Created: 2010
Where: London
Scale: Over £15 million raised for UK charities

The Pennies Foundation is the UK’s leading ‘micro-donation’ platform, a key example of how technology is changing the way we contribute to charities across the country. Retailers who sign up to Pennies give their customers the option of donating a few pennies, anything from 1p to 99p, after they’ve paid with card or shopped online.

With an incredible one million card transactions happening every hour in the UK, it’s a huge potential crowd to target for donations. For the Pennies Foundation, the project began with launch partner Domino’s Pizza back in 2010 and has now led to over nine million small change donations using this new way of giving, with many high street names and popular brands joining the scheme.

By keeping the process of donation as simple and quick as possible, the Pennies model has been a remarkable success with international equivalents in the US and Europe also having simultaneous and significant impact.