Join us in building a community-powered funding database for small charities

Finding the right funders takes huge amounts of time — especially for small charities without research teams, paid subscriptions, or hours to spend trawling the internet. Most of the real intelligence in our sector lives in WhatsApp groups, spreadsheets, email chains, and brilliant grassroots efforts like Jo Jeffery’s ‘List’, which has shown just how powerful shared knowledge can be.

Inspired by Jo’s work, we want to take the same spirit of openness one step further and explore creating a community-powered funding database built by the sector, for the sector.

This isn’t about competing with existing efforts.

It’s about creating a shared resource that everyone can contribute to and everyone can benefit from.

Why a community-powered funding database matters

Charities deserve better than paywalled databases and shallow, self-reported funder profiles.

We want to explore building something deeper, clearer, and more transparent — a genuine data commons for the sector.

A community-powered funding database could offer:

Real experiences from real charities

Insights into how funders behave, respond, support, and decide — contributed by verified charity users across the UK.

Smarter use of public information

Charity Commission data, programme criteria, accounts, giving histories, and trends brought together in one place.

Clearer matching between funders and charities

Helping you quickly understand whether a funder is actually a good fit based on patterns, criteria, and previous awards.

Open, transparent, and free to access

A shared sector asset — not locked inside one commercial provider.

Responsible use of AI, with human oversight

AI can help surface patterns and insights from public sources, while the sector keeps ownership and control.

Protected space for genuine charities

Only verified charity accounts can contribute or access deeper insights, maintaining trust and avoiding commercial scraping.

Why Raiser is exploring this now

Raiser already helps small charities organise their work, clarify their impact, and draft stronger bids.

A community-powered funding database would help complete the picture.

Imagine logging into Raiser and instantly seeing:

what a funder says they fund
who they actually fund
where their money goes
giving patterns over the last 5–10 years
user experiences from across the sector
a quick “good match / not a match” indicator for your organisation

All within a resource owned by the sector, not by a single company.

This is entirely aligned with Raiser’s core philosophy:

the sector deserves tools built by its own members, in the open, with generosity and collaboration at the centre.

Want to help shape it?

We’re in early discovery mode and gathering a group of charity leaders, fundraisers, data people, and curious collaborators who want to shape this alongside us.

If a community-powered funding database sounds like something you’d want to use — or help create — drop your email below to register interest.

No pressure. No commitment.

Just an invitation to help build something important together.