The Justgiving charities blog

Charity site of the month

OK, so it's not really a charity website per se. But it is a website that can help charities and people raising money for charities...

www.moo.com/justgiving

And yes, they are our new friends, but let me explain what this means: for years people have been asking for a way to print off their Justgiving web address (url) so they can give it people in the *real world*.

Well, now we've teamed up with Moo, printing stuff is incredibly easy to do, hugely customisable (you can have 100 different images for 100 cards) and cheap to boot - be they MiniCards, Postcards, NoteCards or Greeting cards!

You see, Moo love to print, and we love to help people raise money online. Here's what the two look like together (thanks to Francis):



So, now you can encourage your fundraisers to use Moo cards as well as email to promote their pages. Or why not even create some business cards for your charity? We use Moo for that and it rocks!

Think about it, you use DM, you know how that works. This is über Direct Marketing, where your fundraisers are handing out marketing to people, giving them a call to action face-to-face and asking them to donate.

And do you remember the Help the Hospices PDF about how to get the most of Justgiving?
Download making_the_best_of_justgiving_by_helpthe_hospices.pdf
All that needs now is a line that says "Print out your web address on cards to give to people using Moo at www.moo.com/justgiving" and Robert is your mother's brother.

But you won't really appreciate the sheer cuteness and cool-ness of Moo until you get some yourself...

Best Practice Webinar Recording

In September and October last year, we ran a series of 14 Justgiving best practice webinars for all charities on the site. This series was attended by a whopping 158 people from over 100 different charities, but we never got round to making a recording at the time for various tech reasons.

Until now, that is! Yes, with the addition of a couple of very clever software tools, you can now watch a recording of this very popular and well-received webinar at your own convenience, 24/7!

There's a sneak peek below of what's in store, but I recommend you go here and watch it in full screen to fully appreciate the "very slick and interesting" webinar full of "useful tips on how we can promote just giving to our supporters" not to mention the "light breezy presentation" :-)

Oh, and don't forget the notes (and PDFs) that go with it...

Download best_practice_webinar_info_pack_091007.doc

Download making_the_best_of_justgiving_by_helpthe_hospices.pdf

Download justgiving_instructions.pdf

Justgiving Best Practice Webinar from Jonathan @ JG on Vimeo.

Donation reminder & new Gift Aid questions

Way back in the mists of time, people used to be able to make 'pledges' on Justgiving. This meant they could enter their card details and we'd only process them after someone had completed their event.

We had to stop doing this due to card processing security reasons, but we've now introduced a reminder feature on fundraising pages, so sponsors can add a reminder to their calendar - it appears under the thermometer on all fundraising pages that are based around an event date (like this one).

Just click on the Set Reminder link and you're given the option to add a 'donation meeting' to your calendar, so you'll be prompted on the event date to make a donation to the page. So, if people are a bit short of cash, they can write an 'I Owe You' to self and sponsor their friend at a later date.

New Gift Aid questions

We love Gift Aid. It's a brilliant way to make donations go further and we reclaim it automatically on your behalf. But it ain't half complicated (some would even say taxing)!

Some donors still get confused by it every so often [and we hate having confused users :-(] so we've simplified the process again to make it clearer for users. But even the simplification of this is kind of tricky to explain, so I've made a video:

New Gift Aid Questions on JG from Jonathan @ JG on Vimeo.

Yes, that was probably the most exciting video you've ever seen on the interweb...

New homepage

If you've been to www.justgiving.com today you'll have noticed that it's a bit different:

Yes, we've added a few new things, plus a bit of spit and polish, to update the site for 2008.

So what's new?

The first thing you'll see is that we've added an overview of fundraising on the site (in the top right) to show how many people have used the site to raise money for you, the charities, on Justgiving. This is updated every night and helps put people at ease that they can feel confident doing the same thing.

THE most important button on the site (start fundraising now) has been moved to the left to make it more prominent, but it's in the right box is where things get interesting!

We're promoting the London Marathon and New Year resolution pages at the top and then we show pictures from real fundraising pages showing how much they've raised and for whom.

As for how the pages are selected, every night we pull a random selection of 50 pages that meet certain criteria: a page with a user-uploaded page image, a page that has raised over £100 and a page that is not an In Memoriam page.

