Retail Technology Show 2025: Poundland and Travelodge talk how micro donations are driving change

At RTS 2025 in London last week, Pennies highlighted its work with discount retailer Poundland and budget hotel chain Travelodge to encourage micro-donations and drive real change for its charity partners.

“Purpose is one of those words that company boards struggle with,” explained Alison Hutchinson, CEO at Pennies, which works with retailers to encourage shoppers to make ‘micro donations’ at the checkout.

“A charity partnership can really align this,” she added, noting that purpose can be so embedded in a company’s work it can be hard to define, but working to support others can help make things clearer.  

“Most people that approach us already have a goal in mind,” she added. “It’s so humbling to learn what bringing purpose to life really means.”

Pennies facilitates micro-donations through its digital charity boxes, aiming to replace the change dropped in charity boxes at the till when cash was more prevalent. It has raised more than £50 million for charity through more than 245,000,000 microdonations.

Tom Edwards, Chief Revenue Officer at Travelodge, which has been working with Pennies since 2011, explained that the company’s current work with charity The British Heart Foundation has been made possible by the partnership.

Around one in every ten Travelodge customers chooses to donate 50p to the charity when booking a room online, Edwards explained. Alongside the fundraising, Travelodge has also worked with the British Heart Foundation on CRP training.

Travelodge has now trained 3,800 people in CPR through the RevivR training tool, which only requires a mobile phone and cushion to complete. As well as promoting the training to staff, the company has also made RevivR available for guests in its 43,000 hotel rooms through a QR code that can be scanned to access the tool.  

“We would never have got there on our own. This is only possible because we work with Pennies,” Edwards added.

Also on the panel was Simon Wells, Chair of the Poundland Foundation and People Director at Poundland. Poundland has been working with Pennies since 2019 and has raised more than £1.1m for its charity partners with over 4.6 million donations.

“The Pennies process is simple - it doesn’t tie people up at the till or disrupt the process,” Wells noted. “It’s not disruptive and it can make a real difference.” He also noted that Poundland is also conscious of tightening consumer budgets and the reduced ability of its customers to donate. The retailer has set a 25p donation limit. Wells added that staff play a key role in finding a balance.

Despite the pressures on consumer budgets, Wells said the level of donations from its customers is still “very good”. The retailer tries to demonstrate exactly where the donations are spent with updates from its charity partners shared in stores.

Pennies’ Hutchinson also noted that despite the challenging economic climate and tighter consumer budgets, donating at the till is still the most popular way to support a charity. “This is something that customers want to do,” she added.

Hutchinson pointed to Pennies’ first partnership with fast food outlet Dominos. “We wanted to be the first to donate,” she explained, recalling the team logging on at 10am when the scheme was first made available only to find several customers had already beaten them to it, just seconds after launch.