Last week I got this email from Elie, one of our web developers here at Justgiving:
After Rasha suggested I do the same as Ben did a while back, I've set up a fundraising page about me quitting smoking… and if I fail to do so in my lifetime, I shall double the amount made in donations through that page.
I know that he likes a good smoke, and he didn’t have to involve any charity aspect in his decision, so I thought, yes, I’ll give you some money for that - especially after reading the personal message on his page.
So I went through the usual Justgiving donation process that I’ve been through many times before. I got a thank-you from Elie and a receipt email including a thank-you from the charity.
And I’m happy to admit that I felt pretty good with myself for supporting him and the charity – well, you do, don’t you?
That’s the whole point.
A bit later that day, I had a quick look at the page to see the progress, and already £100 had been donated. This was on a Monday, so I knew that the whole £100 would be paid to the charity on the Friday.
That made me think - ten people probably spending around 3 minutes of their time had meant a charity would have £100 in their bank account, within a week, to spend on their cause.
Amazing, isn’t it?
****
At the time of writing, Elie (left) had raised £232 (plus Gift Aid of nearly £60) on his fundraising page.
You can see the latest figure on the widget below:
Plus, look out for an interview with Elie on the blog tomorrow, when he'll explain a bit more about why he's fundraising and what he's learnt.
Hello, it’s Natalie here! I’m on the charity helpdesk and I recently spoke to Chris from The Rona Trust about a really great fundraising idea.
Darren and his crew took an original approach to fundraising by using a music video to raise money. This is not, however, your average music video. It was filmed on a six day voyage whilst in the waters of England, France and The Channel islands!
Chris says, "We set a video launch target of £500 expecting it to take a few weeks to reach and hit it in 48 hours. We are now targeting £2,000." (Wow!)
This page really highlights the potential of fundraising pages; you can use them for any idea you come up with and so can your supporters. Using YouTube and Flickr is quick and easy and makes the page more interesting with video and more photos.
Chris kindly took some time out to answer a few questions about this marvellous idea…
What is your charity and what do they do?
The Rona Trust is a sail training charity based on the south coast of England. We aim to provide through sea training, opportunities for young people to acquire those attributes of a seaman, namely a sense of responsibility, resourcefulness and teamwork.
Where did the fundraising idea come from?
On the second day of a standard sail training voyage, the one CD of music we had was playing for the fourth time and Dean said we should reshoot the video... (and so the idea of fundraising using a music video was born!)
What did you want the page to achieve?
We want to raise enough money to replace the computer systems the project uses to run everything from, anything left over can then go to help fund the sail training voyages.
What sort of feedback have you had?
People love the video and find it’s really easy to donate via the page.
How has Justgiving helped?
Justgiving has helped shorten the time it takes to get people to give money, as soon as they see the video they can open their wallet and donate straight onto your site.
Did it take up much time or resource?
The video took five days to film, and was edited in the evenings during that time. The Justgiving page was really easy to get going and add the video and photos to.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A big thank you to all the crew that helped make it happen: Darren, Robin, Chris, James, Dean, Dan, Jo, Hazel, Lucinda, Jim, Lewis, Ashley, Rob, Cat, Liam, Rob, Marc, Ed, Katy, Rochelle, Matt and Jon-Joe.
Well done guys and good luck for reaching that £2000 target!
Want some inspiration? We’ve made a slide show bringing together ideas from fundraisers and charities who have done their own creative fundraising. Access it here - the embedding feature on Slideshare doesn't seem to be working :-(
Do you have an unusual and exciting fundraising story you’d like to share? If so please leave a comment or contact us.
I realise that this [Justgiving] is a great resource for people doing sponsored events for us, but could you explain how the site can be used for other forms of fundraising please?
For Sue, and the many others who've asked that before, here's my answer...
Let's start with some charity case studies. Medecins Sans Frontieres gave us a breakfast talk last year entitled Beyond Events: Raising Funds By Unleashing Supporter Creativity.
Download the notes below to read how 'special occasion' and 'in memory' fundraising pages account for 25% of their donations through Justgiving. Download MSF_talk.doc
WaterAid also gave a breakfast talk in August about achieving 2x growth by tapping into non-traditional revenue streams - which for them were 'celebration' pages and 'in memory' pages.
Through effective and persistent promotion, the charity had more than 50 wedding fundraising pages set up for them last year alone. Read their talk to find out how they did it: Download wateraid_talk.doc
Another thing to remember is that fundraising pages can be created for literally anything - the only limit is the imagination of the person (or charity) raising money! Have a look at the Inspiration for Fundraisers or JG: A-Z categories on our fundraiser blog for examples of the amazing variety of things people do on the site.
We mentioned the two charity examples above, plus even more about what we term 'Non event Fundraising', in our welcome pack. Read more in the PDF below, or have a look at these past examples.
Also on this theme, one of the great things about our latest charity website of the month, NAPAC, was the way they promote all these different types of fundraising on their own site.
And that is one half of the secret of 'Non event Fundraising' - both MSF and WaterAid promote the fact that Justgiving can be used for more than just events (else we'd be called Justevents...) - they give examples of these pages with strong calls to action and they reap the rewards.
