The Justgiving charities blog

Justgiving's Tom on Social Media

If you've read this week's edition of Professional Fundraising, you'll have seen our very own head of client services, Tom Mansel, give his thoughts on social media and how charities can use it.

Or, as PF put it rather more alliteratively, if you're myopic about MySpace, terrified of Technorati, frightened of Facebook, Tom's the man with the social media plan...

A few pieces of advice from his awesome article are copied and pasted below:

DO find out who – and where – your supporters are, and start conversations with them
DO be clear on your objectives.
DO be prepared to lose some control
DON’T ban it
DON’T strive for perfection
DON’T obsess about your website

If that has piqued your curiosity and you'd like to read all of Tom's recommendations, go to the Professional Fundraising website.

Feb Charity site of the month

This month we have the story of www.napac.org.uk, the website for The National Association for People Abused in Childhood

What's great about this site? Well, I've created a short video walk-through of their site to explain exactly why, but the most interesting thing is how this site came to be great (in my opinion)...

And the reason is that Helen from the charity saw our best practice webinar recording and decided to update their site - and they've already reaped the rewards.

Before you take a look at the video, I asked Helen a few questions about the site:

How did you come across the webinar recording?

I was sent an email on the 30th of January with the subject "New year solutions with Justgiving" - One of the articles featured the Best Practice Webinar recording and I decided to have a look...and I am so glad that I did!

Was it useful, would you recommend it?

It was so useful! I kept pausing every couple of minutes to make notes, jotted down all of the examples and tips...I ended up with two A4 sides of notes telling me exactly what I needed to do to give the donations part of our website a much needed face-lift. I would highly recommend it!

It's so clear, so simple and the tips absolutely work...having the Justgiving webinar to guide me meant that I didn't have to reinvent the "fundraising wheel" - all I had to do was use other people's past experience and knowledge and put it into practice on our website.    

Did it prompt you to update the fundraising area on your site?

I was already thinking that I needed to get around to sorting out the donations section of our website and watching this webinar was the catalyst I needed to get me moving. I spent a week completely re-building and re-writing the entire donations part of our website.

Has this update had any effect so far?

The day after it was launched a new Justgiving fundraising page was created! It was such a great feeling...the work I'd put in revamping the site was already showing it's benefits and our new supporter has raised £30 for us so far! I also knew about the importance of supporting our supporters so after being sent a notification of the new Justgiving fundraising page I was able to immediately email David Still and tell him how much we appreciated his support.

I was also able to add the widget for his fundraising page to our website so that everyone can see who our supporters are and what they're doing! The effect of the update so far has been incredible - I am working on a "making the most of your Justgiving webpage" document in eager anticipation of there being many more pages created in the near future!

Have you had any feedback on the site?

There hasn't yet been any feedback on the site updates but I'll soon be sending our a mass email to all of our supporters so that they can take a look - I'm sure this will result in some feedback!

Did you do all this yourself – was it easy to do?

I did all of the re-building and re-writing myself - but I had so many ideas from the webinar and the resources on the Justgiving website that I can't take any credit for it!

What was initially a daunting task was made so easy by the Justgiving team - and Jonathan took the time to look at what I'd done and gave me some constructive feedback so that I could make further improvements. 

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

The only thing I'd like to add is that it's well worth the investment of time to re-vamp the donations part of any charity website because you very quickly reap the benefits...plus it's great fun thinking of creative ways to get people to look at the donations part of the website.

So, check out the video (it's best to open the link in a new window) and see why their re-vamped site has already lead to one more fundraiser, and remember to watch the webinar recording yourself to learn how to do the same!

Justgiving charity site of the month Feb 2008 from Jonathan @ JG on Vimeo.

Thanks, you really should have :-)

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Some might say they are the three most important things to say to a donor. And 1.8 million results for 'thank donors' on Google show thanking is something of a hot topic...

We all know giving thanks is good, and of the many scientific studies to prove it, one came to me recently courtesy of the excellent Daily Good newsletter and its Lesson in Thanks - the story is of a US psychologist in a high school, Jeffrey Froh, who encouraged students to show more gratitude.

