The Justgiving charities blog

The Justgiving Charities blog is moving home

It's been well over two years since we first posted to the charities blog on June 29th 2006 and it's time for a change. We've now combined our two blogs into one and they now live at www.justgiving.com/blog or http://justgiving.wordpress.com

This blog's focus has been solely on charities who use Justgiving, whereas our other blog (http://justgiving.typepad.com) included news about fundraisers, tips for fundraisers, as well as the occasional story about our office.

Some of that may be of interest to you, some may not. But you can still focus on the charity specific stories by going to the Justgiving for charities category, and subscribe to the *charities only* feed (using RSS).

And, of course, all our archive posts have been moved over, so you can still read about Facebook, widgets and the like, only in much shinier and easier to read surroundings :-)

We hope you like the new look blog, and continue to keep up to date with all the latest Justgiving developments, news, research and advice...

The old charity account is being turned off

***Update 23rd October

The charity support area is now live at www.justgiving.com/charitysupport and you can find all the information on how to use the charity account here, including a video to show you how it all works.

***

The time has finally come for us to turn off the old charity account area that currently resides here.

As of Friday 31st October, you will no longer be able to access the old area.

The old area has been there since 2001, so it's showing its age and it's been well over two years since we released the *new* and improved Charity Account (which you can access with the same log-in details) at www.justgiving.com/charityaccount.

The decision to turn off the old area finally came because the new processes we've put in place to pay Transitional Relief on Gift Aid won't be shown in the old area.

So, from November, all payment information (and more data than you can shake a stick at about everything else) will only reside at www.justgiving.com/charityaccount

We are making this announcement now to give you plenty of time to get familiar with the not-so-new Charity Account if you are still using the old area.

Is there any help available on using the Charity Account?

If you are worried about learning about the *new* Account, the best start for you would be to take one of our weekly online training sessions. As well as introducing you to the main features and areas of the Charity Account, you'll learn (for free!) how the site as a whole works and how best to start using it.

We're also planning to release a new charity support area in the next couple of months that we hope will answer all your questions about reporting, as well as all sorts of great resources you can use to help raise money on Justgiving.

For the moment, though, you can find out how to run donation payment reports and manage the data and learn about how we are paying Transitional Relief on Gift Aid in the Charity Account.

You can also find some guides on how to run different reports in our JG:Insider category. Here, you can learn how to add an event to the site, find out how much you've raised on Justgiving and also report on fundraising pages based on the page creation, expiry or event date.

But if you need more help, or have some processes that heavily rely on the old account, please get in touch with our charities helpdesk on charities@justgiving.com or 0845 021 2133 (local rate). We would love to help in any way possible.

Justgiving's *new* processing partner is… the *old* one

You may remember our recent announcement about a change in Justgiving’s payment processor.

You may or may not also recall the line in Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi where she sings, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.

That refrain would be an appropriate sentiment in this instance, because it turns out that the service provided by the new payment processor (RBS Lynk Inc - RBS) did not meet the bespoke requirements we agreed, nor did it match our high expectations or the promised levels of support.

Our technical team worked extremely hard to make the change happen, but it just wasn’t the better service that we believed it was going to be.

We’ve discussed our concerns at length with the senior management team at RBS and they’re looking at how they could offer us a better support structure in future.

What does this mean for Justgiving?

We’re switching back to our previous payment processing partner (Barclaycard Merchant Services - BMS) for the majority of donations made on Justgiving, with only a small percentage of donations being processed through RBS.

This is so we can compare the two services for the foreseeable future and ensure that we make the right decision on which one to partner with in the long term. It also means that, if one of the services is experiencing downtime, we can switch to the other and make sure all donations made on the site are processed successfully.

At the same time, BMS is investing heavily in its platform and aiming to launch a much improved offering in the coming months.

What does this mean for your charity?

Another change in the card fees. Some not so good, some *very* good. But again, we’ve negotiated hard to get the best possible fees for you.

All fees exclude the need to have Verified by VISA (VBV) or MasterCard SecureCode (MCSC) on our website (except for Maestro where it is mandatory). They are the fees that BMS charge us and that we pass on to charities at cost:

•    Credit cards (Visa/Mastercard) = 1.45% (previously 1.34% with RBS)
•    Business credit cards (new card rate) = 1.85%
•    Debit cards (Switch/Maestro/Solo) = 16.25p per donation (was 22p)
•    Visa Delta/Visa Electron = 23p per donation (was 22p)
•    Business debit cards (new card rate) = 30p

The credit card fee has gone up ever so slightly, but the Maestro rate is considerably less than it used to be.

We’ve analysed the last 3 months’ donations on the site and Maestro cards accounted for around a quarter of all donations - so the card fees charged to charities will, on the whole, be about the same.

What happens next?

We've only this week decided to switch back and confirmed it with the two services. The new card fees will take effect from today, Friday 5th September.

We’ll be monitoring the performance of both BMS and RBS to make sure we choose the one that will allow us to offer the best possible service to charities.

Mercy Mankind International - how to start well on Justgiving

One of the many charities to join Justgiving in the last couple of months has been Mercy Mankind International. We think they've made a great start to using the site, so I caught up with their Chairman, Sahar, to ask them if they could explain why they decided to join and share their secrets on how to kick-start fundraising on Justgiving...

Why did you decide to join Justgiving?

We were on the lookout for a reliable, secure method of collecting donations that also displayed an online fund meter which updated itself whenever a donation was made. As we only have one person dealing with administration for our organisation, it meant that we didn't have time to deal with Gift Aid paperwork.

Justgiving helps us by doing all the Gift Aid paperwork on our behalf. Since we joined, we have received our money straight into our bank account without ever having to lift a finger, or even a pen for that matter.

How easy was it to join?

It was extremely easy to join. We had a few questions and the team at Justgiving were extremely approachable and helpful both over the phone and by email. So friendly in fact that we went and handed in our application in person at their offices. [and it was very nice to meet you]

What was the first thing you did once you joined?

Chill out - relieved that the Gift Aid hassles were now a thing of the past. The next step was to advertise the Justgiving donation link on our website as a new donation method, and to set up some target based appeals.

Justgiving has a great widget which we use on our website for highlighting our appeals. It displays the target amount, amount raised, and is very eye-catching. [you can see their great appeal page here or below]

How are you promoting online fundraising? What tools and mediums are you using?

We send a monthly newsletter to our mailing list highlighting our work and encouraging them to visit our donation page. We have a few links pointing to our website from sympathetic people. And the rest is by word of mouth. It is a slow process and you need a lot of patience, but it is worth it.

How has the response been from your supporters?

Joining Justgiving has been good for us because we feel it lends credibility to our work. We now have more regular donors.

What's been good about Justgiving?

It's a painless way to raise money online, great tools, and no paperwork.

What's been less good about Justgiving?

Our experience so far has been very positive. Adding a foreign currency feature to the donations page would be a bonus, so our many American supporters feel comfortable using Justgiving (we want their dollars!). [it's something we are looking at, but are unable to do at the moment :-(]

Do you have anything else to add?

If you are a charity, we would recommend you try Justgiving. We haven't been paid to say this by the way, honest! [I can confirm that no money has changed hands...]

****

So, many thanks go to Sahar for taking the time to answer our questions and share his charity's experiences with the blog readers. Thanks also for being nice about us too - we hope that your great start on the site continues and you carry on raising lots of money!

And just so you know, we're currently hard at work on a new charity support area that will give you all the pointers you need to get started on Justgiving if you're new to the site, and get the most of the site if you're not-so-new too. Watch this space...