The Justgiving charities blog

Fundraising page estimated cost

One of the top queries to our helpdesk recently has been about working out the net total raised by a fundraising page, i.e. the amount raised on a page minus our 5% transaction fee, the VAT on our fee and the debit/credit card fee (see here for more detail).

This used to be quite complicated to work out, requiring you to look at many different donation and Gift Aid payment reports and to do some manual calculation and manipulation of the data we provide.

But that wasn't deliberate on our part, it was only due to the nature of how our finance processes work - for every donation that is eligible for Gift Aid, we pay that in full to the charity straight away and only take our fee from the Gift Aid payment we subsequently make, which can be up to 6-8 weeks after the donation was made.

And if a donation isn't eligible for Gift Aid, we take our fee out of that donation. Our processes can therefore appear fairly complicated because of that difference.

Thankfully, it's not that complicated any more!

We've just released an easy way to see the gross and estimated net donation figures for a fundraising page using the fundraiser quick search function.

Here's how...

When you log-in to the Charity Account, enter the person's name who's page you're looking for in the search box on the first screen as below:

You can then click on the person's name to see a summary of their fundraising:

When you click on "See sponsorship to this page" you will then see a list of all donations, plus the estimated fees charged for each donation, and a total for the page:

You'll notice that, as above, we tell you why these fees are only estimated:

These fees are estimated because we can only calculate the exact fees after we have successfully reclaimed Gift Aid on a donation and paid it to your charity (which can be 6-8 weeks after a Gift Aid claim is made).

And even when we do pay the Gift Aid over, it may not be possible to get an true exact figure for a page: this is because we don't charge VAT on our transaction fee for each donation, the VAT is charged on the total fees per payment we make to you.

So if a payment to you includes donations from more than one fundraising page, the total VAT charged would have to be split per donation, and that may mean small rounding errors occur (but these would be discrepancies of pence, not pounds!).

But this new feature will give you as close as you will get to the exact figure for a page, so if you, or your fundraisers, would like to know exactly how much your charity has received thanks to their fundraising efforts, you can find out in less than a minute!

More information on how our (sometimes straightforward, sometimes complicated) payment processes can be found here, including documents and easy to follow diagrams.

Payment reports are back up

We’re glad to say that you can download your customisable payment reports from your Charity Account again.

***Update, 30th April***

As so many people are now accessing the reports at the same time, they are taking longer than normal to be generated. You should not be experiencing any time-outs, but please be patient when downloading reports or try running them early in the morning or in the late afternoon.

They may take longer, but this will only be for the short term - and you can read how we are planning to improve this in future here.

***End of update***

As you may know, we suspended the ability to download payment reports during the London Marathon peak because our servers couldn't support the heavy website traffic combined with the increased usage of bigger-than-normal reports (due to many charities needing to download lots of reports to close the books at year end) all at the same time.

For this, we are sorry. Really, really sorry. We realise this has caused a lot of frustration for a lot of people and understand that over the last couple of weeks we have not provided the level of service that we normally do.

And that makes us angry. Angry because we care about what we do. We're passionate about helping people raise money online (and all that encompasses) and when we fall short of our reason for being, and our company values, that really frustrates us.

So quite simply, keeping the reports up would have meant people couldn't donate. But the root causes are a bit more complicated, so next week our CTO (up now here) will give you a full and detailed explanation of what happened, our decisions, and what we plan to do to prevent this in future.

And to give you some context for the traffic we had, below is a six-month graph showing the daily reach of Justgiving in comparison to Everyclick and Sport Relief (the most popular charity website according to the latest Hitwise report).

Charity Account update: finance reports made easier

Our techies (mostly Derrick) have today made some updates to the charity account that we hope will make it easier to use. The change will primarily effect payment reports, but it also cleans up the column selection screen.

What's new?

Click here to watch the video below in full screen

Now, when you click on the Finance reports tab, you are taken straight to the list of recent payments made to your charity:

On this screen you can now choose whether to download a PDF summary of the payment, or create and download a detailed report in either CSV or Excel.

