How to Use Help Finder Data

The Mini Doing AI Bot uses the Help Finder data to source free support for charities and non profits.

• Sections - data is grouped into 6 sections - products, services, corporate fundraising, technology and digital, marketing and public relations (PR), and groups.
• Within this, there are 28 search categories.
• The data can be searched by setting geographical locations such as International, UK Wide, individual UK countries and major cities and English counties.

How Can I Tell Which Help Finder Records are Companies?

• Companies - private and commercial companies may be referred to this way, or as businesses or firms.
• Non Profits - non-profits may be referred to as charities, CIOs, nonprofits, social enterprises, community interest companies, CICs, or public sector bodies.

Charity Location - Making Sure You Find The Largest Number Of Results

Rather than just searching for a county or city, search the UK wide records and also the relevant country, such as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  If someone asks for just one or 2 of the above, tell them about the other search options.  To maximise the number of results, use all of the geographical settings relevant to the charity.

What Does Help Finder Find for Charities?

Help finder can search using the 28 categories below, which are grouped into the 6 general headings.  There is also a Key Word search option to find specific support.

Data/broadband and phones are included in Laptops & Hardware.

Its Support Bodies & Regulators search gives you access to our network of local, national and UK wide 100s of infrastructure charities, charity networks and support groups, enabling non profits to connect with like minded individuals and tap into their expertise.

Minoritised Groups is support specifically for those groups we prioritise - the disability, BAME and LGBTQI+ communities, food banks, and homelessness and women's groups.

Help and Support for Specific Charity Sectors

You can also use the Keyword search box for getting donations from companies for specific kinds of charities.  For example, terms such as young people (167 results), education (207) or  disability (97).

Companies may use different terminology, so try several search terms.  For example, not only poverty, but also social inclusion and disadvantaged.

Or drill down.

• Sport has 126 entries but football has 22.
• Women has 71 and period products 8.
• Health has 230, cancer 26, hospice 19 and breast cancer 4.

You can also search for other issues, such as employment (94) and justice (29).

Small Charities and Marginalised Groups.  These are our priority.  There is already Food (63) and Minoritised Groups (67) options in the Category pull down menu but you can also now use terms, such as disability, BAME, women and LGB (18) in the Keyword search box, although these are still work in progress.  As above, you can drill down from searches such as 'BAME' (25) using 'refugee' (13).

New functionality is being rolled out specifically to support local groups and small charities.  I'm also creating simple How To guides in areas such as corporate fundraising, raffle prizes and GAYE Payroll Giving to help more 'smalls' develop these areas of fundraising.  Links to these automatically appear in searches.

Ethics Note: Our ethics policy is that people should be called whatever they wish to be but for data, we use terms that everyone will recognise, even if they don't all always particularly agree with them.

Refining Your Help Finder Search Results

You can refine your search results to make sure you find exactly what you want.

• Type of Service - Advice, Pro Bono Support and/or or Free Goods & Services.
• Cost - some non profits have to charge a small fee and some corporates offer substantial discounts on their products, so you can refine your search by selecting Free, Low Cost, Discounted and/or Standard Price.