The results? "Higher levels of optimism, increased life satisfaction, and decreased negative feelings" among the students apparently. So how do you make your donors feel the same way on Justgiving?

Well, everyone who makes a donation on the site gets a receipt that can include a thank-you message from you, the charity. It's very easy to set up too (as long as you have an admin log-in) - just log in to your charity account and go to the Fundraising & Donations area:

Once there, click on the Your Donation Thank-You Messages link and follow the process. Easy!

You can download an example of how that text appears to the donor here:

Download justgiving_thanks.txt

That message will be inserted automatically into the receipt for every single donor. But other donors may leave their contact details with you (some prefer to be anonymous) and you can send them a more personal thank-you as well.

By clicking on the Direct Donations or Event Fundraising links above, you could create reports to get a list of donors to either of those services, but it's maybe easier to download your weekly payment report to see who's made the most recent donations if you want to send an extra thank-you.

But that's just donors - don't forget to thank your fundraisers as well! To help with this you can subscribe to our page expiry alerts, or read our how other charities provide Outstanding Supporter Care.

Plus, remember that donors who give money direct to you can leave you messages too...

RSS on Justgiving - keep up to date easily

RSS - you heard of it? Possibly. Have you used it? Probably (without realising it, too).

What does it mean? Really Simple Syndication, apparently. But who cares about that? What it does and enables you to do is what's important.

There are plenty of other great posts out there that explain it in great detail, but in a nutshell, most people use RSS to draw lots of content and info from many different sources into one place.

Are you on Facebook? Do you hang on your mini-feed's every update? Well, that's just a collection of RSS feeds from all the profiles of your friends.  So instead of visiting all your friends profiles, you just watch the mini-feed come to you. It really is that simple.

Justgiving has had RSS feeds on the site for a while, and they are the brains behind our widgets - the widget is effectively a way of presenting the live feed from a fundraising page in a cool and funky way.

But it is the feed that transmits all the info the widget uses, info that can be read by any RSS reader.

Which, ahem, leads nicely onto RSS readers (aka RSS aggregators) and how to draw all your content together. There are lots of them out there, but two of the more popular are probably iGoogle and Netvibes (or you could jus use the Firefox browser).

Here are a couple of examples of what you can do on with both of them when you register for free:

On Netvibes...

Or iGoogle:

What I've added to both those examples are the feeds from the charities blog the status blog and our main Justgiving blog [well I had to really :-)], plus a feed from our Flickr site to keep you up to date with all things JG.

What's more interesting perhaps are the feeds from three random fundraising pages so you could keep on top of some or all of your fundraisers, checking how much they've raised.

To get the feed for a page, you just click on the RSS button under the donation totals, as shown below:

Quite a few phones come with RSS readers too these days, so you can even keep up to date with any fundraising page wherever you are - it's how I kept up to date with the Cutty Sark page.

I've also added a couple of feeds from two very interesting charity-centric blogs, not to mention the feed of the latest Fundraising news from Third Sector.

Both of those readers are very clever in that they let you share content, so you could add my JG example pages to your own iGoogle or netvibes page by clicking on this crazy Google link or lovely netvibes button below...

Also, you should take a look at the new BETA version of the BBC homepage - it's all based on RSS feeds from the different parts of the website and is a great example of a website giving its users control over what they see and how it's presented. More on that in the summer...

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

 

Blog review of the year - Part 2

Ready for part 2? I know you've been looking forward to it since the amazing part 1, and I don't like to disappoint...

April

With the Flora London Marathon taking place in April, it is always our busiest month of the year (over 14,000 pages for the FLM alone) but that didn't stop the blog: whilst at the expo, I met some great charities and a couple of true international fundraisers.

On the service update front, we announced new links for charities, gave direct donors the ability to leave messages, announced the start of our successful webinar program and gave you a new help section.

For fundraisers, we started the JG Clinic, promoted help on the forum and told how badges help raise money.

