# Givestar raises $12 million for UK growth and US expansion

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2026/09/29/givestar-raises-12-million-for-uk-growth-and-us-expansion/
- Published: 2026-09-29T16:30:42+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**Givestar, the fundraising platform that links events, fundraisers, donors and 
charities, has raised $12 million (about £9m). The round was led by Mercia Ventures,
with Love Ventures also taking part.**

The company says this is its largest funding round so far, and “one of the largest
ever raised” by a UK giving or fundraising technology platform. The money will pay
for continued growth in the UK and a major expansion in the US. It will also fund
product development and more staff.

## From collection tin to platform

[Givestar](https://fundraising.co.uk/tag/givestar/) started in 2019. Its co-founders,**
Tom Montague** and **Alex Coleridge**, were concerned that charities were struggling
to keep up as people carried less cash. Their first idea was to turn smartphones
into contactless donation points. The first £2 donation was taken on a prototype
card reader outside Topshop on Oxford Street.

## Advertisement

Since then the business has grown into a wider platform covering digital fundraising,
event fundraising, supporter engagement and stewardship.

Givestar reports:

 * nearly 800,000 user accounts created
 * more than $70 million (about £52 million) raised for over 4,000 charities
 * active fundraisers up 225% this year, to around 27,000
 * 76% of users aged under 35.

## Built into mass participation events

Givestar’s growth has been driven through securing official fundraising platform
for UK event organisers. These include RunThrough, Tough Mudder UK, Spartan UK, 
Ultra Events and Ultra X. Together they cover hundreds of events, so charities can
reach new fundraisers at the moment they sign up to take part.

The company describes this as a network effect. Events bring in fundraisers, fundraisers
bring in donors, and charities gain supporters they can keep in touch with after
the event ends.

One of its more successful users is Russ Cook (Hardest Geezer) who has raised over
£1 million through the platform.

Tom Montague, co-founder, said:

> “When we started givestar, we’d noticed that young people hadn’t stopped caring
> about causes, they’d just stopped carrying cash. So we put the collection tin 
> on the phone.”

He added that fundraising “is still fragmented across events, fundraisers, donors
and charities”, and that the new investment “gives us the firepower to take that
ambition much further, particularly in the US.”

## US ambitions

Givestar already works with more than 70 events in the US, including Bay to Breakers,
the Las Vegas Marathon and the Portland Marathon. Earlier this year it became the
Official U.S. Fundraising Partner to Spartan and Tough Mudder, which brings its 
technology to hundreds of thousands of participants each year.

Hugo Lough, investor at Mercia Ventures, said much of the technology used by charities“
has struggled to keep pace” with how fundraising behaviour has changed. He said 
givestar was “embedding fundraising into the places where it naturally begins” by
working with some of the biggest participation events in the UK and US.

 * **[Givestar becomes official fundraising platform for Motiv’s running events](https://fundraising.co.uk/2026/05/22/givestar-becomes-official-fundraising-platform-for-motivs-running-events/)(
   22 May 2026)**

 * **[Give A Little’s cashless giving community passes £100 million raised for good causes](https://fundraising.co.uk/2026/07/13/give-a-littles-cashless-giving-community-passes-100m-raised-for-good-causes/)(
   13 July 2026)**
 * **[Givestar offers £100,000 through its Adventure for Good Grant](https://fundraising.co.uk/2025/06/19/givestar-offers-100000-through-its-adventure-for-good-grant/)(
   19 June 2025)**