A charity app that I found called “ Toucan “ gave me some ideas for my own app;

( Toucan mission statement )

Toucan’s mission to be a flexible charity app actually has very similar features to what I would like in my app;

1. In Toucan, users can filter, read about and then finally choose what charities they want to give to. In my app, users can read about different animals and choose what animal they want to sponsor/donate to and what charities they want to do this through.

2. In Toucan, users get a charity portfolio of up to three charities a month. ( They chose how much they want to give per month and spread their donation across three of their chosen charities). In my app, users also get a portfolio of the animals that they are currently sponsoring and get updates/newsletters on their sponsoring animals.

3. Lastly, in Toucan, users can change the charities in their portfolio. I would also like to give the users the ability to change the animals that they are sponsoring in my app.

   Below are screenshots of the functionalities that Toucan offers, as discussed above;

When researching existing apps, I also like to read the app’s reviews to gain a better idea of what the app did right and what can be improved.

Unfortunately, at the time of doing my research, the Toucan app is undergoing a re-vamp and therefore is temporarily not on the Apple or Google store. The only reviews I can find are those posted on the Toucan website. However, through these reviews, it is clear that the users really appreciate the flexible approaches to charity giving;

Given that Toucan as a flexible donating app is doing very well (Got funding from dragons den, acquired the donation app DonatePal, raised £800k and is currently being brought over by PAYA group ), this gives me the confidence to know that my idea of having a flexible animal donating/sponsoring app is heading in the right direction.

From reading the reviews, I also leant that users really appreciate being able to easily find animals that fit their interests ( filter by location, endangerment level etc ), as users seem to really value Toucan’s ability to easily browse different charities that speak to them.