May

JG Towers moved in May, and that didn't stop the work either - we gave you our first charity breakfast talk, a new remember area on the site and announced updates to tables on fundraising pages.

Plus, one of our most popular posts, how to let your fundraisers know about Justgiving, saw the light along with a new help section and not one, but two posts on helping schools.

May also brought the arrival of Josie "The fish" B to our charities helpdesk. She's now sadly back in NZ, but at least I remembered her arrival (unlike Liz in part 1)...

We had another great website of the month, London's Air Ambulance and Cutty Sark Trust were in the news (replete with a lovely graph...) and we had a really nice email too!

June

In the summer we brought you some reviews and analysis (my fave thing) - first on the Cutty Sark Trust fundraising efforts and then on our webinar program - apparently I am "very friendly, approachable and not too technical [good for non IT wizards!]"

No bad eh! Things that were also on the good side of, er, good, included the "widget-tastic" charity website of the month, a great example of an email signature and an upgrade to our website security.

And although we couldn't help with the lousy summer weather, the clouds did part for the first JG Insider post, some more ideas for schools and a JG welcome to one of the biggest charities in the UK, the British Heart Foundation.

Blog review of the year - Part 1

Yes, it's that time of year when lazy copywriters review all the hard work they've done over 11 months to give themselves one easy month of re-writing old stories.

Having said that, a bit of reflection at this time of year is always nice, so here's the first part of my (four part) review of Justgiving's 2007...

January

The year started with a bang - the release of our very first widget! This was one of the most exciting developments we've ever, er, developed and it proved to be really successful (and it spawned a newer version later in the year... but you'll have to wait to hear about that).

Also in January, we released a new email tool to help supporters spread the word about their fundraising pages - email is still the most popular, and probably the most effective, way that fundraisers get people to sponsor them.

February

The second month of 2007 brought you the first, but by no means last, marble-effect graph showing you how you can raise 30% more for the marathon with Justgiving.

This was based on our sponsor survey which showed that when asked "If you hadn't been able to sponsor your friend online, what would you have done?" 31% of sponsors said they "would not have sponsored their friend at all"

Also in the news that month were great examples of using widgets and an improvement to the charity account.

March

Ah, here was when the blog really started to hot up and we began to post more content, more often.

Notable highlights included the first ever Charity Website of the Month award, the introduction of tagging on fundraising pages and the release of some new (and free) fundraising flyers.

In addition, we let you know how to have your fundraiser promoted on our home page.

You also had the unenviable task of reading my thoughts on how to create donor evangelists using widgets and blogs and see pictures and find out more about the inhabitants of JG Towers: I'm not as weird as the biog makes me sound (honest) but I'm clearly not as easy on the eye as Sophie :-)

****UPDATE 5th December****

I've been made aware of a glaring omission from January's highlights, that being the introduction of the all-knowing, all-powerful, generally amazing charity helpdesk person that is Liz (#2) Smith. (I hope that means she'll talk to me again...)

Outstanding Supporter Care – Breakfast Talk

Last week, we held another idea-sharing Breakfast Talk about Outstanding Supporter Care.

Lots of best practice examples from different charities were shared, highlighting the fact that the more your supporters enjoy their fundraising experience with your charity, the more they’ll want to raise and the more people they will tell about their experience!

Help your fundraisers:

The highlights from the discussion included VSO and the resources they make available on their website: an online fundraising pack and a fundraising ideas A-Z, amongst many others.

The offline resource created by Help the Hospices, entitled 'Making the best of Justgiving', is another great resource. It gets posted to all their fundraisers and Geoff Watson of the charity explained,

We hope our one-pager gives our supporters enough handy hints to ensure their Justgiving page works well for them. We've raised almost 50% more through Justgiving this year so far, so maybe the one-pager is working!

Download making_the_best_of_justgiving.pdf

Contact your fundraisers:

Médecins Sans Frontières’ robust contact strategy ensures no supporters fall through the cracks. Sam Knight from MSF contacts supporters as soon as their page is built, before the event itself and then after to say thank you.

