Justgiving's blog

Nominate your Fundraiser of the Month

We need your help!

We want you to nominate the person who you think should be Justgiving's "Fundraiser of the Month" for September.

Every month we choose one Justgiving fundraiser to highlight as our "Fundraiser of the Month". With thousands of you doing such a huge array of amazing challenges and events to raise funds for the causes you care about, it's always incredibly tough to pick just one person to feature.

So we want to hear from you. Comment on this post and tell us in no more than 50 words why the person you're nominating deserves to be Fundraiser of the Month. Include their Justgiving page URL and our Editor Caroline will choose one person to feature at the end of the week.

We're not just looking for the person who has raised the most money, but rather the person who has most inspired you with their passion and dedication to raising funds for their chosen charity.

If you'd rather nominate someone privately, simply send an email to caroline@justgiving.com.

Check out this month's fundraiser of the month here.

No more pledges - thank you for your comments

Thank you to all of you who have written to us, or posted comments on our blog, in response to our email on the removal of the pledging facility on Justgiving. We really appreciate you taking the time to provide feedback.

As I read your comments, I noticed some key misunderstandings about our service, which I wanted to dispel:

• Bar the removal of the “pay on completion” function on your fundraising pages, our service is unchanged. Justgiving continues to enable people to make a credit or debit card donation to your fundraising page. As Stef Hall commented, this is the preferred option for the vast majority of donors on Justgiving (90% of them to be precise) and tens of thousands of Justgiving pages already operate without the pledging option, and performing extremely well.
• Pledges that have already been made to your page will be processed as normal. There is absolutely nothing for your donors, or yourself, to do.

Thank you to those of you, like Ed Bird, for suggesting a pledging facility 'lite', which would enable potential donors to leave their email address on the page and receive an automatic reminder after the event.

Unfortunately, this model has been tested in the past, and proven to be largely unsuccessful: donors just do not respond to automatic emails, and charities lose out. What donors do appreciate is a personal message from you, so the best way to communicate with those donors who prefer to give after the event is to email them then.

I would like to assure you that we never make changes to our fundraising pages without careful consideration. It is important to remember that we are doing this to comply with the highest possible levels of online security, which will be expected of all online merchants by June 2007. We simply decided to remain ahead of the game. Increased security, along with real-time processing of donations, will result in more money being raised for charity.

Our product development team will review your comments and suggestions carefully over the next few days and weeks. Please continue to send us your feedback. Your comments are greatly appreciated.

Anne-Marie Huby
Managing Director
Justgiving

Enhanced security on Justgiving – what it means for you

September will see a major upgrade of Justgiving’s donation processing system. One key consequence of this change is that we will no longer be able to support the processing of pledges – the ‘pay on completion’ option on your fundraising page.

Please take a moment to read our simple six-point explanation of how this came about, and what it means for your fundraising page.

1. How do pledges currently work?

When a donor chooses to pledge rather than donate right away, Justgiving captures their full card details and only debits the card after the event has been completed.  Up until that point, ‘pledgers’ can cancel or amend their gift at any time.

2. Why is Justgiving making this change?

In September, Justgiving will introduce a cutting-edge, real-time authorisation system that will deliver the latest security and fraud-prevention techniques to your donors.

Not only will this help further reassure your donors that online giving is highly secure, but it will also benefit charities by reducing the number of donation cancellations and charge-backs (where a donation is contested by the card owner and refunded via their credit card company).

Pledges need to be phased out because they will not be compatible with the enhanced security environment that we will deploy in September.

For instance, we will start asking donors to enter the 3-digit security code at the back of their cards. Because this code authenticates the donor as the rightful owner of the card, it cannot be stored in any circumstances by Justgiving.

Because pledges involve the storage of a donor’s card details until the transaction can be processed, we will no longer be able to support them under our new security rules in September.   

Though pledges are popular in a minority of cases, we believe that the benefits of enhanced security will vastly outweigh the loss of pledges.

3. What will happen to pledges already made?

Pledges that have already been made will continue to be processed in the ‘traditional’ way. There is absolutely nothing for your donors, or yourself, to do.

4. When will the pledging option be removed?

Donors will no longer be able to make a pledge through your page from Monday 21st August. 

5. Will I raise less because of this change?

Many Justgiving pages are already operating without the pledging option, and doing equally well in the long run.

6. What if my donors do not wish to donate right away?

To ensure you raise as much as you would without the pledging option, it is important to send out another round of emails to friends and family right after your event, to encourage those who have yet to donate. It is a good time to refresh your page with a new photo and a message, to show them you actually made it!

If you have sponsors who strongly do not wish to donate until after you have completed your fundraising event / activity, suggest a date (i.e. 1 day after you event) when they can return to your fundraising page and make a donation.

If you have any questions or suggestions about this change please do email us.

RSS RockSS

Every single fundraising page on Justgiving now has its very own RSS feed!

It's something that a fair few of our users have been asking for, so we've gladly obliged.

