The Justgiving charities blog

Dreamforce, Salesforce, Salesforce Foundation & Justgiving

A couple of my colleagues and myself have spent the last two days at the awesome Dreamforce Europe conference, for users of Salesforce.com. If you've not heard of Salesforce before, it's a CRM (customer relationship management) tool that we (and 40,000 + companies in the world) use to manage relationships with our clients.

Now this was not your normal bland, boring conference. Not when the flamboyant CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, is there speaking alongside the likes of Stelios, Peter Gabriel and Jimmy Wales (founder of a little known encyclopaedia website called Wikipedia...) about "The Future of Software" and "The Internet As A Platform For Changing The World".

It was all hugely inspiring stuff and I've come away with lots of ideas of how we can use Salesforce internally to really help the charities who use Justgiving, but also how charities themselves can use Salesforce.  And for this, there is the Salesforce Foundation:

The Salesforce Foundation harnesses the power of product and people to improve the lives of those in need. Using a unique 1/1/1 model—1% Time, 1% Equity, and 1% Product—the Foundation reaches out to the community and increases the effectiveness of non profit organizations so they can better achieve their goals. We call this the Power of Us.

And it's 1% product part that I'd like to focus on - for if you go here you can apply for up to 10 free (or apply for additional) licences, watch a demo, or take a free trial of the service.

Let me repeat that:

If you are a charity, you can get this amazing tool for free.

So if you are a small charity looking to implement a fundraiser/donor relationship tool, it's really a *no-brainer*. We pay for the service, do hugely customised and complicated things and think it is amazing, and you can get all of that for no cost!

Plus, you can work with Salesforce's partners to help you implement it - because a large number of the companies who build custom applications for Salesforce for paying subscribers like us, also donate their time through the "Power of Us" of the Foundation.

So why are we plugging Salesforce?

Well, it would make it easier for us to integrate fundraising and donation data from Justgiving with charities who use Salesforce, since we already use it ourselves. That would enable you to have a 360 degree view of all your (online and offline) fundraising, donor contacts, campaigns, mailing lists, and all the other stuff you do (e.g. finance) online. In one place. In one web browser.

And, er, it's just brilliant.

But seriously, we see the whole point of Justgiving as a similar service - where Salesforce is "software as a service", we try to be "fundraising as a service". And our future aim is to be even more like the platforms Marc Benioff referenced in his keynote below:

So for more info on the Foundation, go to their site, or visit the non-profit message boards at the Salesforce community pages.

Sorry for the interruption to reports

We know that we’ve caused a lot of frustration this month by limiting access to the payment reports. Here with an apology and an explanation is our Chief Technology Officer, Dom Lacey.

So Dom, tell us, what happened?

We noticed that we were starting to get some donation time-out alerts (where donations weren’t being processed because they were taking too long) due to the heavy traffic on the site.

We decided to suspend access to our payment reports temporarily, to create more space on our servers and make sure we could process all donations successfully.

Why did that happen?

The payment reports were pulling data from our database at the same time as the donation data was being written to the database. Due to the fact that more people were running more reports than normal, and the reports themselves were also bigger than normal, there were conflicts between the data that reports were accessing and the new data being created by donations.

So we had to decide whether to report on past donations and lose donations that were being made, or to process all donations and report on them later. We decided on the latter option, as our top priority is always making sure that people can donate to charities.

We have to admit that we didn’t plan ahead here. It hadn’t occurred to us that this year’s earlier marathon would coincide with heavier use of the charity account as charities tied up their year end accounts. It was poor planning from us. We’re really sorry and we’ll learn from it.

What are we doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

We’ve started work on three different projects to ensure this doesn’t happen next year.

1. We’ll pay more attention to the timing of the marathon and make sure reports are available during the end of March/early April.

2. We’ll separate the reporting database from our live database so there won’t be repeat of those data conflicts between reports and donations.

3. We’re re-thinking how we offer reports. We need to look how they are powered, generated and offered to charities. It may be that offering some reports in real time isn’t feasible, but we’re discussing ways of doing this to find the best solution for everyone.

