Start-up Raiser launched to help small charities raise more funds
Howard Lake | 1 October 2025 | News
A software platform designed to help the UK’s smallest charities secure funding from trusts and foundations has been launched.
Raiser is a tool that helps small charities write stronger funding bids, demonstrate their impact and save valuable time. It has been created and developed by Buxton-based fundraiser and former small-charity CEO Luke Wilkinson with the support of co-founder James Poulter, an AI and innovation expert.
The concept grew directly from Wilkinson’s freelance work with small charities, but especially Buxton Crescent Heritage Trust, which was the first organisation to adopt his simple grant-fundraising system. Appropriately enough, the platform’s ‘global launch’ took place in Buxton, in its historic Pump Room at Buxton Crescent.
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Raiser brought together around 20 leaders of local charities and community groups from in and around the High Peaks area. The event included a free grant-writing surgery as well as the option to trial the Raiser app.
The tool helps small charities write stronger funding bids, demonstrate their impact and save valuable time.
“Small charities change lives every day. They deserve technology that actually works for them,” said Wilkinson.
“With Raiser we’re putting powerful AI tools into the hands of the people closest to social problems—without the cost or complexity that usually keeps small organisations out.”
As such Raiser is now available to any small registered charity (under £1 million income per year) across the UK.
Recently featured in Fundraising Magazine, Wilkinson believes that Raiser is the only UK platform built specifically for small charities.
Raiser is a UK-built SaaS platform that helps small charities let their impact do the talking.
Wilkinson explains that, rather than simply speeding up grant applications, it enables them to feed in real stories and evidence of the difference they make so that funders can see and support their impact-making activity, without making them fill out endless forms.
By combining AI-driven impact storytelling with smart bid support, he added, “Raiser aims to become the go-to place for those serious about backing the smallest charities making the biggest difference”.
Challenges to seeking grants
Raiser’s launch comes as the charity sector grapples with the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence, and challenging behaviours from some grantmaking trusts, including large funders.
Wilkinson argues that AI should shift the balance of power:
“Instead of charities spending endless hours feeding the old grant-application machine, we can finally let the real stories of impact carry as much weight as the spreadsheets. Raiser helps charities tell those stories—and helps funders listen.”
- Gilly’s offers small grants for small charities (3 September 2025)
- Funding opportunities in September 2025 (22 September 2025)
- CharityJob to share £70,000 among small charities (15 September 2025)
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.