Thank your fundraisers:

Thanking supporters for their efforts is essential, as one supporter said,

It gives me a lovely feeling knowing that I am doing this for the good of others. And it just confirms why I am doing it when I receive emails of thanks from the charity for the money I have raised.

Such a complete approach results in supporters coming back time and time again to raise funds for the charity.

A supporter care strategy works well for many charities. Here’s an example (click to enlarge):

Promote your fundraisers:

Featuring your supporters, both on your website and in your offline communications, is also a great motivator for them and others. The Samaritans do this very well as do the Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre (MSRC).

Abi Crawford from MSRC said,

We couldn't be more enthusiastic about Justgiving, and that's contagious when it comes to our fundraisers. Over the last 12 months we have seen real growth in our fundraising and Justgiving has played a very big part in that growth - for a smaller charity like MSRC that has made a very real difference!

Tell your fundraisers how they help your charity:

Lots of charities such as Comic Relief, GOSH and Asthma UK explain to supporters how their donations will be invested. This is crucial if you want them to fully engage with your charity and reassure them that their money is being put to excellent use.

Details of the full talk will soon be available in the Marketing Resources area of your charity account to download.

Many thanks to all charities who contributed to this session – they’ve shared some great examples of how to make the perfect supporter experience.

Making the most of your Justgiving service!

Last Thursday we were lucky to have Lucinda Cooper and Suzanne Fenwick from WaterAid at Justgiving towers, hosting the latest Breakfast Talk. The subject was how the charity has effectively utilised alternative revenue streams to achieve 2x growth online.

The discussion was lively and full of insightful learnings from WaterAid’s exploration of the 'occasions' market including events such as weddings, birthdays and anniversaries. WaterAid have also started promoting fundraising 'in memoriam'.

With people getting married later in life or for a second time and with the increase in civil partnerships, WaterAid has seen a boom in fundraising pages set up in lieu of weddings having 50 this year alone. Have a look at some examples here, here and here.

WaterAid actively promotes this service on its own website, using bold directive buttons to aid easy navigation for fundraisers to start fundraising quickly.

WaterAid keenly supports its page builders and helps them in any way they can whether it’s sending them posters, WaterAid DVDs to play at their wedding reception or sending out wedding gift cards that can be included with the wedding invites.

Christenings and birthdays are a popular means for fundraising too. Each donation to Charles’ 50th birthday page is at least £50!

Supporter care is extremely important to WaterAid and by making regular contact with their supporters, encouraging them and offering any support they might need pays dividends for the charity – supporters often come back raising money for different occasions and events!

A full summary of the talk will be posted on your charity account area later this week, or you can download it here: Download wateraid_talk.doc

We'd also love to thank WaterAid for hosting this talk!

10 Point plan for online fundraising success

This summer we've been looking at the top performing charities on Justgiving to find out exactly how and why they are doing so well, and continue to raise even more money each year.

Different charities raise money in different ways online, but in terms of Justgiving, there are also some common rules that all the top fundraising charities follow, and that any charity can benefit from.

We've distilled this "best practice" approach into a 10 point plan that, if followed, will give you the best chance of using the power of the Internet to raise more, every year:

1. Encourage your supporters, both on your website and in all your offline communications, to create fundraising pages. Tell them:
   • What Justgiving is: a website that enables them to raise money or donate online
   • Why they should use it: it's quick, easy, free and 100% secure for them and tax efficient and reduces admin for you
   • Where they can use it: a link to your fundraising area (like www.justgiving.com/jgdemo/raisemoney)
     


2. Include a “donate” link in a prominent position on every page of your website (download Justgiving buttons in the Account Management section of your charity account)


3. Offer support to your fundraisers as soon as they build their page: email them; phone them – and thank them so they continue to raise money for you every year


4. Ask supporters to email their family and close friends first: they tend to be more generous and encourage future donors to give even more


5. Ensure your supporters personalise their page as much as possible (upload a picture of themselves) and write a compelling personal message as a “call to action”. Tell them to be persistent too!