Could you give us an analogy in layman’s terms?

OK, so imagining our database is the engine that drives the website, what we are planning to do is create a separate engine for reporting and - potentially - put it in a quicker, more reliable and more robust car!

Dom, thanks for this explanation. I know you and your team have worked extremely hard to make the best of a bad situation.

Yes, we tried to keep in contact with the charities team and to pass on updates as soon as there was any news.

We’re aware of the frustration we’ve caused to the charities we serve and we are genuinely sorry, as well as being determined to learn from our mistakes and engineer a better solution moving forward.

If you have any questions, please email me at jonathan@justgiving.com

Person-to-Person fundraising update

On April 15th, I blogged about Person-to-Person fundraising in reply to a question posed by Peter Deitz of the About Micro Philanthropy blog.

He asked the question, "Is Person-to-Person Fundraising Dead, or Just Getting Started?" and invited people to send in their opinions for him to publish at the end of the month.

If you pop over to his blog now, you'll see he's posted a collection of all the responses.

As well as my answer (yay!), there are some really interesting points made by a wide variety of people.

Go on, take a read, see what people are saying. And feel free to put up your *thoughts* here, or there, or on your own blog. Or, hell, just tell the person sitting next to you. This is person-to-person after all!

I had the pleasure of meeting Peter the other day (I've been visiting our Firstgiving counterparts in Boston to find out more about the US nonprofit scene) and I was really impressed with the vision for his Social Actions project, described in his own words:

Social Actions helps individuals and organizations use social media to plan, implement, and support peer-to-peer social change campaigns.

And that's not really too dissimilar from the original goal of why Anne-Marie and Zarine set up Justgiving - to enable people to join together and raise more money than they thought possible, quickly, easily and efficiently, for the causes they care about.

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).

Person-to-Person Fundraising

At the beginning of the month, Peter Deitz of the About Micro Philanthropy blog, asked the question, "Is Person-to-Person Fundraising Dead, or Just Getting Started?". This was part of the Giving Carnival, which he describes as:

a monthly event that gathers the best blog posts on various topics related to Giving (philanthropy, charity, etc).

Since Peter referenced us, and the story the Guardian ran about Justgiving the other day, it seems only  fair that I return the favour and give our opinion (as our US company, Firstgiving, has).

Now it will come as no surprise to anyone that our response is that person-to-person fundraising is just getting started. Since Justgiving started in 2001, almost 5 million people have raised more than £260 million for over 4,700 charities.

But we have never helped our users raise as much money as in the last 7 days - more or less all of it down to the 15,000+ people raising money on the site for running the Flora London Marathon (officially the world's largest fundraising event, for which over £18 million, including Gift Aid, has been raised so far on Justgiving).

On Friday alone, we helped our users collect over £1 million in donations for the first time ever - March 2004 was the first time we'd helped people raise that much in just one month. That's some increase in donations, and shows how popular and widespread online person-to-person fundraising has become.

But these marathon runners are only the early adopters of person-to-person fundraising. In the last year we've seen a huge increase in the number of 'non-thon' fundraising pages - created by people doing more than just events, as I wrote about recently - from hymnathons to weddings, birthdays and doing nothing. And it's the same in the US too.

Plus, we're by no means the only ones who extol the *personal* aspect of fundraising: over on the Extreme Fundraising blog, Marc A. Pitman agrees, with his post Fundraising Secret #15: People Give to People. And whilst he writes in reference to people and direct mail, and not people-to-people fundraising per se, it still rings true...

When public trust in charities is apparently falling, giving money to people you know and trust who are raising money for a particular charity could become more effective than any direct mail a charity produces.

And that's not just our biased view. Read how Andrew Cates, Chief Executive of SOS Children's Villages, writes that their charity sent no direct mail in the whole of 2007 and "why internet fundraising is so cool".

So many charities produce guides for "A-Z fundraising ideas", where pretty much all of the ideas involve some sort of person-to-person fundraising - all of which can be done online with the minimum of fuss and maximum gain for the people and the charities involved.

