Charity Giving Platform

Wishy.org.uk lets people grant wishes for charities. Think of them as micro-grants. A cause can list a one-off need, such as a veterinary bill, or an ongoing wish such as pet food, so they can appeal for a particular project or react when something urgent appears.

The idea is simple to explain and hard to build. A donor does not add a few pounds to a large pot. They fulfil the entire wish. That is intensely satisfying, but it means the product has to make every wish feel complete, priced and trustworthy.

Charitable payments added another layer of difficulty. A single checkout might include several charities, each needing the right amount, plus a service fee that keeps the platform running. That is a legal and technical problem as much as a design one.

Wishy also needed to launch quickly enough to prove the idea with real causes and real donors. Brand, product and payments all had to arrive together, or the story of “grant a whole wish” would not survive first contact with a bank and a regulator.

We created a fully functional MVP within four weeks so Wishy could test the basic idea with real users. From there we iterated with feedback from donors and causes, and delivered a release candidate in just under three months.

The public site is built around the wish itself: a clear amount, a human story, and a single action to grant it. Causes can list one-off or repeating needs, and donors get the satisfaction of completing something rather than disappearing into a general fund.

On the payments side we designed a system that sends money directly to each charity in the correct proportions, with a service fee that supports the platform. That allowed a basket to include more than one cause without turning the donation into a manual split after the fact.

Wishy launched with more than 20 charity partners and a lot of press attention. Monthly donations quickly exceeded £50k. The brand, the product and the payment model were designed to work as one, which is why the idea survived the jump from prototype to a live giving platform.