Raise Your Hands champions exceptional small charities transforming the lives of children and young people across the UK.
When you donate to Raise Your Hands, your gift goes directly to vetted, high-impact children’s charities supporting young people facing family breakdown, mental-health struggles, barriers to education and other urgent challenges.
One donation. Big collective impact.
Why Small Children’s Charities Matter
Small charities often deliver the deepest, most innovative impact, but they are underfunded. They:
✔️ Work closely with children and young people in need
✔️ Provide tailored, frontline support
✔️ Can respond quickly to urgent crises
By giving through Raise Your Hands, your donation helps charities that otherwise might be overlooked, ensuring your gift reaches children who need it most.
One Donation Helps Them All
When you support Raise Your Hands, your donation doesn’t go to just one organisation — it is shared equally across all 17 vetted small charities on our platform. That means a single contribution from you helps:
✔️ Expand vital frontline services for children and families
✔️ Improve access to education, wellbeing and support programmes
✔️ Build confidence and resilience in young people
✔️ Offer trauma‑informed care and community connection
…and much more.
Because we’ve rigorously selected these charities based on impact, governance and effectiveness, you can be confident your contribution is working where it counts most.
The Charities We Support
Our partner charities are specialists in their fields — from mental health and young carers to anti-bullying programmes, creative learning, confidence-building and crisis support for families. Each one works closely with children in their communities and delivers trusted, measurable results.
You’ll find organisations such as Literacy Pirates, supporting children with reading and confidence; Storybook Dads, keeping families connected during imprisonment; and Happy Baby Community, providing safety and support for families fleeing violence.
Together, these charities cover a wide range of children’s needs across the UK.
Explore all our partner charities below and see exactly who your donation supports.
Literacy Pirates
Boosting literacy, confidence and future prospects
MYTIME Young Carers
Creating space for young carers to be children
Happy Baby Community
Safe community for mums and babies seeking safety
Action for Conservation
Backing young environmental leaders today
Empire Fighting Chance
Boxing-based mentoring that changes life chances
Storybook Dads
Keeping children connected to imprisoned parents
Chiva
Championing children and young people with HIV
Kidscape
Stopping bullying and rebuilding children’s confidence
Our Time
Supporting children with parental mental illness
Become
Standing beside children in care, for good
Jessie May
Hospice-at-home care for seriously ill children
Switchback
Intensive support for young men leaving prison
StreetDoctors
Youth-led first aid to tackle violence and save lives
The Wave Project
Surf therapy that rebuilds confidence and calm
Dandelion Time
Nature-based therapy for children facing trauma
BelEve
Powering the next generation of female leaders
Go Live Theatre Projects
Opening up theatre for disadvantaged children
How We Vet Every Charity
Every organisation we partner with is carefully assessed through a rigorous selection process. We look for:
✔️ A proven track record of impact with children and young people
✔️ Strong governance, financial responsibility and safeguarding
✔️ Innovation and sustainability in frontline delivery
✔️ Leadership that prioritises outcomes and community‑led solutions
This due diligence gives you confidence that your support isn’t just well‑intentioned — it’s well‑placed and effective.
Be Part of the Solution
You don’t need to research dozens of charities to make a meaningful difference. With Raise Your Hands, one donation supports many causes at once — amplifying your impact with less effort and more confidence.
🧡 Donate now to help improve the lives of children and young people across the UK.
Your donation is passed directly to the charities we support.
FAQs
1. Who is Raise Your Hands and what do you do?
Raise Your Hands is a UK charity that helps exceptional small children’s charities reach more young people.
We partner with 17 high-impact charities working across the UK — from youth mentoring and mental health support to family crisis services, safeguarding, disability support, and creative learning programmes.
Our model is simple: we champion the small organisations doing extraordinary frontline work, and we make it easy for donors to support them with confidence.
By backing Raise Your Hands, you’re directly strengthening the charities that often struggle most to be seen, funded, and heard.
2. Why focus on small children's charities?
88% of UK charitable funding goes to the largest 5% of charities — leaving thousands of smaller organisations underfunded, despite delivering some of the most innovative, agile and impactful work.
Small charities often operate closest to the challenges facing children and young people: poverty, trauma, family breakdown, mental health struggles, exclusion from education, youth violence and more.
They are experts in early intervention, trusted relationships and long-term support — but they rarely have the resources to fundraise at scale.
Your donation helps close that gap, ensuring these children’s charities can continue to deliver life-changing work.
3. Where does my Christmas donation go?
Your gift is split across our portfolio of 17 vetted small charities supporting children and young people.
We regularly review each charity’s governance, safeguarding, impact, finances and leadership to ensure your donation goes where it can make the greatest difference.
Funds from this campaign are unrestricted, meaning they can be used flexibly — for frontline delivery, crisis response, staffing, specialist support, or keeping essential services running when families need them most.
This type of funding is the hardest for small charities to secure and often the most transformative.
4. How does Raise Your Hands measure impact?
We provide ongoing monitoring, impact reporting and evaluation across all 17 partner charities. This includes outcomes data, case studies, annual performance reviews, site visits and charity reports.
Our 2024 Impact Report highlights the breadth of work supported — from improving mental wellbeing and raising confidence through creative learning, to helping families in crisis rebuild stability and supporting children and young people to thrive.
When you donate, you’ll receive updates showing the collective impact your generosity helps generate.
5. Is Raise Your Hands a not-for-profit? How do you use donations?
Yes — we are a UK-registered charity. We do not have shareholders, and any surplus goes straight back into supporting our partner charities.
We keep reserves at responsible levels to protect the sustainability of the charities in our portfolio and to ensure continuity of support for the children they serve.
Your donation goes directly to our partner charities, helping them provide essential services to children and young people across the UK during one of the hardest times of the year.