To sum up, we're constantly amazed by the imagination of people who use our site to raise money for the causes they hold dear, through the people they know and love, and the unstoppable enthusiasm and creativity they bring means we're confident that this is by no means a passing fad.

You can see more examples of the wide range of person-to-person fundraising that takes place on the Justgiving website in our JG: A-Z (or, er, A-G as we've got up to so far) series of posts...

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.

Newbie Natalie

In addition to the fantastic Gemma and lovely Liz, we now have newbie Natalie working on our charities helpdesk. With Liz and Gemma, she (wo)mans the phones and email inbox from Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm and is there to answer any charity queries.

I asked Natalie why she wanted to work at Justgiving:

I've always felt my path was somewhere in the charity sector, and this came to light even more whilst I was living in Uganda.

After returning to the UK, and making the step to move to the big smoke, I realised I would need to be involved with the third sector to be happy and develop professionally.

I think the idea behind Justgiving is genius [Ed - you'll fit in well] and was keen to be involved with the company since it helps charities to raise the money required for the invaluable work they do.

So far I've really enjoyed communicating with charities and helping them to achieve the most from their relationship with Justgiving.

And to give you a chance to get to know Natalie a bit better, we've got a, er, photo of some fish she (allegedly) cooked the other day. Apparently it was quite tasty:

Plus, we've asked her the traditional tough questions that all JG newbies need to take...

Where would you like to live?

Somewhere with mountains, sun sea and sand…with a lake nearby!

What would your super power be?

An attached magic carpet

What is your favourite book?

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski (quite highbrow, our Nat)

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

Lovely, mint, you're kidding me, I’m hungry! (as probably never heard together in the sentence, "Lunchtime's over? You're kidding me! I'm still hungry. Got any lovely mints?)

What kind of biscuit would you be?

A Lindt chocolate covered shortbread with raisins, cranberries and macadamia nuts.

What's your secret talent?

I can tap dance! (I think we need footage)

Lastly, tell us one thing about you that we'd only ever find out if we gave you one of these silly questionnaires...

When I was a wee bairn my nana was pushing me home in a pram. She had lots of shopping and approaching the road she decided to take me out and put the shopping in…

She crossed the road, a car came whizzing along and crashed into the pram - shopping went everywhere (but I was probably still asleep). It’s a miracle!

So, when she's not tap-dancing, or cheating death, Natalie (and Liz and Gemma) can be contacted on 0845 021 2133 or charities@justgiving.com. Welcome to the team!

Gift Aid... the small print

The news that Gift Aid was going to stay at 28% was greeted with cheers from all corners. But whilst the future is rosy for the next three years, upon reading the small print, you'll see that the whole Gift Aid process has actually become more difficult for the next four months or so.

Let me explain (and there is, alas, no easy or short way to explain this)...

The Budget good news

On 6th April 2008 the basic rate of income tax is being reduced from 22% to 20%.  This changes the calculation behind the rate of Gift Aid reclaim from 22/78 (28.2%) to 20/80 (25%).

While all claims “allowed” (i.e. all donations made on or after the 6th April 2008) in the new tax year will be repaid initially at the rate of 25%, the Treasury has ordered that transitional relief of 3.2% also be repaid to charities on all donations made before 6th April 2011.

The small print

No transitional relief will be repaid until Royal Assent is granted to the Finance Bill 2008.

Which is nice.

Apparently, Royal Assent is a procedural formality of the legislative process and there is virtually no possibility of refusal.

But this is not expected to take place until some time in July.

Which is really great to know when you've been given more or less two weeks notice to change one of the most important processes for your business or charity...

Once Royal Assent is granted, HMRC plan to go through all the claims which include donations from the qualifying period (i.e. since 6th April 2008) and pay the extra 3.2% separately, as if it were a correcting payment to the original claim.

What this means is that we will have to reclaim Gift Aid at a rate of 25% until Assent is granted, at which point HMRC will pay the additional transitional relief of 3.2% automatically.

Claims submitted or processed after Royal Assent has been granted will be effectively processed as per tax year 2007-2008 for 28.2% of Gift Aid, although technically 3.2% of this will still be transitional relief.

