2025 at Dona: Turning Every £1 Into £24 for Charities
A letter from Dona's founder and Managing Director, Elroy Fernandes.
As we look back on 2025, I feel an enormous sense of pride in what the Dona team, our charity partners, and their supporters have achieved together.
Dona was founded on a simple belief: that technology, when built with care and purpose, can help charities raise more money and make every donation count. This year, that belief was tested at scale and the results speak for themselves.
In 2025 alone, charities using Dona fundraised £24 million. Even more powerfully, for every £1 paid to Dona, £24 was fundraised – a 2300% average return on investment.
That ratio captures exactly why we exist.
A year defined by real impact
Behind that £24 million are 750,000 individual donors who chose to give through Dona-powered devices and donation webpages. Their generosity was felt by charitable organisations of all shapes and sizes, including health and social charities, museums, schools, places of worship, and community organisations.
Some highlights from the year:
- Over 40% of donations were Gift Aided, unlocking vital additional income for charities.
- The overall average donation on Dona was £12.36: the average donation given via devices was £11.57, while the average donation via donation webpages reached £40.29, showing how in-person and online giving complement each other.
- The largest single donation made on the platform this year was £9,999.99 – a reminder of the trust donors place in our technology.
- Each Dona device raised an average of £740 per month, demonstrating consistent, sustainable fundraising at the point of giving.
These aren’t just numbers.
They represent roofs repaired, food banks stocked, outreach programmes funded, and communities supported.
Fundraising that works - even when connectivity doesn’t
One of the most important product milestones in 2025 was the continued success of offline donations.
Almost £1 million was collected while devices were operating offline, accounting for 11% of donations on devices that support this feature.
In real terms, that means donations were still captured in rural churches and thick-walled historic buildings, as well as busy underground stations and outdoor events – where connectivity can’t always be relied upon.
For charities, reliability isn’t a “nice to have” – it’s essential. Offline giving ensured that moments of generosity were never lost.
Platform reliability you can depend on
None of this impact is possible without trust in the platform itself.
In 2025, Dona achieved 99.99% platform availability. That level of uptime reflects the focus and discipline of our in-house Product and Tech team, who work continuously to ensure our systems are secure, resilient, and scalable.
Alongside this, we were proud to achieve ISO 27001 (information security) and ISO 9001 (quality management) certifications.
These aren’t just badges – they’re independent confirmation that we take data security, operational quality, and governance seriously as we grow.
Learn more about our ISO certifications here.
Support that puts charities first
Technology only works when people are there to support it.
Our support team maintained an average support score of 4.8 out of 5 in 2025, reflecting a deep commitment to helping charities succeed, not just resolve issues. This year we also launched the Dona Support Hub, giving customers better access to guides, resources, and self-service support when they need it.
For us, great support isn’t reactive – it’s proactive, human, and grounded in understanding how charities operate day to day.
Innovation with purpose
2025 was also a year of meaningful innovation.
We launched Antonia, our AI-powered Virtual Fundraising Assistant, designed to help charities understand their data, spot opportunities, and make smarter fundraising decisions. Antonia reflects how we believe AI should be used: not to replace people, but to empower them with insight.
Every product improvement this year had the same guiding question behind it: does this help charities raise more, with less friction?
Expanding our product range: the Digital Donation Box
In 2025, we also took an important step forward with the launch of our Digital Donation Box (DDB) – a new product designed to meet a different, but equally important, fundraising need.
The DDB is a larger, more physically imposing donation product, created for high-footfall environments where visibility, permanence, and security matter most. It offers a more secure, fixed-line solution, while retaining the same robust Dona technology that charities already trust.
Crucially, the Digital Donation Box enables custom branding directly on the product itself, allowing charities to tell their story clearly and confidently at the point of donation. This makes it particularly well suited to locations such as cathedrals, museums, visitor centres, and heritage spaces, where a strong physical presence can significantly increase engagement and spontaneous giving.
While the form factor is new, the foundations are familiar: the DDB runs on the same reliable Dona platform, with the same focus on uptime, security, ease of use, and donor experience. It’s not a replacement for our existing devices, but a powerful addition – giving charities more choice in how and where they invite generosity.
The launch of the DDB reflects a broader theme of 2025 for Dona: listening closely to our customers and building products that meet real-world fundraising environments, without compromising on reliability or trust.
Rooted in Brighton & Hove, serving charities everywhere
While Dona now supports charities across the UK and beyond, we remain proudly based in Brighton and Hove. Our team works from here, building, supporting, and improving Dona every day with a shared sense of purpose.
That local grounding matters to us. It keeps us close to our values, to each other, and to the charities we serve – even as our impact continues to grow nationally.
Looking ahead...
As Managing Director, what I’m most proud of isn’t just the £24 million raised – it’s how it was raised. Reliably. Securely. Transparently. And in partnership with charities who trust us to be part of their mission.
Thank you to every charity, donor, partner, and member of the Dona team who made 2025 such a defining year. We’re excited about what’s ahead – and we remain focused on one goal above all else: helping charities raise more, because every donation truly does count!
