Justgiving's blog

Alice sleeps rough for Earthquake victims

Another amazing Earthquake Appeal page to report on.

Tonight at 8pm Alice Crossley plans to start a 24 hour period without food or shelter to raise funds for the Red Cross.

Alice says on her page: "I am allowing myself only water, with clothing / small blanket just warm enough to withstand the night cold and a plastic sheet in case of rain. I plan to be static at a site in Central London - sponsors will be updated of this location, and can pop down to witness anytime, if you wish!"

Donations are flooding in with £4,500 already donated. Visit Alice's page and sponsor her here.

- James G

Brentford FC manager nets £6k on Justgiving

Brentford Football Club manager Martin Allen has raised more than £6,000 in just a few days through his Justgiving fundraising page.

Martin is cycling from Knowle Hill via the A4 to Brentford Football Club on Tuesday 29 November 2005 to raise funds for the club, and avid Bees fans have been flocking to sponsor him and leave messages of support.

Martin was given the nickname "Mad Dog" during his playing career, so it might be a good idea to sponsor him!

Visit Martin's page here.

- James G

Justgiving scoops double Hitwise award!

For the second successive quarter, we've been awarded a Top 10 ranking against other UK websites in two Hitwise categories. Yay!

For the quarter ending September 2005, Justgiving ranked:

• No.3 by visits in the Community - Humanitarian category
  
  
• No.9 by visits in the Business and Finance - IT and Internet category

Hitwise is the world's leading online competitive intelligence service (phew, that's a mouthful). Each quarter, it gives a Top Ten Award to the Top Ten websites across each industry it monitors.

So thank you everybody for making us a Top Ten site by using Justgiving so much!

- James G

Thousands more raised for earthquake survivors

Since our last post, Amaar Khan and his friends have raised even more for victims of the South Asia earthquake. Their fundraising page has collected almost £10,000 for the Red Cross and Red Crescent in just nine days. Well done guys - an incredible effort.

Many other individuals and groups of friends have set up Justgiving fundraising pages to aid the relief effort. Sohail Ahmad and his friends are asking people to sponsor them to undertake a 7km run, and their efforts have already raised more than £6,000 for the Red Cross.

In just over one week, Mehvish Khan's page has raised an incredible £30,000 for Friends of The Citizens Foundation which builds and runs schools in rural parts of Pakistan.

Almost £17,000 has been raised for Islamic Relief by Sameer Alam's page which has pooled the fundraising efforts of Accenture Muslim Network, BT Muslim Networks, Civil Service Islamic Society, Canary Wharf Muslim Professionals Network and Muslim Professsionals UK.

Employee fundraising has seen thousands more raised through pages created by PwC Muslims, HSBC Islamic Society and Savapoint.

Well done to everyone who has put so much effort into fundraising for earthquake victims in the past week. You really have made a difference. The money you raise is paid directly to your chosen charities at the end of every week, meaning funds are quickly available to spend where they are needed most.

You can help earthquake surivivors by making a donation to one of the pages featured here, or raising funds through your own fundraising page. To find out which charities are working in the affected area, take a look here.

- James G

Amaar and friends raise £6,000 for earthquake victims in just 48 hours

Proving that individuals really can make a difference, Amaar Khan and his friends set up a fundraising page on Justgiving to raise money for those affected by the earthquake in South Asia. They have raised £6,000 in just 48 hours for the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

Amaar takes up the story: "A few friends met up at my house on Monday evening and we decided to try and raise some money for this disaster. A friend of mine found your site and we decided that we would start here. We send out an email to all our friends and families and they started donating. More and more people were interested and more people wanted to join us on the run. It was a great feeling for all of us.

"Since then there has been no turning back and we are trying to get as many people involved as possible now. This was the ideas and motivation of Amaar, Falak, Shoib, Saima, Murtaza & Nadia. We couldn’t have done it without each others help. Thanks everyone."

Visit Amaar's page here.

To create your own fundraising page, click here.

- James G

October improvements

At the beginning of every month our techno bods stay up all night pushing buttons as a whole host of improvements to our site go live. They’re all looking a bit bleary eyed this morning, so that must mean the site’s had its monthly makeover.

Here’s what’s new this month:

1. Contacting your sponsors

Loads and loads and loads of you have contacted us to say you’d like a simple way to email all the people who donated to your fundraising page once your event is completed. And your wish is our command!

We’ve added a check box in the donation process so each person who sponsors you can opt-in to be contacted by you. If the donor ticks this box, their email address is visible to you on a new screen in the “See who has sponsored you” section of the “Page management” area of Your Account.

When your sponsors opt-in, their email addresses will automatically be added to your online address book within Your Account, and hey presto, you can easily send an email to them all to say thanks.

2. Making it easier to tell friends about your fundraising page

We’ve redesigned the screen you see when you’ve successfully completed building a fundraising page. Instead of the confusing email options, it now points you directly to your account. From there, you can quickly and easily send emails to promote your page.

3. Access to your page even when it’s expired

Once a fundraising page has expired, it used to be the case that you could no longer access it to see who sponsored you. That was rubbish, so we changed it, and now you can!

4. More email templates

We have created two additional email templates within your account area. Whereas previously you could only send a “please sponsor me” email, you can now send a “update on my progress” email, and one to say “thank you for sponsoring me”. Cool, huh?

Oh, and there’s loads of other stuff as well, but it was mostly boring complicated stuff, so suffice to say we hope it will make your life easier and your time on justgiving.com more enjoyable. Let us know what improvements we should make in November by emailing suggestions@justgiving.com.

Right, we’re all off for Jason’s birthday drinks. He’s 30 you know. Happy birthday Jase!

- James G

Welcome to the Justgiving Blog

Hello everyone –

Welcome to the Justgiving Blog!

We’re keen to keep you updated with all the exciting things that happen here at Justgiving HQ, so we’ve set up this blog where we can post news, views and other fun stuff on a regular basis.

You’ll be the first to know when we make improvements to the site, or when we release exciting new products invented by our team of technological wizards. We’ll flag up fundraising pages we like and share top tips to help you raise more money. And lots of other stuff like that.

We’ll also use the blog to introduce ourselves a bit better, so you’ll get to know us as well as our website.

Please leave us comments by clicking on the 'comments' link below. Let us know what you think of the blog, or tell us jokes, or give us recipes for nice cakes. Whatever you like.

- James G