After July we will need to continue to report Gift Aid and Transitional relief separately, although they are likely to be received from HMRC and paid over to charities together.

Submission and separation of April Gift Aid claims

We will submit Gift Aid claims for this transitional period as below:

1st April 2008 – 5th April 2008 donations – CLAIM A
6th April 2008 onwards donations – CLAIM B

Justgiving will generate a Gift Aid claim for 1st to the 5th April (Claim A) at the old 28.2% rate. This will be sent off to HMRC shortly thereafter so charities should get their Gift Aid payment that much sooner.

Subsequent claims (Claim B’s) will be at the new rate of 25% (the 3.2% relief will not be noted on the claim form), raised at the end of the month.

But - this is a last minute plan for HMRC and what they have told us could potentially change.

Again, this is really helpful to our developers and finance team who have been frantically changing our business, finance and varied back office systems...

Charity Account Reporting

For payments of  Gift Aid at the new transitional rate we will add three new columns to our reports: a 25% Gift Aid column plus a 3.2% Transitional rate column and a total Gift Aid column.

However, as the first payment of transitional rate Gift Aid is unlikely to be made before the end of May, this change will not be visible until then.

One last thing to note is that our 5% fee will still be calculated on gross donations (the donation plus Gift Aid at the 28% rate) throughout this period. And it will be taken out of the payments we make at 25%, before Assent is given. But that does mean the transitional relief payments of 3.2%  we'll make will have no fees deducted.

That's all folks

Hopefully you've understood this, it's been a dubious pleasure to try and explain it. But email me if you have any questions (although I can't guarantee I'll be able to give a better explanation!).

And, suffice to say, where I quoted our CFO in ebullient mood in our first post about the new Gift Aid rates, his opinions this time aren't suitable for posting online...

Expo-nential

At the time of writing, the countdown to the Flora London Marathon shows 18 days and 17 hours till the Big Day... Which means it's only 2 weeks until the FLM expo.

Like last year, we'll be there again, hanging around, ready to talk to anyone who wants to talk to us, give us feedback or ask for advice or help on all things online fundraising (or indeed the chap who asked me to help him use an international phone card!).

Feel free to come along and say hi to us, it's always nice to prove that we are actually real people! A variety of JG staff (even, gasp, the techies and finance bods) will be seen or heard at stand 448 sandwiched between Ki Health International and the Baxters Loch Ness Marathon.

And to top it off this year we also have a Wii on our stand to encourage even more people to toddle along and meet the JG team (and then ignore us to play games). Now you'll definitely want to come over and say hi.

Plus, for all you stats fans out there, at the last count there were 14,730 Marathon fundraising pages on the site that have already raised over £7 million for 1,264 charities.

That's an increase in donations of more than 25% compared to the same time last year!

Do come over and let us know your stories, I mean, just look at how much fun it was last year...

Updates to Terms & Conditions for charities

In order to clarify some of the processes we undertake (specifically refunds), we have updated the Terms and Conditions for charities on Justgiving.

You can access the new T&Cs by clicking here.

The main addition is to clarify and confirm our policy with respect to refunds; we have always refunded donations made on the site provided we've received authorisation from the charity involved. The way that worked was that we would pay back the money donated to the donor (from our operational accounts), and then deduct that amount from the next payment made to the charity.

This had not before been clarified in the T&Cs, but it was always our process. What is a new process is that if there is not enough money in the next payment to cover the refund we had already made, we will issue an invoice equal to the amount of the refund, expecting settlement within a month.

Also added is the proviso that we can suspend the use of Justgiving by a charity if the subscription isn't paid. Which is much the same as anything you pay for, really.

One last change is including in the T&Cs the fact that Justgiving retains interest on the trust account in which donations are held before being paid to you. This is to cover the costs incurred by us when we pay credit card fees, which is typically about 8-10 weeks before we receive our transaction fee from the Gift Aid reclaimed and paid to charities.

So, in summary, here are the major changes to the T&Cs:

• we’ve confirmed how we’ve always worked with refunds
• if refunds are not covered by the amounts in subsequent payments to you, we’ll invoice you for the amounts already paid to you
• we reserve the right to stop the service if you stop paying for it

If you have any questions about these updates, email me or leave a comment.