If you choose to create a detailed report in either format, you're presented with the screen below that gives you the option to select different columns to appear in your report, use a default column selection or use your saved settings:

[Note: this screen has changed for all reports that you can create in the account]

Once you've clicked on "continue", the report is then created in real time, and you can download it (after the Justgiving dog has finished barking at the, er, Dove of Data).

We're confident that these changes make the process easier, so that now it only takes three clicks from logging in to get all the details of the money we've sent to you!

New sponsorship amount screen

Our techies have been a particularly busy bunch this week, especially Systems Dev Manager Jason (he of the Famous Friday Fact), and another feature they released was a change to the sponsorship amount screen.

If we click "sponsor me now" at www.justgiving.com/cycletocannes, for example, we'll see the screen below:

Instead of options for £100, £50, £20 or Other, what you see now are the five most recent donations and the five largest donations plus names and messages.

Having said that, if you've turned off the donation amount column, like on www.justgiving.com/olileech, only the latest donations are shown and the amounts do not appear:

We've been asked before whether we could enable custom amounts on fundraising pages, but we took the view that showing the most recent and top donations gives sponsors a better context for their donation.

The average donation on JG is about £34 (including Gift Aid), but some pages get lots of very large donations, and other pages get lots of smaller donations.

This new screen caters for both sets of pages because sponsors won't be put off by too high or too small ask amounts - they can just see the top and past donation amounts for that page, how much they are and then decide if they want to match those amounts or go higher or lower (and, er, pay their credit cards right...).

You can also see the fundraising page target and total donated if you want to help someone reach their goal, plus adding your name and message at the beginning makes this screen even more compelling and *sticky* (plus you can still change the amount and message on the last screen of the donation process).

Our stats told us that some people would drop off the donation process on the old sponsorship screen, but we hope this change means more people go from visiting a page to making a donation. Which means even more money gets to you, the charities!

Charity Search Improvement

Earlier in the month we brought you news of improvements to the 'sponsor a friend' search, and now it's time for the charity search to get an update too!

So now if I search for "cancer" from the homepage, this is what I will see:

What's changed?

• it's quicker and more relevant
• results are now weighted more towards the name of the charity
• charity descriptions are now searchable

And that's, well, it really. A simple, but very important task, made better.

'Sponsor a friend' search improvement

We've now made it even easier to find a fundraiser on Justgiving by updating the 'sponsor a friend' search from our homepage. And it's a lot faster now too!

Here's what it looks like now if you search for "Jonathan":

As you can see, you're now presented with a lot more info about the fundraising pages - their image (where they have one), the url (web address), the name of the fundraiser and when they created it.

You'll also notice that if a page is set up with team members, or is in memory of someone, their names appear too. So it's now even easier to find the page you want to donate to!

This is also the same when you search for *all fundraisers* for your charity, like in the example below for  the fundraising area  of the Demo charity: www.justgiving.com/jgdemo/raisemoney

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...

Present for all - event landing pages

Here is another exciting development our techie elves have been working on this Winter: new event landing pages

This is something we've been asked to do by both fundraisers and charities, so we're really excited about how they'll be used.

Event Landing Pages

These are basically new landing pages for every public event on the site, automatically created by the system and linked to from every page created for that event.

Here's the page for the Winter Rickshaw Run:

As you can see, it gives basic information about the event (date, type etc.) but also shows how many pages have been created and how much they have all raised.

Plus, to add a bit of *user generated content*, the most recent fundraising pages created with personalised images are promoted - just click on the picture to see the page!

This event landing page is linked to from every fundraising page created for that event and the idea is that by showing how many people do raise money this way, it will encourage others to do the same.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Presents for Fundraisers - YouTube & flickr on pages

One of the most frequent requests from fundraisers is that they'd like to add more photos and videos to fundraising pages. We know that adding some personalisation can be really important in getting people to make donations, so this release should make lots of people happy!