6. Provide fundraisers with cost examples to use on their page and in their emails (i.e. £10 will pay for…) and examples of why your charity deserves and needs support


7. Promote your best fundraisers on your website and in offline communications to your other fundraisers – it rewards the best and encourages others to follow suit.


8. Prompt fundraisers to write to their local papers, TV & radio stations asking them to promote their fundraising efforts (and your charity)


9. Encourage your supporters to spread the word to even more people online through the use of widgets and social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook


10. Urge fundraisers to update their page and email supporters with news of their success post-event, as some 20% of all donations through Justgiving come in after events have taken place

Lesson 2: Fundraising ideas for your school

Give children a challenge or fire their imagination and they’ll turn into some of the most motivated fundraisers we’ve seen at Justgiving.

We know kids love using computers and they can be incredibly inventive when it comes to using the Internet to raise funds. Ask them to knock on doors with paper sponsorship forms and you might get short shrift, but give them a set of cool online fundraising tools and just watch them go.

See picture of BRGS pupils undertaking their sponsored walk to raise funds for a new sports hall.

The great news is you don’t have to run marathons to raise money on Justgiving – we’ve got dozens of ideas for ways children can use our service and here are some examples of fun and imaginative challenges people have used to raise funds on Justgiving, take a look at the links below:

Ride rollercoasters
Stage a football match between Heroes and Villains
Put your pet on a diet
Break the DJ Marathon World Record
Writeathon
Danceathon
Taekwondo spar-athon
Eat chilli
Knit
Sit in a bath of baked beans
Be blindfolded for a day
Write poems
Play fancy dress netball
Grow a beard
Dye your hair
Do nothing

And here are some great fundraising pages created by young people:

Cecily’s birthday
Liam’s swimathon
Harry’s tsunami appeal page
Kat dyes her hair (look at how many of Kat’s school friends have sponsored her!)

You can find lots more examples in our Forums here.

If your school has any good ideas for online fundraising campaigns, email us and we'll publicise your campaign to our membership.

KISS - Keep it Simple, Signature

What's the thing you use everyday to communicate with donors or fundraisers? You probably call a lot of them, but do you email them too? And if you do, what's in your email signature?

This thought struck me when I received an email from Lisa Flint of the the AADC Research Trust and saw her email signature (click to enlarge):

It includes a Justgiving logo (available here) and some text that says:

My name is Jake, I am 9 years old and I suffer with Aromatic Amino Acid Decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency (a rare brain disease). Very soon I will be walking to raise money for AADC Research, please visit my page and sponsor me by clicking on www.justgiving.com/JakeF

I don't know about you, but I was grabbed by that short paragraph and clicked on the link. This is a brilliant example of promoting a real life story of who the charity helps in every single piece of email communication sent out.

To find out a bit more, I asked Lisa why she included a link to this fundraising page in her email signature:

I included a Justgiving link to my son's fundraising page in my e-mail signature because it was the easiest way of informing people of our fundraising activities. This way you could make a personal plea without actually asking the person directly.

I sent quite a few e-mails to people around the world and I do know that Jake has received generous donations via Justgiving from the UK, USA and Australia. It can reach anyone, anywhere and it is simple to do, you just need a credit card!

Do you know whether it has helped?

Going by the number of visitors to our web site since including this e-mail signature I'm sure many more people now know about Aromatic Amino Acid Decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency: it is  a very good way of raising awareness as this is a very rare disease suffered by only a few children (that we know about!) around the world.

As a small Charity we need to be pro-active for a number of reasons. Including an e-mail signatory such as this one on 'all outgoing e-mails' allowed me to introduce my son, his Charity and a way to donate without talking about it.

It is the choice of the receiver of my e-mails to decide if he/she will support our cause in some way, I like to think they would! Including a Justgiving link just makes it easy to make a financial contribution!

From here on, all my future e-mails will include an e-mail signature with a Justgiving Link and a Website Link to our Charity... I just need to design the next e-mail signature after 'Jake's Sponsored Walk' has taken place!