Gift Aid stays at 28% in 2008 Budget

So... some good news for charities in the 2008 Budget! Yesterday, the Chancellor announced that charities can continue to reclaim Gift Aid at its current rate of 22% for the next three years, despite the standard rate of income tax dropping to 20%.

What does this mean?

Well, an extra £300 million for charities, according to the Financial Times. Who then go on to say that...

Claiming gift aid can be highly complex, since it is hard for charities to tell which donors are eligible and which are not.

Of course, with respect to Justgiving, we reclaim Gift Aid on every eligible donation made through the site. To do that we ask all donors a couple of questions to confirm the eligibility of their donation for Gift Aid - and you can see what they are in an earlier post.

This means it's not "highly complex" at all if people make a donation through our site, making us an extremely efficient way to collect donations online - and the reason why most charities use the site.

Justgiving's Chief Financial Officer, Neil Bannister, had this to say about the Budget:

It's great news to see that the Chancellor has recognised the importance of charitable giving in the current budget by keeping Gift Aid at the current rate, due to the 2% transitional relief.

Gift Aid is a hugely important relief for all charities - last year, Justgiving processed £18.5 million of Gift Aid on donations of £85 million; the previously expected fall in Gift Aid to 20% would have meant that £2 million less Gift Aid would have been raised for charities through the site.

Justgiving will continue to endeavour to help all member charities take advantage of Gift Aid through our automatic reclaim process and benefit from this Budget announcement.

To find out more about Gift Aid and Justgiving, see our riveting explanation here.

And for more information on the Treasury's consultation with charities about Gift Aid, and what they announced in the 2008 Budget, see their website here.

Their site includes a handy PDF download that gives you the high level and detailed information about the changes and non-changes to Gift Aid, including a the launch of a new Gift Aid web information service amongst many more exciting things...

Congratulations Dotty Rhino

Almost a year ago, we started a charity website of the month feature on the charities blog, and the inaugural winner was the fabulous Dotty Rhino website.

It's strange reading something I wrote 12 months ago when I first started writing to this blog, but it's clear that we're not the only fans of the site... as the Dotty Rhino blog has just won "best african weblog" at the Eighth Annual Weblog Awards!

Now, the *bloggies* are pretty prestigious so this is a great award to receive - and if you look through the other winners, there are some pretty big name, huge traffic blogs up there. Plus, as far as I can tell, it's the only charity short-listed too!

But what's it about? Here's what the blog says:

Dotty Rhino is a real-life baby rhino living in a purpose-built rhino sanctuary in Tanzania. She and her friends are protected around the clock by Fitz and his dedicated crew who work incredibly hard to maintain water supplies, organise anti-poaching patrols and support the surrounding villages.

Dotty Rhino Humans work behind the scenes in an effort to educate and inspire young children to get involved in wildlife preservation and to introduce the world to the real Dotty Rhino.

Our Dotty Rhino Blog is unusual because it is aimed specifically at young children. This means we cannot observe several typical blog features… we never link to third-party external sites and we vet every single comment to ensure our site is safe for visitors of all ages.

So congratulations to Mandy and the team at Dotty Rhino for a great effort! :-) If you're a charity wondering how you might start blogging to reach out to your target audience and supporters, it's a great example to follow.

And here's to starting a new bloggies category next year for "best online fundraising weblog aimed at charities that use Justgiving, written by a guy called Jonathan"...

Best Practice Webinar Recording

In September and October last year, we ran a series of 14 Justgiving best practice webinars for all charities on the site. This series was attended by a whopping 158 people from over 100 different charities, but we never got round to making a recording at the time for various tech reasons.

Until now, that is! Yes, with the addition of a couple of very clever software tools, you can now watch a recording of this very popular and well-received webinar at your own convenience, 24/7!

There's a sneak peek below of what's in store, but I recommend you go here and watch it in full screen to fully appreciate the "very slick and interesting" webinar full of "useful tips on how we can promote just giving to our supporters" not to mention the "light breezy presentation" :-)

Oh, and don't forget the notes (and PDFs) that go with it...