YouTube & flickr on pages

By logging into their account on Justgiving, fundraisers can now add videos and photos from two of the most popular sites on the web: flickr and YouTube.

What does that look like? Here's an early adopter, a very quick on the draw, Laura Knight:

As Laura herself says on the page:

Thanks to some very cool updates to Justgiving you are also able to look at the photos of my adventures on flickr AND watch the hilarious cow touching video for Challenge Laura. Just click the pictures on the left. That's right...just there.

Another page that's added YouTube at the first opportunity is www.justgiving.com/angelsofthenorthwest

Nice work guys!

Here's our snazzy video guide to YouTube:

Fundraising Page Countdown

Another frequent request has been a page countdown, as many people are unsure of when their pages expire.

Now, once an event has taken place, a countdown will appear on the page to indicate how long people have left to donate:

We hope this will encourage people to donate towards the end of a fundraising page's life, giving one last boost to a fundraising total before the page closes.

Present for Charities - page expiry email alerts

Yes, it is the season of (Just)giving, and we have a little present for you!

We've today released a new email alert that you can subscribe to in the Charity Account, one that will let you know when fundraising pages expire (i.e. cease to accept donations).

This email will be sent every Monday morning - so what better start to the week than getting in touch with your fundraisers and thanking them for raising loads of money for you!

To subscribe, go to the Account Management area and click on Manage my emails on the left hand side.

Remember, you can also subscribe to one of our two other email alerts (when pages are created and when payment reports are ready to donwload), and of course, our super charity newsletter.

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...)

New widget now works on MySpace

Our funky new widget has been making waves all round the internet since July, everywhere that is, except MySpace. That is, until today. Yes, the fundraising widget now works on the *original* social network, the site that is currently the 6th most popular in the world (that's MySpace, by the way).

In case you'd forgotten what the widget looks like, here's one in action:

To get one yourself is easy - go to any fundraising page, click Promote this page and then Grab a fundraising widget and you'll see the screen below:

If your eyes follow the big red arrow, you'll see a new tab on that page cunningly titled 'MySpace'. In that tab there is some new html code to use if you want a widget to work on MySpace. It's as simple as that!

And while you're doing that, why not take a look at MySpace's new charities channel, Impact, at www.myspace.com/impactuk

New Columns on Payment reports! Wow!

Now, I've announced some exciting new features in my time, but this is possibly the best - yes, we have added two new columns for you to select when downloading payment reports. And what snappy column titles they are:

So there you have it, Estimated VAT and Net Donation Minus Estimated VAT. A real cool addition to the column selections.

But seriously, this is an important update, one that many of you asked for. Why? Well, it's all to do with the way we transfer money to you.

As you know, we charge a 5% transaction fee on every donation and VAT is applicable on that amount. But we only calculate the VAT for the total fees for each payment we make to you, not on each individual donation.

In the Finance Reports section of the Charity Account, you can see a high level breakdown of the Gross and Net payments as below (with amounts erased, obviously):

You can download a PDF giving you a one page invoice detailing the total amounts and deductions when you click on view details but you can now see that breakdown in the detailed reports for each payment too.

So if you need to attribute VAT on each donation, or record net donation without VAT (depending on your financial systems), you can easily do so once a payment report has been created.

But remember, these figures are only estimated per donation since the actual VAT is calculated on the total fees taken - dividing the total VAT to all the donations will inevitably cause some small rounding errors.

So there you are, that was me trying to make VAT exciting. Now I know how Adam Hart-Davis feels...

Extension to fundraising page expiry date

From next Tuesday (16th October) we are extending the expiry date for sporting types of fundraising pages from two months to three months.

Come again?

Well, at present all pages created for a sporting event are set to expire two months after the event date. What happens when a page expires is that whilst it can still be viewed online, it can no longer accept donations, and the page owner no longer appears in the 'Sponsor a friend' search.

Why have we done this?

