Ten years supporting a charity that gives musical talent a chance

The Challenge

Young Sounds UK has spent 25 years supporting talented young musicians from low-income families across the UK – funding instruments, lessons and transport, expanding musical networks, and creating performance opportunities. With Arts Council England National Portfolio status, they punch well above their weight. But as the charity grew, so did the complexity of their digital needs – from a simple web presence to a platform that could handle donations, communicate with supporters, and serve a national audience of young people, families and educators.

What We Built

We started working with Awards for Young Musicians – now Young Sounds UK – in 2015, and have rebuilt and evolved their digital presence alongside the charity ever since.

One of the most significant early projects was a bespoke GoCardless integration – built directly against the GoCardless API to handle regular donations for the charity. This gave Young Sounds a seamless, low-friction way for supporters to set up recurring giving, which is the lifeblood of any charitable organisation. The integration has since been retired as GoCardless evolved their own hosted solutions, but at the time it was a genuinely custom piece of work built specifically for their needs.

Around the same time, we migrated the team from legacy POP3 email to Microsoft 365 – a significant operational improvement that gave staff reliable, professional email and the foundation for modern collaborative working.

When the charity rebranded from Awards for Young Musicians to Young Sounds UK, we managed the full domain migration – implementing redirect strategies and technical SEO measures to protect their organic search visibility and ensure supporters could still find them throughout the transition.