Download best_practice_webinar_info_pack_091007.doc

Download making_the_best_of_justgiving_by_helpthe_hospices.pdf

Download justgiving_instructions.pdf

Justgiving Best Practice Webinar from Jonathan @ JG on Vimeo.

New homepage

If you've been to www.justgiving.com today you'll have noticed that it's a bit different:

Yes, we've added a few new things, plus a bit of spit and polish, to update the site for 2008.

So what's new?

The first thing you'll see is that we've added an overview of fundraising on the site (in the top right) to show how many people have used the site to raise money for you, the charities, on Justgiving. This is updated every night and helps put people at ease that they can feel confident doing the same thing.

THE most important button on the site (start fundraising now) has been moved to the left to make it more prominent, but it's in the right box is where things get interesting!

We're promoting the London Marathon and New Year resolution pages at the top and then we show pictures from real fundraising pages showing how much they've raised and for whom.

As for how the pages are selected, every night we pull a random selection of 50 pages that meet certain criteria: a page with a user-uploaded page image, a page that has raised over £100 and a page that is not an In Memoriam page.

The idea behind this is that it gives more visibility to the things people are doing on the site, it encourages people to upload their own images, and by only including pages with donations, it is supposed to give examples of how easy it is to raise money on the site.

Every time you refresh the page, you'll see the images change from one of those random 50 pages.

The sponsor a friend search is still there, as is (of course!) the charity search as below:

You'll no doubt notice that we've added a new footer to every page on Justgiving that gives all the info anyone would need (especially a new link to the charities blog - yay!).

And, one thing you might not have noticed is that the site has been centred - so now people can print fundraising pages without having to set their print settings to landscape - a small, but helpful change.

But, as ever, we'd love to hear your feedback, so leave a comment below and tell us what you think (good or bad)...

Liz is 1 today! And Gemma's here too

As well as it being Kai's 1st Justgiving birthday on our fundraiser blog, it's also one year to the day since the indomitable Liz Smith joined our charity helpdesk.

Liz is the first port of call (along with Gemma - more on her later) for all the charities who use our site, helping you with reporting, finance, website, or indeed any and all, queries.

As well as being a font of Justgiving knowledge and answering any email or phone call, she's also a massive fan of biscuits and MacGyver (often both at the same time).

If you're in need of help on the site though, don't call MacGyver, call Gemma and Liz on 0845 021 2133 or on charities@justgiving.com

Here are some photos of Liz in action...

And here's Gemma putting the JG world to rights...

New Year, same old Marathon

Happy New Year to you all. After a couple of weeks off over the Christmas it's good to be back behind the wheels of the charities blog (not that it's a car) to start off 2008 in style.

This next year is going to be a very exciting one with loads of new features and products due to be developed, but I'll start with a quick look back at one of the December releases - event landing pages - and specifically, the page for the Flora London Marathon:

Despite the event being four months away, there are already over 6,000 pages for the event and over £800,000 has been raised and paid to the charities. Not bad going I'd say!

So if your runner has yet to start fundraising, you can direct them to www.justgiving.com/londonmarathon to create a branded fundraising page and start raising money for you.

Plus, if you want something to send them to encourage them to do that, why not email them our easy instructions on how to create an FLM page?

Download make_a_justgiving_fundraising_page_flm.doc

Great seasonal emails

I'm sure most people are already sick of receiving "Season's Greetings" emails from every man and his dog, but in the last couple of days we've seen two really great examples.

The first is from a charity, MaAfrika Tikkun UK, and is simple, well designed and informative. Plus it has a great call to action and a button (see how) for people to make donations. Good stuff!

The second email is not from a charity, but an Ad agency, Glue:

It's a nice and simple looking "Merry Christmas" message, one you've seen before. And the image just links to www.letsgotolapland.com.

