About Us

Bristol is a city full of giving and volunteering. We have thousands of charities and voluntary/community groups caring for individuals and looking after the social and physical fabrics of their communities.

AskingBristol wants to democratize asking and giving so that the smallest voluntary group has the same opportunities to ask for support as the largest charity. AskingBristol makes it much easier to match askers with givers. This opens up asking to all charities and voluntary/community groups in Bristol and at the same time opens up giving to all individuals, organizations and businesses. There are six different categories of ask: things given, things lent, spaces lent, volunteering hours, specialized expertise and advice, and money.

AskingBristol believes that the matching process should be driven bottom-up starting from the asks. Every charity and voluntary/community group is given a “Buddy” (we call them an AskAuthor) whose job is to help them identify their asks and make them as specific as possible. We aim to make the overhead as small as possible. Bristol is also an unusually well-connected city (organizations, businesses and individuals). This connectivity will be used to find givers for each ask – it democratizes giving as many givers (of things, time and expertise) do not realize that they could give until they hear about a specific ask that is a good match to what they are able to offer.

AskingBristol is an experiment run by volunteers that offers a free matching service to charities and voluntary/community groups in Bristol.