The idea behind this is that it gives more visibility to the things people are doing on the site, it encourages people to upload their own images, and by only including pages with donations, it is supposed to give examples of how easy it is to raise money on the site.

Every time you refresh the page, you'll see the images change from one of those random 50 pages.

The sponsor a friend search is still there, as is (of course!) the charity search as below:

You'll no doubt notice that we've added a new footer to every page on Justgiving that gives all the info anyone would need (especially a new link to the charities blog - yay!).

And, one thing you might not have noticed is that the site has been centred - so now people can print fundraising pages without having to set their print settings to landscape - a small, but helpful change.

But, as ever, we'd love to hear your feedback, so leave a comment below and tell us what you think (good or bad)...

How a small charity raised over £237K with Justgiving

The Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre (MSRC) is one of Justgiving's oldest (joining us way back in 2002) and most effective clients who continue to raise more and more every year.

Why are they effective?

Well, we thought we'd ask them and find out exactly that. So, thanks to both Helen and Abi from MSRC, we've written a success story detailing the steps they take to help their fundraisers raise great amounts of money online - almost £250,000 for the Flora London Marathon (FLM) last year alone!

For example, constantly promoting online fundraising to their supporters is one key aspect:

In our charity, online fundraising IS Justgiving. We are hardcore Justgiving – we do not shut up about Justgiving, it’s just so effective for us.

And this is done through as many mediums as possible: Abi explains how they basically insist that all their FLM runners need to have a Justgiving page. They do this by email, telephone, face to face and in offline fundraising packs.

We work on the principle that it is an expectation that anyone taking part in an event will set up a Justgiving page

In 2007, MSRC had 102 runners in the marathon, 88 of whom used Justgiving to fundraise. The runners who used Justgiving raised a net £2,000 each, smashing MSRC’s target of £1,500 per runner. Out of the lowest 15 performers, 14 didn’t have a Justgiving fundraising page.

Abi sent me an update on the 15th January, to give an indication of their fundraisers' progress this year:

We now have 76 of our runners with a Justgiving page, out of that 6 already have raised over the £1,500 (and we have received the sponsorship) and we have had nearly £24,000 in already!

Whilst the FLM is clearly very important for them, MSRC still take the same steps with their other events. The 2007 British 10K event was the best yet for MSRC as even though they only had four runners, they managed to raise 53% more than in 2006 using Justgiving.

And there is plenty of scope for more growth too – like pushing more unconventional ideas such as fundraising pages for birthdays or weddings, with the common theme is that it's all happening online. As Helen adds:

We’re continuing to phase out the paper end of fundraising as we believe online is where the future lies. Using Justgiving is a no-brainer for our charity – why would we use anything else?

To read the whole story, including more on their outstanding supporter care and where the future lies, download the success story PDF below:

Download MRSC_success_story.pdf

 

Liz is 1 today! And Gemma's here too

As well as it being Kai's 1st Justgiving birthday on our fundraiser blog, it's also one year to the day since the indomitable Liz Smith joined our charity helpdesk.

Liz is the first port of call (along with Gemma - more on her later) for all the charities who use our site, helping you with reporting, finance, website, or indeed any and all, queries.

As well as being a font of Justgiving knowledge and answering any email or phone call, she's also a massive fan of biscuits and MacGyver (often both at the same time).

If you're in need of help on the site though, don't call MacGyver, call Gemma and Liz on 0845 021 2133 or on charities@justgiving.com

Here are some photos of Liz in action...

And here's Gemma putting the JG world to rights...

New Year, same old Marathon

Happy New Year to you all. After a couple of weeks off over the Christmas it's good to be back behind the wheels of the charities blog (not that it's a car) to start off 2008 in style.

This next year is going to be a very exciting one with loads of new features and products due to be developed, but I'll start with a quick look back at one of the December releases - event landing pages - and specifically, the page for the Flora London Marathon:

Despite the event being four months away, there are already over 6,000 pages for the event and over £800,000 has been raised and paid to the charities. Not bad going I'd say!

So if your runner has yet to start fundraising, you can direct them to www.justgiving.com/londonmarathon to create a branded fundraising page and start raising money for you.

Plus, if you want something to send them to encourage them to do that, why not email them our easy instructions on how to create an FLM page?

Download make_a_justgiving_fundraising_page_flm.doc