Lisa Flint (mum to Jake - sufferer of AADC deficiency)
The AADC Research Trust
www.aadcresearch.org

But you don't have to link to a specific fundraising page to ask for donations: why not include a general donate link or encourage people to create a fundraising page?

If you do want to promote a page, you can include a Justgiving Badge in your signature by following the instructions here.

Remember, sometimes the simple things are the most effective!

First Charity Breakfast Talk

Yesterday James Kliffen and Sam Knight from MSF were the first to star in our brand new Charity Breakfast Talks. We invited a few representatives from the 2500 charities who use Justgiving to listen to our enlightening guest speakers.

Their talk was all about community fundraising: people going a little bit crazy and creating their own fundraising events.

Everything from bus-hopping around the UK and being a James Blunt fan to playing four 18-hole rounds of golf in a day and riding a motorbike around Australia have raised funds for MSF.

And if it’s technological wizardry you’re after check out this Welsh lady, who’s making great use of the Justgiving widget on her own website:

And how about these guys, using Myspace to promote their efforts?

Wateraid were also at hand to talk to us about their recent successes, with a plethora of people building Wedding pages. No need any more for a Gift List or the superfluous toaster.

Raising money in lieu of pressies for your birthday, or anniversary, civil partnership, Valentine’s day or Christmas are all becoming more and more popular too.

A big thank you to MSF and to Wateraid for sharing what they’ve been up to.

A detailed summary of the talk is available to download from your Account Management area in your Charity Account, or here: Download charity_breakfast_talk_24_05_07.doc

Watch this space for a round-up of the next Breakfast Talk!

How to let your fundraisers know about Justgiving

We are often asked how to promote the Justgiving service to fundraisers, so we've created a document to give some suggested text for all your communications, be it online or offline, newsletter or website.

If you would like your fundraisers to use Justgiving to raise money or make a donation, you need to let them know three things:

What Justgiving is: a website that enables them to raise money or donate online

Why they should use it: it's quick, easy and 100% secure

Where they need to go to do so: a link to your fundraising area (like http://www.justgiving.com/jgdemo/supportus )

This file contains suggested text you can use and adapt for any purpose. It's not set in stone by any means, so feel free to play around as much as you want: Download justgiving_suggested_text.doc

But don't take our word for it, see how other charities get the message accross:

One World Action provide a fundraising pack to download on their own website that includes information on how to use Justgiving, as does the RNLI in their PDF fundraising packs

Similar advice is given to fundraisers on the Samaritans website, who also give hints and tips on how to make the most of Justgiving here, as do Bridge 2 Aid too.

I sent the above links a while back to Ron Millar, of the The Rotary Club of Salisbury, and he modified them for his own charity communications. See what he did by clicking on Download justgiving_instructions.doc

Tricia Cavell from St Richard’s Hospice also emailed me the other day about how sending our flyers to their supporters led to more fundraising pages:

Just to let you know we sent the flyers out last week to all those participating in our upcoming sponsored events and the response has been really good! I am sure you can see from our site there has been a significant increase in people creating pages as a result ( probably 10-15 in last few days) . We had already given information to them all about setting up a fundraising page on justgiving – yet the flyer has obviously got the message across more.

So remember, whilst linking from your site is important, don't forget the power of the post!

Justgiving interviews school members

In March we interviewed some of our school members to find out how they are using their Justgiving service. We gathered some excellent feedback from a mixed bag of schools –grammar schools, special needs schools, independent boarding schools and youth projects.

We discovered that they appreciate the value for money we offer, citing automatic Gift Aid reclaim as a real bonus. Direct payments into school bank accounts are also a hit as they cut down on the administration involved in fundraising events.

There’s a wide variety of fundraising capability and experience out there – we have schools where a teacher leads fundraising as an add-on activity and others that have a dedicated development department. But both have seen how successful online fundraising can be!

We discovered several areas where Justgiving can work harder to help schools maximise the effect of online fundraising and with that in mind we’re introducing some new resources specifically aimed at helping schools.

