Nonprofit and community · Community fundraising platform
Coo Fundraiser: a fundraising app for schools, clubs and local charities
Coo Fundraiser gives schools, sports clubs, churches and small charities a simple way to run fundraising campaigns online. We built it in 6 weeks. In year one, 1,300 campaigns raised $4.7M, setup takes 25 minutes, and reconciling a campaign dropped from 6 hours to 20 minutes.
- Client
- Coo the App
- Industry
- Nonprofit and community
- Built
- Web app
- Timeframe
- 6 weeks
What changed
- $4.7M raisedacross 1,300 campaigns in year one
- 25-minute setupdown from the two to three weeks a paper and spreadsheet drive took
- 34% higher giftsaverage donation rose once recurring giving and matching were added
- 780 organisationsonboarded, most with no prior digital fundraising
- 6 hours to 20 minfor admin reconciliation per campaign
- 6 weeksfrom kickoff to a finished build
Results as reported for this build after launch.
The challenge
Community groups raised money with manual methods and a mix of digital tools, which made it hard to reach donors and keep track of what came in.
Commercial fundraising platforms did not fit them. Fees assumed a professional team, onboarding required a registered charity number a parents association does not have, and the interfaces were not built for a seventy-year-old club treasurer.
The client works with school groups, sports clubs, churches and small charities. These are groups that fundraise twice a year using a paper form, a WhatsApp group and a shoebox.
The issue was never generosity. It was that half the money was never counted properly. Cash pledges went uncollected, a treasurer matched donations to a handwritten list weeks later, and donors never heard what their money paid for.
Volunteers burned out on the admin and stopped helping. The client wanted a tool these groups could pick up without changing how they already worked.
What we built
We built a fundraising platform with a guided campaign setup, one ledger for card and cash donations, live public progress and automatic donor receipts.
Offline cash logging was not in the original scope. We added it because it let organisations keep their existing habits while moving online.
Guided campaign setup
A step-by-step flow with templates for common cases gets a volunteer treasurer to a live campaign page in under half an hour.
Every kind of donation in one ledger
One-off and recurring giving, employer matching lookup, offline cash and cheque logging, and Gift Aid style tax declaration capture where it applies all reconcile in the same place.
Live public progress
Progress updates in real time, and reaching a milestone triggers a message from the organisation, because visible momentum drives the second half of a community campaign.
Peer-to-peer pages
Individual supporters can run their own sub-page under the main campaign.
Receipts and outcome updates
Donors get automatic receipts and an update on what was achieved when the campaign closes, which is what turns a one-time giver into a repeat one.
Organisation dashboard
Reconciliation, exports and volunteer permissions are handled from one dashboard.
Screens and design system
The result
Offline logging is what made adoption possible. Recording cash next to card donations meant groups did not have to give up how they worked before they could start.
780 organisations now fundraise on the platform. The treasurer job, once the hardest volunteer role to fill, takes twenty minutes at the end of a campaign instead of six hours.
