Cashless donations: there’s gold in their data

We’ve likely all seen them. The plinths and donation stations in museums and other cultural hubs, shopping malls and civic centres, where people and communities gather. Sometimes they’re still accompanied by cash donation buckets, but that’s not always the case anymore. Indeed, contactless donation terminals are an increasing presence in our lives, part of a broader picture that saw the UK Government predict, nearly a decade ago, that by this year only 21% transactions would be conducted in cash.

How does that piece of forecasting look now? Well, it’s hard to be exact, but the Charity Aid Foundation’s UK Giving Report 2025 estimated that the UK’s public donated some £15.4 billion in 2024, and that only £577 million of that figure went into collection buckets or tins.

For digital channels, however, they found that ...

• well over £3 billion came via charities’ website, as well as other fundraising websites or apps
• nearly £1.3 billion came through social media, over-the-phone and in-game donations;
• over £1 billion arrived thanks to crowdfunders.

 In other words, the ways people donate have hugely diversified and digital giving represents the lion’s share – and then some.

It’s all part of an area that keeps developing, of course, and one that the sector must strive to stay on top of.

Charity Digital, for example, recently published an article focusing on how fundraising is changing in our cashless age, including the following observation:

“The era of the charity collection tin may soon become a distant memory. An increasingly cashless society has led to a new raft of innovative, digital giving options, which, for some charities, may have displaced more traditional forms of fundraising in their giving portfolio.” 

In terms of contactless donations, and as with cash collections, they’re not entirely problem-free – the obvious one being that they too are often anonymous. So the pounds might add up, but follow-up is impossible if you can’t trace gifts back to their owners. It’s an age-old issue and one that’s notoriously hard to remedy, but we believe contactless donations offer real opportunities – with effective technology giving fundraisers the chance to break free from the status quo.

Cashless living is no longer some scenario that’s approaching, but one we’re all navigating now. So what does it mean for charities?

Well, it surely suggests the pressure is on to make the most of the situation out there. The good news is that good ways to grasp the nettle certainly exist and we’ve put together a few examples:

• Make contactless touchpoints special

Contactless giving needn’t be stiff and sterile. In fact, when it’s the opposite it can be really attractive. The National Trust for Scotland devised ingenious ‘Tap the past to preserve the future’ replica artefacts, to bring its requests to life. While Blue Cross ‘Tap Dogs’ have been very successful too, with canine friends proving an effective draw for people (and making a nice change from ‘your dinner’s in the dog’, to ‘your donee is the dog’!

• Make micro-donations count

The charity Pennies has set its sights on protecting and growing micro-donations, by using technology to facilitate affordable, digital ways to donate. A survey it recently ran found that after being told that if every UK cardholder gave just 35p a week to charity, it could raise an additional £1 billion for charities every year, 48% of respondents said that they’d be more likely to micro-donate. To put it another way, small (and regular) is beautiful.

• Make your platform a digital powerhouse

Having a slick system on your side that can help to manage donors, campaigns and supporter relationships is a huge advantage. There are lots of strong examples of CRM software out there, including Donorfy, which offers integrations with the likes of Enthuse, and smooths your way when it comes to Gift Aid.

You can find just one instance (among 1000+) of how Donorfy has helped charities by heading here.

What links these examples is that they’re all focused around the power of digital technology and aiding ways to make charities’ lives easier, including with cashless giving. Because cashless donations are no longer some novelty, they should be the default expectation.

Although they present challenges, they’re rarely the problem – it’s the set-ups that receive them which are usually at fault. And in particular, weak cashless donation systems which simply don’t connect data properly.

If you’ve been worried that contactless donation "taps" may be diminishing, or even effecting your relationships with supporters, here's a fresh perspective.

With the right digital architecture – and especially a strong CRM – in place, you can ‘turn on the donation taps’.

That tech-enabled framework can then bring you donor details from the beeps, make that information useful and ultimately offer new ways to build links with supporters. Because with the right customer relationship management software and accompanying integrations, cashless charity donations become:

• Identifiable: the system records donor details from all sorts of interactions, including contactless gifting (primarily via integrated payment gateways and automated data syncing);
• Segmentable: by creating targeted contact lists based on behaviour, interests or donation history, which can then help with outreach efforts, including personalised marketing campaigns;
• Automatable: the data can also be used to automate the likes of follow-up journeys for donors;
• Reportable: you end up with a rich seam of digital information that gives you invaluable data for reports, planning and strategic decision-making;
• Gift Aid-optimised: and yes, it makes Gift Aid simple by processing such claims automatically with direct HMRC integration.

The right cashless donation system offers a rich seam of data

Any type of donation, including the cashless ones, can form the basis of ongoing relationships. You just need the right tools to dig up the data, polish it and turn it into something precious.