Introducing the Justgiving Welcome Pack

Drum roll please... Yes, it's time for us to announce our first ever Justgiving Welcome Pack! This pack is designed to give you all the info you will ever need to know about our service in a lovely shiny folder, with nice colours and everything.

It's the culmination of much work from the finest minds at JG Towers and it has been developed over a longer time period that we'd like to admit. So whilst it was originally designed to help new charities, we're sending it to every other charity too, because we're nice like that.

Here's a sneak peak at the outside:

 

And within? Well, there's a letter from our CEO, Zarine, and MD, Anne-Marie. But also, there are four information sheets covering the below subjects:

• Raise more money

Hints and tips on how to optimise your online fundraising through Justgiving, plus examples of how
other charities have successfully used our service.

• Your online charity account

A summary of the various financial reports and resources you’ll find in your secure online account.

• What happens to your money?

Information on how Justgiving’s financial systems operate. This includes details of how and when we
make donation payments, how we process Gift Aid and how transaction, card and VAT charges affect
donations made through Justgiving.

• We’re here to help

Useful Justgiving contacts to help you and your supporters raise more.

Now we'll be adding to the pack over time, and we'll give you PDFs to download and print off. But for the time being, I won't show you what each sheet includes as it would ruin the surprise!

So, watch out for the pack in the post in the next week or so, and be sure to let me know what you think.

Comments

[Alan Cooper]

I really appreciate Justgiving.org for its cost effective collection of small donations for charities. I do think though that there should be a ceiling for the 5% commission, because Justgiving gets fat in my opinion on the commission for more generous donations. I would like to see the 5% become 1% for donations of £100 and over and 2.5% for donations of £50 to £99

[Jonathan]

Thanks for your comment Alan. We're always happy to hear what people make of our fees and for them to argue their case. Whilst I appreciate your desire to see our transaction fee reduced on donations over a certain ceiling, I assure you that no-one, either shareholders or staff at Justgiving, is getting fat.

As a company, we first made a profit only two years ago and we still have accumulated losses running into millions of pounds. Our running costs also amount to millions of pounds annually.

The vast majority of donations on the site are less than £50, but the cost of processing them, including reclaiming Gift Aid, is disproportionately high. It is only by charging the same percentage on all donations that we are able keep down the charges on the much smaller donations. Were we to have a lower % fee for the higher donations, we would probably have to increase our fee for the lowest donations. And I think you’d agree that that would really hurt the smallest charities on our site, the people to whom, arguably, we provide the most value.

[Alan Cooper]

Thanks for your reply Jonathan. I am sure you work very hard. From where I am standing it seems like electronic banking enables quite cheap transactions and the costs are high for all but small donations, after all, donations for a cause totalling ten thousand pounds would mean £500 goes to Just Giving. Maybe most does go on costs but seems a lot that's all. I think there is need to be careful about not letting costs run away, eg not too many cost swallowing gimmicks like expensive introductory packs and staff courses! Kind regards, Alan.

[sally phipps]

I do not seem to have received my Fundraising Pack - should I have done so by now? It is possible it has gone astray within the organisation - any chance of another one addressed to me please?

Sally Phipps
Community Fundraising Officer
Hospice of St Francis

[Jonathan]

Hi Sally, thanks for your comment. I'll send you an email to get your address and will pop a pack in the post for you.