To subcribe, all you need to do is scroll to the bottom of the fundraising page you want to monitor and then import the RSS data into your current reader.

Here's a working example: my best friend Dave is currently cycling from John o'Groats to Land's End (right now he's getting very cold and wet in the highlands somewhere) and doing some fundraising for Rainer. Here is his page and here are the instructions for me to track his donations. Now I can keep updated on his fundraising without having to keep checking the page directly, since I use Google Sidebar as my RSS reader and any new donations will pop into my web clips section. Easy.

So if you'd like to track your own page more effectively, or the page of someone you know, then get subscribing to those feeds!

If RSS means absolutely nothing at all to you then check out the BBC's explanation. They say it better than I can.

Check out a new charity events calendar

I received a rather nice email over the weekend from Gareth at www.countmeincalendar.info  complimenting our new our blog (thanks for that Gareth).

So it's only fair that we return the compliment. Check out www.countmeincalendar.info the UK's leading not- for-profit events calendar. It's a really useful site that lists events that will interest fundraisers and charities alike.

Waltzing Marissa

It's a sad day today at JG Towers, as our finance assistant Marissa is leaving us to go back to Australia :(

She's been here for about a year and has certainly added a touch of glamour to the finance department (not that it needed it. You guys are the best...)

So in true JG style, we did take her out last night to present her with the, ahem, expensive and exclusive gifts that only a tourist in London would appreciate...

Here she is with Neil the CFO as he explains

And then sporting the fashion highlights

It goes without saying that she'll be missed, but we wish her all the best in the land of Oz (just so long as you don't tell us what the weather is like)

Hints & Tips for fundraisers

Get your fundraising efforts off to a good start by following some guidance we've picked up over the years.

1. Personalise your page - add your own photos and text. Click here and here to see some examples.
2. Email your friends and family first.
3. Tell everyone you know - even people living abroad.
4. Contact your local media - write a press release (click here for a mock press release).
5. Keep your fundraising page up to date and continue emailing friends.
6. Use your own personal email AND the Justgiving email facility so friends recognise you.
7. Promote the address of your fundraising page on your email signature.
8. Communicate what a donation will buy e.g. "£20 will restore someone's sight". It helps people understand the true value of a donation.
9. Put up a notice in your gym, church, local schools to promote your appeal.
10. Ask to be featured on your company's website.
11. Personalise your thank you email when you set up your fundraising page.
12. Ask friends to pass the address of your page onto others.
13. Keep fundraising after your event - there's still time for more donations!
14. Use our telephone and email support desk to answer any queries. Click here for details.
15. If you have any other tips for fundraisers share them. Contact us here.

New JG Blog gets first rave review

Three days on from the launch of the new Justgiving blog and we've received our first  review from ClickRich entitled "The World's Greatest Site gets new Blog" (what a brilliant title for a blog post).

This cracking entry also shows how people are building online fundraising pages that work. So, go on, have a read and get inspired.

Awesome stuff - a big shout out to ClickRich for the nice words. Loving your profile by the way.

Fundraiser of the Month, August 2006

Our Fundraiser of the Month for June is Emily Thackray.

Not many people complete sponsored runs with 50 or more ‘angels’ helping them along, but 22-year-old Emily Thackray will be doing just that on September 3^rd, despite living with CF and waiting for a double lung transplant.

Read her story here. Visit her page and sponsor her here.

If you want to nominate someone as a future Fundraiser of the Month, please drop us an email at community@justgiving.com or post details in our forum.

All the best Emily!

Your comments on Justgiving's blogs

The purpose of Justgiving's weblogs is to encourage the best and most innovative uses of online fundraising for charities.

We warmly welcome your comments on our blogs, however provocative or critical. 

Our policy is to keep intervention to a minimum but we WILL remove comments that:

1. are libellous, offensive, obscene, racist, or contain personal attacks,
2. have been posted under a fictitious email address,
3. or are a blatant 'plug' for a third-party product  or service

as soon as they come to our attention, at our sole discretion.

If you notice any such comment and wish to report it to us please email us. Thank you.

Welcome to the new Justgiving blog

Welcome to our new look Justgiving blog.  We've re-vamped our blog to bring you more features, colour, information and in true Justgiving style - make it easier to use.

This blog is designed for people who use Justgiving to build personal fundraising pages and require support in maximising online donations. If you work for one of our charity members, please visit our charity blog where you'll find useful service updates and case studies .

So here it is - the Justgiving blog.  Take a look at the categories we'll be posting against on the left hand side. Fundraiser of the month profiles fundraisers who have raised substantial amounts of money for charity; Inspiration for fundraisers provides you with useful hints and tips on how to raise more money online; New on Justgiving updates you on the new features we're working on to make Justgiving even easier; and News from JG Towers is where we'll ramble on about anything that interests us or makes us laugh.

Furthermore, access other fundraisers' blogs via the links on the right hand side.

So have a look around and add comments to our posts. If you think we could do better, give me a shout at james.casey@justgiving.com

Thanks