Of course, having more pages depends on being lucky enough to get supporters who are motivated to take up challenges to fundraise in many weird, wonderful ways (like our very own Lee) - and that's where your job comes in :-)
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.
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.
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 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.
Just getting around can be fatal for people living in landmine affected areas. To highlight the issue we tried to go round 50,000 m2 of ground without touching it and photographed every step of the way.
Well, what does that look like? Well, pretty cool, really - see the video below:
Unfortunately, that's not the reality for the people who live near the 49,855 m2 Lboek Svay minefield in Cambodia, where the money raised through the site will first be spent.
Because, of course, whilst this highly imaginative campaign raises awareness, the charity also hopes to raise money. So they set up a fundraising page at www.justgiving.com/dangerousground to collect donations online.
I asked Becky Maynard, Head of Fundraising at No More Landmines, some questions about the site:
What did you want you're the dangerous ground site to achieve?
We wanted to raise awareness of the landmine issue which has a daily impact on millions of people around the world. Because the number of deaths from landmines are not newsbreaking or headline-making people don't realise the terrifying impact they have on so many people every day of their lives.
We are also aiming to raise funds to clear a specific minefield in Cambodia where people who have lived through a terrible regime, been made refugees and in almost all cases lost family members are struggling just to survive - they cannot farm their land or access clean water because of the landmine threat.
What sort of feedback have you had?
Amazing feedback and hundreds of comments on YouTube but your support could help turn more of that interest into donations! Everyone who has seen the films thinks they are fantastic (or maybe they just say that to me!!).
How successful has it been in raising awareness and getting people to donate?
So far over 85,000 people have viewed one of the dangerous ground videos and thousands have visited the website. Donations have been slower because the YouTube page does not link through to our Justgiving page! [Ed. that's easy to change :-)]
Through a personal contact! All of the people who featured, directed, produced, jumped off high things and the rest gave their time and skills for free - as have UK2
Why did you decide to use videos, pictures and Google maps to illustrate the project and your campaign?
In the flipbook we really wanted to create a link between a 50,000 square metre area in London and the same size are in Cambodia but also the key differences between them and the freedom to walk on the ground that we all take for granted.
The ad film is also a reminder that we can go about our daily lives without worrying what might be just below the surface. I have visited communities who literally have landmines on their doorstep and it is quite terrifying, especially when I see innocent young children running around who could have no concept of the level of the danger they face.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
This week marks the 10 year anniversary of the Mine Ban Treaty / Ottawa Convention which banned the use, manufacture, transfer and stockpiling of landmines. Although it has been very successful there is still huge amounts of work to be done!
A big thanks go to Becky for answering my questions - we wish you good luck with a fantastic idea and superb website.
**** On a "social web" note of interest, our attention was drawn to this site as it was one of the most popular tagged sites on del.icio.us (which can be used on Justgiving pages too!). If you don't know what that means, watch the video below:
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:
We've now had six of our free online training sessions, training 84 people so far and there are only four sessions left in the current schedule for you to attend:
Whilst I was at the London Marathon Expo yesterday, I met loads of great fundraisers and said 'hi' to a lot of charities, but one of the most interesting people who came over to our stand (316) was Jakub Zeman.
The great thing about his page is that he's translated the usual Justgiving blurb into Czech for all his friends and family.
Apparently, "Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure" translates as "Sponzorství přes tuto stránku je jednoduché, rychlé a úplně bezpečné" in Czech. But then, you all knew that anyway.
And Jakub is not the only polyglot on Justgiving... According to Marcus Pfaff the same phrase is "Das Spenden durch diese Web Seite ist einfach, schnell und absolut sicher" auf Deutsch. En espanol, it is "Donar por esta via es simple, rápido y seguro" thanks to Roberto Messuti
You can also visit Adriana Eggleton's page to learn how to fundraise in Spanish: Solo haz click donde dice "Sponsor us now" (which I understand thanks to the wonderful Teresa Garcia at King's College MLC)
Remember, Justgiving fundraising pages can be used by people all over the world to raise funds for UK charities (as per our help section here).
So, watch out for a Juste Donnent, Apenas Dando or Gerade Gebend ("just giving" in French, Spanish in German thanks to babelfish) coming soon to a fundraising page near you!
In order to help further the fundraisers on Justgiving, we recently started a new series of posts on our blog called the JG Clinic.
Our User Marketing Manager, Simon Doggett, explains the thinking behind it:
The JG Clinic was born through charity supporters. Lots of them have made brilliant fundraising pages in the past and it's important to share best practice with the community.
The quality of a personal message and photo along with savvy email marketing can greatly increase an individual's donations.
It's our duty to share the knowledge we have with others trying to raise funds, so we created an environment for users to learn and join in.
You can see all the posts made so far by clicking here. We would encourage you to send this link to your supporters and/or promote it on your website.
We share our own hints & tips in the forum, but as Simon says, following others fundraisers’ tried and tested examples can really lead to receiving more donations.
And we all know that we should do what Simonsays...
At the time of writing, Elie (left) had raised £232 (plus Gift Aid of nearly £60) on his fundraising page.
We've now had six of our 