Lots of page owners ask us every day to extend the life of their page so they can accept more donations (it's one of our top 5 queries on the helpdesk). Rich, our lead developer, has also done some tecchy analysis on when donations are made to pages in relation to the event date.

The graph below shows the number of donations made to all sporting pages in relation to the event date (or "Logarithmic user-created sporting event sponsorship in relation to respective event date" in tech speak):

As you can see, there is a big drop in donations at the 2 month period, with a smattering of donations after that point (where page owners have asked us to extend the life of their page).

In a nutshell then, we've made this change to help users who fundraise for longer, which will therefore mean more donations going to you, the charities.

How will this affect you?

Clearly, the first thing you'll need to bear in mind is that all your event participants will have an extra month to collect donations - so you will only be able to get a final total for each event three months after it has taken place.

For example, all pages for next year's London Marathon, which takes place on the 13th April, will expire on the 13th August 2008.

Yes, this may mean a longer wait for you to figure out how much money an event has raised (although it will still be quicker than money raised offline), but it does also mean you'll get more donations. And we thought you'd like that :-)

PS - on a less exciting note, for 'occasion' type pages (i.e. birthdays, weddings, In Mem pages) we will be removing the 3-month expiry option, defaulting the drop-down to 18 months and adding 24 months as an option for page length.

New fundraising page creation process

26th November 2003

Not a date many keep in the memory, it has to be said, but it was the last time we made a major change to the process of creating a fundraising page on Justgiving.

That's almost 4 years where we've focused on adding new features to pages (amongst many, many other things) like widgets, RSS and tagging. In that period over half a million pages have been built, so we knew that making a page in the first place was easy.

Well, now it's even easier. Extensive user research and testing have helped us re-jig the process  meaning you can create a page in under a minute! (I've just created a page starting from the homepage and it took me 38 seconds. And I wasn't clicking really fast. Honest)

Now, after you've chosen your charity, event and registered (or logged-in), you just need to select your web address and click on "create your page" as below:

And then, hey presto, the fundraising page is live! It really is as easy as that.

You're then prompted to personalise the page and email the link to supporters, but the page is already live, ready and waiting to accept donations.

You may have also noticed in the screenshot that you get the choice to re-use an old web address (URL) - this is one of the most requested features from users so is sure to make them happy!

But don't take my word for it, why not try creating a page for your own charity to see how it works for yourselves!

Justgiving is now available on Facebook

Facebook is a social networking website with over 25 million members worldwide, it is the 17th most visited site in the world, the 7th popular in the US and the 8th popular in the UK.

From now on, all these users now have the ability to add a Justgiving application to their profile page that lists their, or their friends', fundraising activities on the Justgiving site.

This massively increases the reach of their online fundraising page, giving visibility to everyone they know (and even some they don’t) in one easy step.

How does it work?

If I add the Justgiving application to my profile, everyone who is listed as my friend will see on their news feed that I have done so, and a box is added to my profile page to show details of the fundraising page(s) I have chosen to promote:

As you can see, the page title and charity name are listed, as is the fundraising progress. Clicking on the donate button will then take you to the fundraising page on Justgiving.

When you go to the Justgiving application page, you'll also see a more detailed view of the page(s) on your profile, including the last five donations and messages:

If you are a Facebook user (if not, you will need to register with them), you can add the Justgiving application to your profile at http://apps.facebook.com/justgiving and see which are the most referenced fundraising pages on Facebook.

You can read more how it works or go to the help section on Facebook itself as well.

One charity who has recently been in the news for using Facebook is the Royal British Legion, and their story appears in various different places online - we think that Facebook can be a great tool to promote fundraiser's efforts to even more people with much less effort.

For more information, see Facebook's 'about us' section, read about their application project, and see how we announced the update on our Fundraiser blog.

Justgiving Widget version 2.0

Since we unveiled the Justgiving widget back in January, the take up has been huge: over 20,000 have been used online and they have been one of the biggest referrers to the Justgiving website, driving more and more people to fundraising pages to make donations.

