile, increasing the market reach
- Customisable styling keeps the experience on-brand for campaign owners
Administration, reporting & Gift Aid
- Admin dashboard to centralise donation bookkeeping, reducing admin time and human error
- Automatic Gift Aid Excel spreadsheet export saves significant time when claiming tax incentives, maximising donation value
- Transaction and donation management tools make reconciliation and payouts straightforward
- Campaign analytics shows how many donations each campaign has generated
Campaign management & public pages
- Campaign pages display totals, targets and donator lists to build trust and encourage more giving
- Support for multiple concurrent campaigns lets organisations run several fundraising drives in parallel
- Configurable campaign settings give campaign managers full control
Behind-the-scenes and other top features
Not all heroes wear capes. These behind-the-scenes features don't have screenshots, but form an important part of the project.
User permissions and access control support
Data is siloed so that only the campaign manager(s) of a campaign can access data related to it.
Point-in-time database back-ups for disaster recovery
Automatic backups allow quick recovery in case of data loss, helping to ensure that critical donation data is not lost.
Highly available AWS infrastructure
Scalable cloud infrastructure on AWS ensuring uninterrupted service during high-profile or viral marketing campaigns.
Secure third party payment API integrations
Provide secure & PCI DSS compliant payments by using trusted third party providers.
Want to develop a bespoke web platform like this?
"Codevate are a very easy company to work with – and they do it right (not just quickly). The team are extremely knowledgeable and understand that their clients may not be. They took the time to explain the process, problems and solutions in a way that I could understand, and I’d absolutely recommend them."
- 100% UK-based
- Complimentary scoping call
- At-a-glance feasibility analysis
- No obligation high-level proposal
- Work with an expert to evolve your idea
Project outline: developing a web-based fundraising platform
Donape approached us with the idea of developing a mobile app, which would facilitate the giving of charitable donations on behalf of friends and family as gifts. After researching the feasibility of implementing such a platform, it quickly became clear that there was a severe lack of options for getting money to charities - especially in an automated fashion. The gift giving platform could not be realised until we had a way to get donations to charities.
We identified that there was a clear opportunity, a gap in the market, to build a platform that would allow web and app developers to enable donations to charities through their software.
Capitalising on the opportunity
After identifying the opportunity, we undertook a feasibility study into creating a charity-agnostic donation platform. The feasibility study was to determine whether or not the creation of the platform would be possible, understanding why it had not already been implemented, as well outlining the optimal approach to implementation using available tools. We ensured that investigating the legalities of creating such a platform were of top concern.
As Donape was a sharp pivot from the original app idea, there was no clear branding or marketing strategy in place for the new platform. Through innovation consultancy, we worked closely together with Donape to build the platform from the ground up, having a strong impact on shaping the brand and strategy into what it is today.
Our value-driven approach put a strong emphasis on gaining an early return on investment. Through our investor mindset approach, we ensured that the platform would be capable of generating revenue from day one.
Delivering the web platform
The resulting platform allows anyone to create their own campaigns for charities of their choice. Each campaign has its own public page, displaying the total amount raised, fundraising target amount, and a list of all donations to that campaign. Users can opt to remain anonymous, so that their name is not displayed against their donation. Recurring donations can be made, at a customisable frequency, to make regular donations hassle-free.
A key aspect of the platform was to keep administration costs to a minimum, affording scalability as the platform grows. Donors who are subject to income tax, can opt to apply Gift Aid (a UK tax incentive), increasing the amount of their donation by 25%. Donape admins are able to export automatically generated spreadsheets for charities to apply for Gift Aid claims.
Users are able to donate to any charity directly from Donape's homepage, as well as through campaign pages. Campaign widgets allow campaign managers to embed a donation widget into their website or mobile app, meaning that donations can be taken directly from their platforms - excellent for user retention. Campaign managers have access to a dashboard displaying the current progress of their campaigns. Campaigns have a range of configuration options, from adding custom styling for branding the campaign page and widget, to Facebook ad campaign conversion tracking.
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