The Justgiving charities blog

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...

From comment to case study: Cycle India & Heal

Matthew from Cycle India left a comment on a recent post that read:

Just a quick message to say our charity found using Justgiving for our recent Cycle India event was very worthwhile. We raised around £100k for our small charity - www.heal.co.uk

We're now planning another event and will be recommending all cyclists to have a Justgiving page, and only take payments this way.

I was intrigued by this, so got in touch with Matthew to find out a bit more about what they did, and why it was successful.

What does your charity do?

We have a project called the HEAL’s Children Village, where we look after around 200 orphaned or under-privileged children. The children are around 5 – 16 years old and live in  one of 10 bungalows, each with its own ‘house mother’ who takes care of them.

We also fund the Poverty Trap Project which educates children in nearby villages who do have parents but they can’t afford to send their children to school.

We normally get £50k in a year, which can go a long way - everyone who works for the charity are volunteers so almost 99% of all donations gets spent on our projects and we want the money raised from the cycle 2010 event to go to new projects.

What is your event?

Our event is Cycle India, which in January 2008 raised £100K, mainly through Justgiving. We had 22 cyclists, plus some Americans and Indian people joined in. We're planning a new Cycle India 2010 now, for up to 30 cyclists.

Why did you decide to use Justgiving for your event?

I sponsored friends using the service and found it very easy and simple to use. I liked how each fundraising page described where the money was going and showed a personal message by the fundraiser.

 Was it successful and would you use it again?

We raised £25k from the Justgiving pages, so it was only about a quarter of overall revenue. However, we raised around £25k in T-Shirt sponsorship, and Prasad the Founder did a fantastic job on his own with contacts, which made up a big slice.

We also raised £5,500 from registration fees and did a few fundraising parties. So, as far as straight sponsorship it was probably around 50/50 this time. The fundraisers with a Justgiving page significantly raised more.  

[Jonathan's ears prick up...] That's interesting, can you say how much more people raised on Justgiving? Do you know what the percentage is?

I’ve checked through the figures and those that embraced Justgiving did better overall – roughly £1,000 more. But many of these used both methods, such as myself or Prasad  whilst many others, like Debbie, did really well too.

Thanks, what lessons have you learnt for the next event?

I raised around £6k myself and I think it was my ‘polite email reminders’ to friends that helped - including one saying ‘you are the only person who hasn’t sponsored me…’ and within the day everyone had sponsored me!

I will stress/encourage all cyclists to have their own personal page on Justgiving.

How will you be promoting the event and why should people enter?

I have written a blog specifically for it and will be posting all FAQs the cyclists may have so other people can use it to get information and leave comments, which I think will help the cyclists get to know each other before the event.

I'll also use the charity's website and every cyclists will have a link from their fundraising page on the blog, with a ‘top fundraisers’ list to promote competitiveness and motivate the donors.

Do you have any more comments?

Initially we (our treasurer and myself) were very concerned about the charges. But we found we were far better off using Justgiving as it was a very difficult task working out the exact amount of Gift Aid we could claim, and many donors had not left their addresses to claim the Gift Aid.

The treasurer was negative to begin with but is now convinced Justgiving is "the way to go", it’s so "easy" for them on an admin front and they "couldn’t fault the system".

So thanks Matthew for taking the time to fill us in on your experiences,  we hope the Cycle India event in 2010 is even more successful than this year!

And if anyone else has a great fundraising success story they'd like to share, leave a comment below or get in touch.

**Update** here's how the story is told on the Cycle India blog.

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.

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.

Silver Surfers raise 38% more online

Today's post is a fantastic case study about how the so-called silver surfers can use the power of the internet to raise money,  put together by the glamorous Becs:

Christian Aid’s ‘silver surfer’ open day

The problem

Christian Aid performed a detailed analysis of their 2006 events and found that the event ‘In the footsteps of Moses’, a trek through the Egyptian Sinai desert, had not generated any income online.

The reason for this became clear when it was discovered that the age range of the participants for this event was between fifty and seventy.  Alison Gregory from Christian Aid said:

This core audience wasn’t completely familiar with the internet and we wanted to let them know all that the internet has to offer in terms of online sponsorship.

The solution

Rather than write these fundraisers off as internet fundraising ‘lost causes’, Christian Aid decided that it needed to provide them with more help than usual, and chose to invite all fourteen of their next Sinai Desert trekkers to an interactive open day at the charity’s central office.

Alison explains:

It was really easy to set up. We just included an online sponsorship session in our information morning for participants, which we do anyway as part of our communications strategy. At this session we talk about the work Christian Aid does and we all get to meet each other and then we discuss the logistics of the trip with them.

Ten out of the fourteen people we invited came – at the end we did a thirty minute session with them where we gave them lots of fundraising tips, talked about online sponsorship and demonstrated how easy it is to set up a Justgiving fundraising page.

