TPW alumna and Localgiving.com founder Marcelle Speller honoured at Spear’s Wealth Management Awards

TPW alumna (C12) and Localgiving.com founder, Marcelle Speller, OBE, was honoured at the Spear’s Wealth Management Awards held on October 29 at London’s Savoy Hotel when she was awarded the Philanthropist of the Year award.

The judges said: “The Winner of Philanthropist of the Year had a simple but clever idea, using her experience as an internet entrepreneur to a philanthropic end. With Localgiving.com, Marcelle Speller has made philanthropy accessible to all and a daily activity. She has been truly innovative”.

Marcelle Speller founded online fundraising platform Localgiving.com as a not-for-profit social enterprise in 2009 with the aim of helping local charities and voluntary groups to raise funds and enabling people who care about their communities to find and support local charities.

Localgiving.com has nearly 4,000 local charities and community groups on its website, and a database of over 40,000 registered supporters. Many of the community groups on Localgiving.com are too small to register with the Charity Commission and are therefore excluded from other fundraising platforms. Not only does Localgiving.com enable these groups to raise funds but they can also benefit from Gift Aid. And, all charities and groups are validated either centrally by Localgiving.com or by their local Community Foundation. Localgiving.com is the UK’s leading platform for distributing match funds to local charities such as the current Grow Your Tenner campaign which will turn £500,000 from the Cabinet Office into more than £1.2m for local charities in England.

In an environment where the 5% of the largest, national and international charities receive 85% of charitable donations, Localgiving.com has raised almost £5m for local charities and is helping to democratise giving by allowing large numbers of people to give money to the often invisible groups that are the bedrock of our local communities.