We've now got even more good news for the fundraisers, not to mention the innovative charities, who've used the widgets up to now: Widget version 2.0 has arrived!

As you can see, it's a bit smaller and rounder than version 1, but it does a lot more: we've taken all the feedback we received from users and tried to integrate it all into version 2.0:

On the default view (Fundraising Progress), the page title is shown as scrolling text and includes the fundraising target and progress, as well as the last three comments made on the page.

But there's more!

Each Widget also has a menu that gives you options of what to display (click on the first widget to see these):

The My Charity option displays the Charity name, description and logo - a great way to spread the word about your cause.

Clicking on About Justgiving allows users to create their own fundraising page, search our list of charities and send us widget feedback.

The Share this widget option shows the html code needed to display the widget on any blog or website, enabling people to spread the word quickly and easily.

And the most important thing? The orange donate button, taking anyone who clicks on it through to the fundraising page on Justgiving where they can make a donation.

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.

You can read more on our fundraiser blog here.

And if you want to know who's responsible for this work of beauty, step forward Mr Rohit Mistry and take a bow!

Reduction in Justgiving monthly fee

From July this year, we have moved all charities on a £20 p/m month-to-month contract to a £15 p/m (plus VAT) contract.

The minimum term of contract for all charities on the site has also been reduced to one month (previously charities paying £15 p/m were signed up for a year) but we still require one month's notice to end the contract.

We have decided to make this change to simplify our pricing structure (see what it costs to join Justgiving) and to make our contract more flexible.

As shown in the recent breakfast talk by Médecins Sans Frontières, more and more charities are finding ways of encouraging supporters to fundraise outside of the traditional "events season".

We hope the lower and more flexible subscription option gives charities more control over how and when they use Justgiving. Of course, we'd hope that they'd stay: and we do that by promoting the imaginative ways other charities make best use of our service and believing in what we do.

Justgiving Webinars

As it's been over two months since our first webinar, I think it's a good time to review how they've gone. Since our first session, we've held a "welcome" webinar every week, introducing over 50 charities to the main ares of the Justgiving service as below:

The sessions are getting more and more popular, with an average of 8 people attending the last four. Our survey of attendees also backs this up:

We ask "On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you in promoting the Justgiving service to your supporters?" and "On a scale of 1-10 how likely is it that you would recommend Justgiving webinar to a colleague?"

The average scores of 7.5 for the first question and 7 for the second show that most people are  confident after the training and would recommend it to a colleague

But don't worry if it all sounds complicated - it isn't: 78% of people have never been on a webinar before and their comments back this up when we asked what they enjoyed about the webinar:

"Straight-forward, easy to follow and to actually join, technology wise!"

"It was very useful to have someone explain various sections whilst seeing it on screen. I would definitely recommend this method of 'teaching' and would certainly participate in a webinar again."

"Jonathan is very friendly, approachable and not too technical [good for non IT wizards!]"

"Feeling connected to what I was looking at and having the ability to ask questions if I needed to - the human contact is so important.  I probably would not have taken the time to go to through these pages on my own."

The webinar we hold above is aimed at training people who are new to Justgiving, and is effectively a beginner's tour of our service.

If you work for one of our member charities and would like to attend or find out more, read my previous blog post and/or email me and I will let you know when the next session takes place.

Justgiving is now PCI Compliant

Dom Lacey, our CTO, has today confirmed that Justgiving and Firstgiving are now certified fully compliant with the Data Security Standards set by the Payment Card Industry, three weeks ahead of the June 30th deadline.

According to the BBC News website, these new standards have been set up in "an attempt to raise the baseline security practices of online merchants" and "all web shops that process more than 20,000 transactions per year will have to comply with the PCI standards".

Another explanation of the new standards can be found on Wikipedia.

Whilst the security of our site has always been extremely important to us (see previous improvements here), we can now provide VISA-certified assurances to any enquiries about the security of our users' credit card and personal data.