The result

Alison reports that this particular trek raised £60,000 of which £23,000 (even excluding Gift Aid) came in online, which wouldn’t have been raised otherwise:

It was great for us because it meant that people were emailing their pages to relatives and friends all over the world, and not only getting more sponsorship but raising our profile by writing about Christian Aid in their emails

Thanks very much to Alison and Christian Aid for sharing their story, not to mention all you keen silver surfer fundraisers out there!!!

And for an extra special example, here's our very talented designer Kai showing his Gran how to make a donation online:

Showing gran how to use Justgiving.com from Kai Chan Vong on Vimeo.

Cutty Sark Trust raises thousands online

Just under a month ago, a fire ravaged the historic Cutty Sark Clipper, prompting widespread publicity and masses of public affection.

To collect donations for the restoration of the ship, the Cutty Sark Trust created a fundraising page on Justgiving. Within a couple of days, the page had collected over £20,000. As an update in a previous blog post revealed, the page collected donations at a remarkably consistent rate of around £485 every hour for the first 48 hours:

And with the page receiving over 20,000 hits in the first week alone, it's no surprise that as of now, the page has collected 1,126 donations totalling £37,443.19 with just under £8,000 reclaimed in Gift Aid.

The average donation to the appeal was £33.25, compared to the overall average on Justgiving of £32 (including Gift Aid), and around 18% of donations were made from overseas where normally it is 5%.

I asked Louise Massara, Stewardship Manager of the Cutty Sark Trust, some questions about the success of their appeal:

Why did you decide to create an online fundraising page?

We had already set up an account with Justgiving for our London Marathon runners to use so it was simple to set up a page on the day of the fire.

How did you promote the page?

We put the link on to our website straightaway, and included it in our press release. We also asked journalists to include the link in their coverage.

Were you surprised by the number and speed of the donations?

Yes, we were all surprised by how many people gave, from all over the world, and by the speed with which the donations came in.

Was it important that overseas donors could donate?

Yes, very important, as we had a lot of support from overseas and it was an easy way for them to give.

Was it a comfort to your team that so many messages of support were left on the page?

It was heart-warming. We all read the messages in spare moments, and I printed them off to report to our Chairman and Trustees.

What do you hope to do with the funds?

The funds will go towards the recovery of the ship and the continuance of the conservation project to preserve and re-interpret Cutty Sark for future generations.

What proportion of funds raised has come through the fundraising page and where has the other money come from?

About 10% of funds raised so far has come through the fundraising page. The other money consists of three large donations totalling £400,000 and more donations coming in through the post and over the phone.

Do you have any other thoughts/comments about the Justgiving service?

I very much appreciated the personal contact and the practical help we received on the day of the fire, when we were incredibly busy with the police, fire service, and hundreds of press queries. The help we received was prompt and was just what we needed. The follow-up support and interest from Justgiving has also been excellent.

Louise also emailed an update to donors who were happy to hear from the page owner (instructions here) as all good fundraisers should - her email can be downloaded here: Download update_from_the_cutty_sark_trust.doc

For more information on the Cutty Sark Trust, visit their website at www.cuttysark.org.uk or download the latest update emailed to donors:  Download cutty_sark_trust_update_19_06_07.doc

Raise 30% more FLM funds with Justgiving

Here’s why you’ll raise more money with less hassle if you encourage all your Flora London Marathon runners to use Justgiving:

1. We save you time and costs

We process donations automatically so there’s no more chasing dog-eared sponsorship forms. And we reclaim 100% of eligible Gift Aid, so no need to fill out hundreds of R68 forms.

“This is the 3rd year running we've used Justgiving for the London Marathon and it is more and more effective every year so thank you very much for an excellent service!”
Helen Mabberley, Fundraising Manager, The Variety Club Children's Charity

2. Money in your account before the race

Last year, Justgiving processed 47% of all funds raised by FLM runners by the end of March, meaning more than £6m was earning interest in charity bank accounts before the race was even run. Two months after the event, 100% of funds raised had been paid to recipient charities.

“We would not have been able to manage all the donations we received without the service that Justgiving provides.”
Veronica Martin, Fundraising Manager, Brain and Spine Foundation

3. Your runners raise more with us

In our monthly usability surveys, we've asked 2,470 sponsors “If you hadn't been able to sponsor your friend online, what would you have done?”

Here are the results:

• 37.41% of sponsors would have given their friend cash
• 31.90% would have sent a cheque in the post
• 30.69% would not have sponsored their friend at all

   

So if you make sure your runners use Justgiving, you’ll receive a third more donations and save yourself two thirds hard work.

“It has made a huge difference to my fundraising: most of my friends would be impossible to track down for the traditional sponsorship form and cheque. Justgiving has been a godsend.”
Sally Richardson, London Marathon Runner

Don't forget, we've got some fantastic flyers for you to give your fundraisers to encourage them to use Justgiving. Click here to get your hands on some.