Oh but wait, that's no ordinary website. No, it's a site with a live video feed of them cycling to Lapland (on an exercise bike) and a fundraising feed from their Justgiving page where they're raising money for the Salvation Army

But that's not all - you can send words of encouragement as you seem them toil along and they appear on the screen in front of the cyclists (most of which seem to be about punctures...):

They've very cleverly used the RSS feed from their page to keep the site updated, which is how the widget works:

As our ex-pat finance man Ben put it, what a very sticky website...ho ho ho

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.

Dangerous Ground - charity site of the month

December's charity website of the month is brought to us by The No More Landmines Trust, as they're responsible for the quite awesome www.dangerousground.org

As the site says:

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:

That's Lewis, he's a free runner (remember Jump London?) and member of Urban Freeflow, so he can get  50,000 m2 of London's South Bank without touching it.

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 :-)]

How did you get uk2.net to help you?

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:

New In Mem buttons

Our workaholic designer Kai is a very generous guy and likes to knock out nice banners and buttons every so often to help the webmasters of all the charity sites out there...

So in the spirit of (Just)giving, and after a few requests from charities, he's created some new buttons you can use to link through to your In Memoriam area on Justgiving:

Just right click on them to save the image, and use them where you promote In Mem fundraising on your own website. Nice and easy!

We'll also be putting them up in the "Banners & Buttons" section of the Charity Account area in due course (found in the Marketing Resources tab).

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...)

Welcome Pack Feedback

It's been over a month since the launch of our Welcome Pack and your feedback has been great - 95% of people surveyed (153) have said that the pack gave them a better understanding of the Justgiving service!

And that was the basic aim of the pack - to educate both new and current charities how the site works in a clearly presented manner.

The most popular section (in terms of usefulness) was the "what happens to your money" part, which averaged a 7.7 score out of 10. Here are all the scores:

So as you can see, it all appears to be pretty useful. But don't just take my word for it, download PDF versions by clicking on the links below:

Download raise_more_money_1.pdf

Download raise_more_money_2.pdf

Download were_here_to_help_1.pdf

Download were_here_to_help_2.pdf

Due to the way it was formatted for printing, the last two sections are together in two files:

Download charity_account_and_your_money_1.pdf

Download charity_account_and_your_money_2.pdf

As for the open ended feedback (what was best/worst about the pack), we had some interesting answers:

The most popular *worst* thing was some people were worried about recycled paper and the environment (fyi we do recycle in the office)…

Unnecessary use of paper as this notification could probably have been posted to us electronically and still conveyed the necessary message

But then for some people, that was the *best* thing:

Receiving it in hard copy information.  Means I and the team will read it.  So easy to have sent it to us electronically and for us not to have given it the time and energy it requires.

Another common theme of the *best* bits was that people liked seeing who we are:

Good to see the team members. What a good looking bunch you all are. :-)

The pics and descriptions about the team is fantastic customer service - especially compared to the high staff turnover, nameless service we've had from other organisations purporting to help charities.

But some of the most interesting things you said were found in the "any other comments" question I asked. Here's a random selection:

Well done for realising that it's not only new members that need this type of information all in one pack.

Justgiving is great and we love it.

Why did you send this to me?? The membership was cancelled in Sept with just a charge for Oct to be paid. Please check your records. (oops!)

And also, thanks for all your suggestions and ideas. They've all been noted and we'll be looking at them in the future (2008 is going to be exciting):

Keep it simple - you mostly do, and it's the best thing about just giving - if it's easy for fundraisers (especially amateur ones) to use, they will.

It would be good for a charity to have it's own fundraising pages rather than just supporters. Some appeals take years and the expiration dates aren't realistic

And if you're really trying to kill time at work interested, check out all the good and bad feedback (without names) at Download welcome_pack_feedback.xls

Global Fundraising

Every week, Dom (our dashing CTO) sends round an email with our site stats for the previous week. It gives us super exciting things like the top 10 domain referrers (#1 is almost always Google), most popular pages and lots of clever tecchy things like the number of page impressions on the site and the average duration of the visit.

But one stat that never ceases to amaze me is the breakdown of page impressions by time zones. Now for a start, I didn't realise how many different time zones there are (a staggering 32 since you ask), so to see our users placed in a global context is really interesting.