Our new certificate is online here, and appears on all Justgiving pages in the bottom right corner. You can also download a PDF version: Download pci_dss_compliance_certificate_giving_2007.pdf

This has been a massive project undertaken by our tech team and we're really proud that they have managed to prove our compliance before 85% of the online payments and e-commerce industry.

More information about security on Justgiving can be found in our privacy policy and security policy, or by checking our Verisign certificate.

New and Improved Help on Justgiving

Following last month's news of a new help section in the Charity Account, we've now released an improved help section on the main Justgiving site.

The new area can be accessed by going to www.justgiving.com/statements/help/help.asp

So what's new?

The homepage has been reorganised to be more intuitive for the user: they can use keywords or browse our top 5 questions (based on our website stats).

There is also a Google custom search box that searches only the help section to find the answers to any question; users can also browse the most appropriate section for their needs, whether they are fundraising or donating.

From the results of our user testing, these sections have also been updated to simplify the layout and make it easier for the required question (and answer) to be found.

Still, if the answer cannot be found, anyone can still contact us, and get through to our Helpdesk Heroes, Jules and Mike.

Table Service for Fundraisers

On Friday, our Product Team released another update to Justgiving fundraising pages: page owners now have the ability to select which columns of the donation table appear on their page.

This functionality has already been used by Kim Svatek at www.justgiving.com/kimsmtkilitrek where she has hidden the Amount and Tax Bonus columns:

   

Other early adopters of this new feature are Keri Hilson, Debbie Pierson and Nicola Brady.

To set this up on a page, you need to log-in at www.justgiving.com/account and go to the 'edit this page' option, as per the instructions in our help section here.

This update has been something many users have been requesting in our monthly surveys and the examples above show how it is already proving popular.

For some fundraising pages, like sporting events, there is a strong competitive element where donors see how much others have donated and match or raise it. For others, like Wedding or In Memory pages, showing the amount of individual donations may be less appropriate.

Now, any or all of the columns on a page (Display Name, Date,  Amount, Tax Bonus, Comment) can be hidden by the page owner should they so wish.

A new Remember Area

Fundraisers have always been able to build ‘In Mem’ pages on the Justgiving website, but we have now created a specific area for these pages to be built, as at http://www.justgiving.com/jgdemo/remember

This has been specifically designed so that your supporters can create a page in memory of a loved one in a separate place, and with a more appropriate tone, to the rest of your fundraising pages.

So now when a supporter wants to raise money in memory of someone, you can let them know about your Remember Area: if you already have a Tribute Fund programme, why not include the link in your flyers or info packs?

Your supporters can use this area to create pages and collect donations online: as ever, we will process all the money and Gift Aid automatically, and pay it direct to your charity’s bank account.

To see a sample In Mem page, click here, or read how Justgiving ‘In Mem’ pages are used here 

More help on the helpdesk

She’s already been here a month, so it’s a belated introduction to Josie Brennan, the newest member of our Charities Team.

Josie works with Liz on the Charity Helpdesk to answer all your phone and email queries. Our latest Kiwi, she’s already got stuck in with typical antipodean enthusiasm (here seen thinking outside the box in a box...)

I asked her what she’s been up to so far:

I've been adding official events, helping charities with log-in problems, sending out welcome emails to new charities, uploading logos and general housekeeping

We’ve clearly been keeping her busy, so I asked why she wanted to join Justgiving:

I wanted to join so I could work in a positive environment, where my customer service skills could make difference. I've been here just over a month (it's gone so quick) and it's been really fun- everyone is enthusiastic about their work and super friendly! (Ed, that’s what happens when you give us NZ biscuits)

She’s also answered our tough newbie questionnaire on our Fundraiser blog too - a hard initiation indeed!

Josie’s number is 0207 067 0925 and her email is josie@justgiving.com

Liz can still be reached at 0845 021 2133 or a new DDI of 0207 067 0924 and charities@justgiving.com

Help is at Hand

I brought you some news in February about the last improvement our techies made to the Charity Account, and I'm really excited by our latest update: for today marks the launch of a new Help Section for your account.