Yorkshire Air Ambulance raises £190,000 in 7 days

Fundraising page shows power of online communities
The fundraising page created by a Richard Hammond fan within hours of the BBC presenter’s accident has become the best-performing page in Justgiving’s history after fans donated nearly £190,000 in seven days.

The page illustrates the fundraising potential of online communities and the benefits of the Internet for small charities.

On 20th September, Alex Goss was one of several car enthusiasts discussing Richard Hammond’s accident on www.pistonheads.com. Goss, a systems engineer from Bracknell, remembered Justgiving from sponsoring a friend online and set up a page in aid of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA) charity.

He posted the link to his fundraising page on the forum with a target of £340 – the cost of a single YAA helicopter mission.

The response was immediate: within three hours of the page being set up, donations had reached £2,475. Other online communities in the UK and overseas picked up the story, followed by broadcasters and newspapers.

Seven days later, the page has raised £190,000 including Gift Aid, the fastest rate of collection of any fundraising page in Justgiving’s six-year history. The overall total, including off-line donations, stands at £240,000.

Results at a glance

How donations came in on Thursday 21st September – hour by hour.



Traffic
www.justgiving.com/PHRichardHammond received 700,000 hits between Thurs 21.09.06 and Wed 26.09.06. The page received 460,000 hits on Thursday 21st alone – the opening day of the campaign.

Gift Aid
In seven days, Justgiving reclaimed just under £40,000 in Gift Aid on behalf of the YAA.

Best performing fundraising page
Not only is Alex Goss Justgiving’s top fundraiser but his page is the fastest growing. Here are Justgiving’s all-time top three individual fundraisers:

1.    Alex Goss = £190,000 (Yorkshire Air Ambulance)
2.    Jane Tomlinson = £152,296.12 (SPARKS)
3.    David Hillier = £107,016.00 (The Prostate Cancer Charity)

A ground-breaking appeal for the YAA 
The YAA raises approximately £1m a year and relies entirely on donations to fund its life-saving work. Most of this income is raised locally, or from people with Yorkshire connections.
Alex Goss’s appeal not only raised an unprecedented sum of money in record time for the YAA, but it also delivered a totally new audience for the charity. 

“For the YAA to raise £240,000 in a week is extraordinary enough. But for us to raise 80% of this online is even more astonishing,” YAA’s CEO Martin Eedes says.

“Justgiving has enabled us to punch above our weight and reach out to a global audience,” Eedes adds. “We are amazed by the power of this medium.”

The page’s online fundraising target now stands at £500,000 with donations still coming in. The success of the page will enable the YAA to bring forward its expansion plans with the purchase of a new helicopter to carry out 300 more emergency missions each year.
An efficient collection mechanism

As well as additional income, the Justgiving system has collected unprecedented amounts of Gift Aid for the YAA.

“It can be very difficult to reclaim Gift Aid on spontaneous donations, because the donor rarely has access to a Gift Aid form there and then,” Paul Gowland, Director of Fundraising YAA says.

“The charity would love to claim Gift Aid on 100% of its eligible donations each year but often can’t. By contrast, Justgiving will reclaim Gift Aid on every eligible donation by UK taxpayers, or nearly £40,000 for this appeal to date”.

The charity’s cashflow will also be greatly enhanced by Justgiving’s weekly payments. Within ten days of the appeal being launched, Justgiving had already transferred £146,000 into the charity’s bank account.

“Modern fundraising tools need to be easy to use, accessible to all ages, international, tax-efficient, transparent and cost-effective – a tall order! Justgiving does this and adds the personal touch,” says Gowland.

Join the online fundraising community
To create a fundraising page of your own, please visit www.justgiving.com.

If you are a charity looking to raise funds online, please visit www.justgiving.com/charities.

If you are an existing Justgiving member and need help to make the most of your own online fundraising facility, please email our charities team at charities@justgiving.com. We can help you optimise your website for fundraising and better promote your service to your supporters.

Not just marathons and cycle rides: the rise of the 'life event'

More and more people choose to mark a major personal event - such as a wedding or funeral - by raising money for charity. Judging from our users' feedback, we believe that this is a growing trend that charities could greatly benefit from with the right communications.

Wateraid provides a brilliant example of effective promotion. By actively encouraging their supporters to build a page for personal events on their Justgiving dedicated site, they have been raising funds and growing awareness virally from new audiences.

Take a look at some of the fundraising pages that have been created on Justgiving as a result:

1. http://www.justgiving.com/catandwilson
2. http://www.justgiving.com/thetwoannes
3. http://www.justgiving.com/MJBDONNA
4. http://www.justgiving.com/emanddan
5. http://www.justgiving.com/sugar57
6. http://www.justgiving.com/jimandjill

We'll report back soon on the progress of our own efforts to promote this type of fundraising on Justgiving. If you have any suggestions on this aspect of our service, please post a comment or email us direct at charities@justgiving.com.