**Update 30th June - Sammy Ofer answered the call and donated the funds needed!**
On Friday, we were asked by the Evening Standard to give our views on an article (that we sadly can't link to) bemoaning the lack of corporate donors willing to fund the restoration of the Cutty Sark.
It's over a year since the fire wrecked the ship, and the appeal still needs £3.2 million. As we first reported here, the response to the online fundraising page was (and continues to be) great - the latest donation was made only yesterday to www.justgiving.com/cuttysarkfire
Our point was that you can still mobilise a huge public response if there's a lot of affection and attention on a particular appeal (which happens to a smaller extent with every single fundraising page on the site).
Since you can't actually read the Standard online without subscribing to it's reader service (tsk), there's a screenshot below, and the full unedited version too...
In reply to Tristram Hunt, a huge group of individuals has used the Justgiving website to help the Cutty Sark Trust raise thousands. The civic pride he calls for has been shown in abundance, and continues to grow, online.
Upwards of £50,000 (including Gift Aid) has been raised so far through www.justgiving.com/cuttysarkfire with an average of £35 donated by over 1,200 people. After the fire, the ‘long tail’ of concerned donors rallied online and raised money easily and efficiently.
So far, Justgiving has enabled thousands of people around the world to support the project (almost 20% of donors were from overseas), and by reading their comments on the fundraising page, you can see the emotional connection people all over the globe have with this historic ship.
And it’s this emotional attachment that causes massive online engagement - Justgiving powered a huge viral response from donors (£186K) to Richard Hammond’s car crash and it’s happening again now for the disaster appeals in Burma and China. All these appeals have generated thousands and thousands of pounds because they have caught the public’s attention and affection.
The story is repeated in the US elections – Obama’s war chest is significantly larger than Hilary’s - his is funded by over 1.5 million individual donors, whereas hers is mostly made up of the maximum limits for major donors.
So, whilst looking for a millionaire to fund the shortfall is one option, there are thousands of passionate individuals out there who can be brought together using the internet to raise significant amounts of money for the things that matter to them.
What we felt was most important about the piece is talking about the 'long tail' of donors. The 'long tail' is a phrase coined by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson first in an article here and then in a book.
Put simply, it describes how the volume of best selling *things* sold (be it books, or films, or music) can be dwarfed by the total volume of least sold *things*.
Applied to the charity sphere, the concept implies that a large number of people giving small amounts can bring in a greater volume than a few major donors, and it's one that I've seen written about a fair bit recently - here's a good blog post on the same subject, plus there's a great article from the Sunday Times by Andrew Sullivan about how Obama has mastered 'Facebook politics' and mobilised the political 'long tail'.
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