Essence has completed the development of the Give Take Donate website for Cancer Research UK. The website is part of the charity's longstanding initiative to find new and innovative ways to fundraise. While the website is currently in beta, which means only visitors from certain UK regions can register, the aim is to extend it out to the whole of the UK in due course.
The website encourages individual volunteers to 'give' their services or skills to others. In return it is hoped the person who 'takes' the service or skill will make a donation to CR-UK. The Give Take Donate website is the platform by which 'Giver' can list their skills and services, and ‘Takers’ can search for those offers, take them up and then donate online.
Using social features like friendship networks, feedback scores, references, personal and public profiles and more, Give Take Donate enables people to safely exchange anything from guitar lessons to web design for a donation to CR-UK. Therefore people who may not to be able to afford a monetary donation can still help in the fight against cancer, and people can source services from an ethical, local and self-policed pool – and get the warm feeling of helping a charitable cause at the same time.
The website was developed using Essence's own content management system Fig™, built on the robust and rigorously tested Zend Framework.