Now when you log-in to the Charity Account, you will see a new Account help button on the top right, as shown below:

When you click on the Account help button, you will see a a new window including the 13 most frequently asked questions, which you can then click on to find the answers (and with any luck, these 13 FAQs won't be cursed by being announced on Friday 13th...).

You can take a look now by clicking here

This list has been created by those of us who man (or woman) the helpdesk or speak to you, the charities who use Justgiving, every day: we compiled a list of all Charity Account queries we received, so this section is based on your feedback and questions, and the answers we gave.

We will be adding some tutorials to this section in the coming weeks (similar to those in the main help section here) to assist further, and you can, of course, still contact us if your question is not answered.

Having said that, we're confident that this is a first step that will, like Ronseal, do what it says on the tin and help you out!

Donors can now leave you a message!

We’re pleased to announce the release of a new feature enabling donors to leave a message for their charity with their donation.

This is the most requested update from your donors and will be especially useful for those making donations on behalf of a loved one.

Our Product Manager, Will Hardy, explains:

What is it?

When a user makes a donation on the Justgiving site or via a dedicated donation facility (like here) they will be given the option of leaving a message for their charity as per the screen-grab below:

A donor is only able to leave a message if they reveal their details to the charity, so when a user starts typing in their message, the "Please tick here if you want The Demo Charity...." box (highlighted in red above) will be automatically ticked.

We have also updated the text in this option and included a tooltip to make it clearer to users what details are passed on to you. When you hover the mouse pointer over the sentence, the box below appears:

This will undoubtedly have an effect on your charity’s opt-in rates: if a donor leaves you a message, their details will appear in your online Charity Account.

Where can I find the message?

The donor’s message will only be available in the Payment and Direct Donation reports created in the Charity Account:

You will be able to see your donors’ messages by selecting the "Message from Donor" option when you decide on the columns to feature in your reports, as below in a Payment Report:

This "Message from Donor" column will not be visible if you are using saved custom column selections. You will have to select "JG Default View" to see this column and you can then set-up your customised columns again to include it if you wish.

This column will then be exported in the relevant section of your report and you will be able to see the donors’ contact details.

Please note this does not apply to donations made via fundraising pages, where sponsors can already leave a message on the page.

What should I do with it?

This functionality is most likely to be used by people making In Memory donations, so we would suggest you check your account frequently to find out what messages have been left. As you will see the contact details for all the donors, you are then able to contact them and thank them appropriately.

If you do receive a lot of ‘In Mem’ donations, we recommend you promote the new “donate” link on your own website.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

New links for you on Justgiving

We have updated the links to your charity on Justgiving to make them a more accurate reflection of the content on each page, and we've also created a new page for you.

You now have three links on Justgiving:

1. http://www.justgiving.com/jgdemo/supportus

This page is similar to the old donate page, as it gives your supporters the choice to donate or raise money.

    2.   http://www.justgiving.com/jgdemo/donate

This page stands alone to accept one-off or monthly online donations.

    3.  http://www.justgiving.com/jgdemo/raisemoney

This page is where your supporters can create an online fundraising page for an event or occasion of their choice.

This page now has a list of top 5 fundraisers and will soon be showing a list of the top 5 most popular pages below (i.e. pages with the most donations for your charity over the preceding week). To accommodate this, your charity search box has moved to the right.

OK, so how should I now link to Justgiving?

The “support us” page links through to both the “donate” and “raise money” pages, and it is what your supporters will find when they search for your charity on Justgiving. They can then choose whether to donate or fundraise for you.

What we recommend you do on your own website (or in any communication with your supporters), is link directly to your online donations page or your fundraising area.

A great example of how to do this can be seen at http://www.childnet-int.org/support

The Childnet page is a shining example of best practice for three reasons: it explains what Justgiving is, how their supporters can use it to raise money or donate and where they need to go to do so.

With these new links, you can now promote the relevant area of Justgiving to your donors or fundraisers in all your online and offline communications.