QR codes for charities and fundraising
A donation code with your logo on it, for £1 — and half that on bulk packs for registered UK charities. It will still work in ten years, because there's nothing to keep paying for.
This small business supports a young family in the Scottish Highlands working in nature conservation.
A real example: a collection tin
Highland Rivers Trust
Help us keep the river clean
Scan to donate £5
highlandriverstrust.org/give
This is the code a charity would print on a collection tin: their own green, their own mark in the middle, and nothing on it that says who made it.
It is a real code, generated by the same code path that fulfils a paid order and checked to decode before it was published. Point a phone at it and it opens this page.
- Encoded once, so it keeps working whether or not this business still exists.
- Aim it at a page on your own domain, not straight at a JustGiving link, and you can move platforms later without reprinting.
- Half price on every bulk pack once your charity number checks out.
Try it — this code really scans
The problem with the usual QR services
A charity prints 5,000 leaflets with a donation code. Eighteen months later the QR company's subscription lapses — an expired card, a changed free tier, a product sunset — and every one of those leaflets stops working. You find out from a supporter who tried to give you money and couldn't.
That happens because most QR codes are dynamic: they point at the provider's server first, which then forwards to you. Stop paying and the forwarding stops.
Ours are static. Your donation page address is encoded into the pattern itself. There's no middleman, no renewal, and nothing that can be switched off — not even by us. The full explanation.
Half price for registered charities
Enter your charity number on the bulk order page and every pack drops to half price. We check it against the public register, so there's no form to fill in and nothing to email us.
- 10 codes — £4 instead of £8
- 25 codes — £7.50 instead of £15
- 50 codes — £12.50 instead of £25
- 100 codes — £20 instead of £40
- 250 codes — £37.50 instead of £75
Works for charities registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR in Scotland, and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland.
What charities actually use them for
Collection tins and buckets
A code on the tin lets people give when they've no cash on them, which is now most people.
Posters and window displays
One code per venue, so you can see which locations actually bring donations in.
Sponsor forms and event packs
A code per fundraiser page, generated in one go from a list of names.
Annual reports and appeals
Printed material that stays in circulation for years — exactly where an expiring code hurts most.
Charity shop signage
Gift Aid sign-up, volunteer forms, or your donations page, one code per shop.
Legacy and in-memoriam cards
Material that may be kept for a very long time. A static code is the only honest choice here.
One tip worth more than the discount
Point your code at a page on your own website —
yourcharity.org/give — rather than directly at a JustGiving
or Enthuse page.
You keep a permanent code and the ability to change where it leads: switch that page between platforms, campaigns and appeals whenever you like, and every printed code follows along. It costs nothing and it removes the only real advantage a dynamic code has.
Before a big print run
- Scan it yourself, on more than one phone, from a printed proof rather than a screen.
- Keep it at least 2cm across on printed material, and larger on anything read from a distance.
- Keep the contrast strong. Dark code on a light background scans best; pale brand colours on white are the usual culprit when a code fails.
- Leave clear space around the code — roughly the width of four of its own squares.
- Tell people what it does. "Scan to donate £5" converts far better than a bare code.