Uncovering potential
▪ Schools unaware of the potential  – e.g. how to use online donations as well as fundraising pages.
▪ Non event fundraising - there are dozens of creative ways to use fundraising page to raise money.
▪ Integrate online fundraising into lesson plans; e.g. ITC, Physical Education – particularly in developing
early relationships between pupils and charities.
▪ Schools can learn from each other and would welcome resources to help engage supporters and raise more

Promotion
▪ Schools aren't promoting their Justgiving service effectively. Promotion needs to take place across all media – website, school newsletters, and local press.
▪ Schools use Justgiving only around key events – Justgiving can be used all year round!
▪ Schools are struggling to engage supporters – staff, pupils, parents, PTA and local community.
▪ Schools assume traditional offline (e.g. alumni) donors cannot be converted to giving online. By converting them, schools will benefit from automatic Gift Aid reclaim and weekly donation payments
▪ Schools do not celebrate success. Promoting successful fundraising events among the school community encourages people to take part next time around

We hope that our Justgiving for schools newsletter will start to address some of the concerns above and would welcome your feedback.

If you have any questions or would like to share your experience of our service, please email me at james.casey@justgiving.com or call 020 7549 2224.

Justgiving for Schools - Lesson 1

It’s easy for your supporters to donate and raise money for you via Justgiving – but you have to make it easy for them to find Justgiving in the first place!

One of the best ways to do this is to make the most of your school's website.

DONATE
Make sure you place a prominent ‘DONATE’ link on every page of your website - particularly your homepage. The web address you need to link to is: www.justgiving.com/YOURSCHOOL/donate*

Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School has designed and placed a big donate button on its homepage. We’d advise you to put your donate button as near the top of the page as you can so no-one misses it.

We’ve already created some donate buttons for you to use on your website. You can find them in your online charity account. Or feel free to create your own to match your school colours.

RAISE MONEY
Pupils, parents, friends, governors, even school staff can raise money for you through a variety of means. From sponsored walks to a school quiz. Whatever the event, ensure you link to your 'Raise Money' page on Justgiving so your supporters can create fundraising pages. The web address for this:
www.justgiving.com/YOURSCHOOL/raisemoney*

PROMOTION
Justgiving really is the easiest & most cost effective way to raise funds online. Furthermore, it's a fun and engaging way to get people involved with your cause. Promote your Justgiving service to your supporters whenever and wherever you can. Take a look at how these charities are promoting their Justgiving service to their supporters:

Yorkshire Cancer Research
Bridge2Aid (scroll down the page to see us)

You can also grab a Justgiving logo to display on your website here.

If you’d like any help engaging your supporters and promoting your Justgiving service feel free to call us and we’ll be happy to talk to you. Just call James on 0207 549 2224 or email james.casey@justgiving.com.

* You will receive a charity code in your welcome email when you join Justgiving e.g. Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School is assigned the code ‘BRGS’. In the web address above, you need to replace the words ‘YOURSCHOOL’ with your charity code e.g. www. www.justgiving.com/brgs/donate

Make widgets work harder

“Brilliant idea well executed… A big thank you to the Justgiving team.”
Chris Cook – fundraiser, National Autistic Society.

The Justgiving Widget helps your fundraisers spread the word far and wide about their fundraising page, so they raise even more money for you.

Make sure all your fundraisers know about the widget. Encourage them to grab one and post it everywhere they can think of. There’s instructions on our user blog here.

You can promote your supporter’s efforts even further by adding their widget to your charity’s website, blog or forum. Here are some great examples:

Youthnet has included a piece on one of its runners on its blog, accompanied by a widget. Good work!

IBS Network has added a widget to its homepage, and you can find one on the Children’s Heart Association site too.

And the pick of the bunch…some fruit loving marathon runners from Innocent Drinks have blogged about their fundraising efforts. Scroll down to see their “fundraising ‘ometer” on the right.

All you need to do to get a widget for any fundraising page is visit the page and click on “promote this page” (under the fundraising thermometer). Then click on “grab a fundraising widget” and simply copy the code provided onto your site to see the widget appear.