Unsurprisingly, most people visit the site from within the GMT zone:

But what is surprising, is that we get page impressions from every single time zone on the planet (I don't know whether we can track views from space...)

So from the smallest number, the very exotic looking Cocos Islands (13 page impressions), to the biggest, GMT (820,783) there's a whole world of fundraising all taking place on Justgiving.com. Isn't the internet great!

Here's the full list of stats from the last week (if you're really interested):

Another one to note is that there are almost 100,000 page impressions from the US alone. A very special relationship...

So remember, people can donate on Justgiving from anywhere in the world using their own credit/debit card. We process all donations in pounds sterling (£ GBP) but an overseas donor would have their currency converted by their card issuer. See help for more details.

101 Posts!

I didn't realise it at the time, but yesterday's post was the 100th on our Charities Blog! It's been a long time since we started it way back in June 2006, and a lot of stories have been blogged about in that time.

The whole objective of the blog has changed a bit too, so it's maybe a good time to illuminate you on what that objective actually is, since you probably don't know, or haven't realised...

So what is the point of this blog? Very simply, to let you (our member charities) know how the site works, how and when we improve it, and how you can get the most out of it.

To do that (well, to hope to do that) we try to post a couple of times each week:

• on case studies, best practice and charity sites of the month to inspire you
• on service updates to communicate with you
• on hints & tips to help you
• on Fundraiser topics and newsworthy things, er, just because you might be interested

Which is about it I suppose. The traffic is improving every month, so we must be doing something right , but you can take our snazzy survey (or just comment) if you disagree!

And as a treat, here's a selection of some of the most popular posts:   

• How to let your fundraisers know about Justgiving   
• The First ever Widget   
• The new Widget   
• Our Facebook Application   
• Outstanding Supporter Care – Breakfast Talk   
• The First Ever Charity Website of the Month   
• Yorkshire Air Ambulance raises £190,000 in 7 days

Plus, if you're interested in what the company as a whole does, head on over to our Fundraiser blog. It's just like this one, except aimed at sponsors, donors, fundraisers or just anyone who's interested about us and what we do.

The best thing about that blog (out of many great things) is that I get to post pictures of food on it, as I doubt any charities are interested in that sort of thing here (Ed. who says anyone else is?)...

And why the cake? Well, I celebrate 2 years at JG tomorrow, so I thought I'd treat myself :-)

Welcome pack PDFs

I announced the launch of our Welcome Pack a couple of weeks ago, and they should have all been sent out by now. If you haven't got one, please let me know and I'll send one to you.

Or you can just download PDF versions by clicking on the links below:

Download raise_more_money_1.pdf

Download raise_more_money_2.pdf

Download were_here_to_help_1.pdf

Download were_here_to_help_2.pdf

Due to the way it was formatted for printing, the last two sections are together in two files:

Download charity_account_and_your_money_1.pdf

Download charity_account_and_your_money_2.pdf

And as for the initial feedback, it's been great - 95% of people surveyed (82 so far) have said that the pack gave them a better understanding of the Justgiving service!

I'll do a more detailed post when all the feedback is in, but for a taster, here's one answer to the question "what was best about the pack?":

Clear, concise and informative.  Although we have been using Just Giving for some time - it was useful to have the pack to update ourselves and for clarification around the services you offer.

But my favourite responses so far have been, strangely, to the question of what was worst about the pack! Here's three gems:

It just fell off the shelf and nearly hit me on the head!!
I've got to decide where to put it now
Purple and green. A bit too Wimbledon... And not great with a hangover.

So a first summary is that it's pretty good. Unless, that is, your shelves are quite full, you don't have a filing cabinet and you do have a hangover...

Tell us what you think

Today's post is quite simply a poll, albeit a quite snazzy looking one.
Please take a second to vote so we know what you like (and, more importantly, what you don't). Thanks!

And if you have any specific feedback, please let me know!

Free Rice! My charity site of the month

A big thanks to the effervescent Mike on our helpdesk for the link to this great site:
www.freerice.com

In its own words, the goal of the site is twofold:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free
2. Help end world hunger b