Localgiving – Fundraising & Grant Management Platform

A centralised fundraising and charity management platform serving 2,200+ UK organisations, with fundraiser pages, grant application tools, Open Banking verification, and an AI-powered grant writing assistant.
localgiving web application mockup

How It Started

The project came from a structural problem in the UK charitable sector. Small and mid-sized charities were juggling fundraising, grant applications, donor relationships, and compliance across too many disconnected tools – spreadsheets for tracking donations, separate portals for grant applications, email threads for supporter communications, and no single place to manage any of it.

Localgiving set out to fix that. The goal was a centralised platform where UK charities could run fundraising campaigns, apply for grants, validate their organisation, and communicate with supporters – all from one place. The initial build focused on public fundraiser pages and a core admin dashboard. From there, the product has grown incrementally based on what charity administrators actually need day to day.

The Challenge

Three areas required particularly careful design – each touching a different layer of the platform.

AI-Powered Grant Writing

Charities applying for grants face a dual problem: they lack the time to write applications from scratch, and they often struggle to articulate their impact in the way funders expect. We needed to build an AI assistant that could generate contextual, question-specific answers grounded in each charity’s own profile and project goals – not generic boilerplate, but drafts good enough to use as a genuine starting point.

Charity Compliance & Bank Verification

UK charities need to verify their bank accounts, submit supporting documents, and pass a series of compliance checks before they can receive donations. Integrating with TrueLayer’s Open Banking API for real-time bank account verification – with its own authentication flow and edge cases around account types – required careful error handling and status management to give administrators clear, actionable feedback rather than opaque failure states.

Public Fundraiser Performance

Fundraiser pages are public-facing and need to feel live – showing real-time donation totals, activity feeds, and progress toward a goal. But they also need to be fast and SEO-indexable. Balancing static generation for performance with dynamic rendering for real-time accuracy, across pages with media galleries, social sharing, and live donation feeds, required careful per-route decisions about caching strategy.

What We Built

Localgiving is now a full-featured fundraising and charity management platform serving around 2,200 organisations across the UK.

Fundraiser Pages

Public fundraiser profiles with real-time donation tracking, media galleries, social sharing, and QR code generation. Supporters can donate directly through the page, with live progress indicators and an activity feed showing recent donations. Pages are optimised for both speed and freshness so donors see their contribution reflected immediately.

Admin Dashboard

A comprehensive admin area covering fundraiser management, donation reports, supporter relationships, organisation settings, and content management. Donation history is exportable, direct debits are manageable from a single view, and supporter records support batch operations for bulk communications.

AI Grant Writing Assistant

A guided grant application tool that combines a step-by-step form flow with AI-generated answer suggestions tailored to each charity’s profile and the specific grant being applied for. The assistant generates question-by-question responses, which administrators can review and edit before submission – reducing application time while keeping human judgement in the loop.

Charity Validation Centre

An end-to-end compliance workflow for verifying charitable status. Includes bank account verification via TrueLayer’s Open Banking API, document submission for regulatory compliance, and a status dashboard showing which checks are complete, pending, or require action.

CMS-Driven Content

A flexible page builder backed by a headless CMS, supporting articles, advice content, appeals, and charity profile pages. Content is composable, type-safe, and automatically kept current without manual cache clearing.

How We Worked

Development has been iterative, with features shipped in priority order based on direct feedback from the founder and early users. The platform has grown from a basic fundraising tool into a comprehensive management system covering grants, compliance, and supporter communications.

Communication runs through regular calls and async threads, with one lead developer acting as the main technical point of contact to keep decisions fast and implementation focused.

Technology

The platform is built with Next.js and React using the App Router for a clean separation between public-facing and admin routes, with TypeScript throughout. HeroUI and Radix UI provide the component system, styled with Tailwind CSS. TanStack React Query handles server state with intelligent caching, React Hook Form with Zod manages complex multi-step forms, and TanStack React Table powers the admin data tables. Rich text editing uses Tiptap with a custom toolbar; the TrueLayer bank validation integration handles the full Open Banking auth flow. Error monitoring runs through Sentry.

Results

Localgiving is now the operational backbone for around 2,200 UK charitable organisations:

  • Charity administrators manage fundraising, grant applications, donor relationships, and compliance from a single platform – replacing a fragmented mix of portals, spreadsheets, and email threads.
  • The AI grant writing assistant reduces the time to complete a grant application by generating contextual draft answers grounded in each charity’s own data, letting small teams punch above their weight.
  • Bank verification that previously required manual document exchange now happens through a real-time Open Banking flow, giving administrators a clear step-by-step compliance process.
  • Fundraiser pages deliver real-time donation totals and activity feeds without sacrificing load performance, giving donors confidence their contributions are being tracked instantly.
  • The admin dashboard consolidates donation reports, supporter records, and organisation management into one view, giving charity teams the operational visibility they previously had to piece together across multiple tools.