Frequently asked questions

Your gift funds the project work you chose plus the real costs of protecting it: verification, project oversight, administration and payment processing. We do not claim that “100% goes to the field”, because running a trustworthy platform genuinely costs money — and we would rather be honest than clever.

The full breakdown lives on our transparency page.

Yes. You can designate your gift to a specific project, a specific milestone within it, a programme (Build or Educate), a community, a country, or simply the highest-priority need. Designated gifts are restricted funds: they are tracked separately and used only for the purpose you chose. See the donation policy for how designations are honoured.

Payments are processed by Paystack. Depending on your country, available channels include debit and credit cards, M-PESA and other mobile money services, bank transfer, USSD, and Apple Pay. The checkout shows the channels available for your location and currency.

You can view amounts in several currencies, including USD and KES. When an amount is shown converted into another currency, it is an estimate based on recent exchange rates — the final amount charged is the one shown at checkout in the processing currency, and your bank or mobile money provider may apply its own conversion rate and fees.

Yes — every successful donation generates an emailed receipt with a unique receipt number, whether you give as a guest or from an account. Receipts confirm your gift; we make no representation that donations are tax-deductible in your country, so please check with a local tax adviser.

There are two kinds of recurring giving. With a card, your gift can renew automatically each month until you cancel. With M-PESA and most mobile money channels, automatic charges are not possible — instead we send you a friendly monthly reminder with a one-tap link to complete your gift.

You can change the amount, pause or stop either kind at any time.

Before a project appears on the site, we check the applicant’s registration documents, land or tenure status, leadership references and budget, and confirm the community’s own contribution. Projects that pass carry the Verified Project badge. The process is described in detail on the transparency page.

Child protection comes before fundraising. We never run a public marketplace of individual children: education support is pooled across cohorts and schools. Photographs and stories involving children are only published with documented guardian consent, recorded in a consent registry, and consent can be withdrawn at any time. Read our safeguarding commitments.

If a gift was made in error — a duplicate payment, a wrong amount, an unauthorised charge — contact us as soon as possible. Refund requests go through a finance review, and approved refunds are returned via the original payment channel, which can take several working days depending on the provider. Details and timelines are in the refund policy.

No. You can give as a guest with just your name and email address, which we use to send your receipt. Creating an account adds a giving history, downloadable receipts and the ability to follow projects — but it is never required.

Every project page shows its live funding progress, milestone timeline, published budget and updates with photographs and reports. Donors receive email updates for projects they have supported, and account holders can follow any project to get its updates.

Each project states its overfunding policy on its own page before you give. Typically, funds beyond the goal flow to the next milestone of the same project, then to closely related needs in the same programme or community — always disclosed, and restricted gifts always remain restricted to a matching purpose. See the donation policy.