Launched in December 2020, bcausam Ltd (which comes from the Latin bonam causam, meaning ‘good cause’) helps charities to maximise their impact and fundraising potential. Founder Keith Nicholson talks about his first year in business.

What sparked the idea for your business?

I’ve worked with charities for more than 20 years and I am interested in how tech can help make the world a better place. I wanted to see how I could create something that adds value for the charity sector but is also replicable and scalable.

bcausam works with small and medium sized charities and we offer a mix of free and paid-for services which help charities communicate their impact and broaden their fundraising opportunities.

Whether a charity comes to us for ongoing or one-off support, we always leave them in a better fundraising position than when we started working with them.

What have been high points of your first year in business?

Seeing the tech come together has been exciting. We’ve worked with a team from Northumbria University to develop a free tool for our website which means charities can enter their email address and charity number and they are automatically sent a list of 50 trusts which they could potentially apply to for funding, adding real social value to charities from a tech-driven solution.

It’s also great the first time something happens, like the first time a client gives positive feedback out of the blue, or when we go and meet with clients and see the difference that their charity is making in the real world. Delivering our Fastest 50 small charities list has been a fun and interesting thing to do in our first year also, adding further free value to the sector.

And of course the biggest high point was in being introduced to my co-director and fellow shareholder, Kasia.

What’s it felt like?

It’s felt fast. It feels like the building blocks of the business are there and we can now focus on growing and scaling.

And have there been any lows?

Managing the administration of a company - things like the bookkeeping through to dealing with HMRC - always feels like a dead cold hand on your shoulder!

What do you hope to achieve in the next phase?

Now we’re happy with the tech that matches charities with fundraising options, we want to really push that and get it out into the world.

We’ll look at adding more staff both in the Leeds office and here in the Northumberland. Then the next location we’re looking at is the US. There’s a strong culture of philanthropy there so it feels like a natural place for us to explore next.

What do entrepreneurs need in order to succeed?

There are so many ideas that people aren’t able to execute because they don’t have the money, time and freedom to make them happen. In the UK and in the North East in particular, we have a long way to go when it comes to giving people equality of opportunity around entrepreneurship.

I’d love to see more done in the North East to help people deliver on the ideas they have. A huge amount would change if money, opportunity, and the space and time to explore were put in place. Schemes like High Potential Startups are great but it caters for people who have the freedom to not take a wage every month and a fairly well-developed idea ready to take to market, or even at revenue stage.

Success is not easy and there’s not a straightforward answer, but giving future entrepreneurs the right environment could be a huge step along the way.

For support with your own new business, visit our Startups Toolkit.