Justgiving's blog

Jules is tha man

We like it when people take the time to write in to say thanks - it makes our work all the more worthwhile. This is no more true than for the guys manning our helpdesk - supporting our users and charity members on a daily basis.

So a big shout out this month goes to Jules - king of the helpdesk for getting a nice mention here. (Thanks to Si for the spot)

This is Jules in his usual helpdesk attire (thanks for the photo Jono).

Don't be messing with Jules now - he will shoot you down.

In memory of Dr. Wally

If you've ever listened to BBC 2's popular 'Wake up to Wogan' breakfast show over the past few years you've probably enjoyed some banter between Terry Wogan and his sidekick, Paul Walters, otherwise known as 'Dr Wally'.

Sadly, Paul Walters died last week after a long illness. If you want to make a donation in Paul's memory, why not join the others from www.togs.org who have set up a fundraising page at www.justgiving.com/drwally.

BTW 'TOGS' is short for for 'Terry's Old Geezers' -- the longtime supporters of the show.

Ditches, deed poll and dieting dogs

Ditch Monkey cooks up a culinary treat. Photo by Mark Bassett.

Tuesday's post about the footie match between Super Heroes and Super Villains got us thinking about the weirdest and wackiest fundraising challenges you've undertaken.

Your imagination and creativity (and, ahem, borderline insanity) never ceases to amaze us. So we thought we'd compile the Top 10 craziest fundraising challenges in JG history.

Drum roll please...

1. Hugh Sawyer (pictured above) lived in a ditch in the woods for a year


2. Elliot Sudbury changed his name by deed poll


3. Jo and Ants drove a tuk tuk from Bangkok to Brighton


4. The Booby Sisters bounced their, um, boobies across Westminster Bridge...


5. ...and Vix got hers out too


6. Chip went on a diet (and became perhaps the first labrador to create a Justgiving page)


7. Dave Spence offered himself up as fish food


8. Jeanette Carney and pals rode rollercoasters


9. Rolesy got all his mates to grow beards


10. Darren Hartland DJed for 96 hours

We salute you one and all.

Do you agree with our selection? Who have we left out? Post a comment to let us know.

And if you can think up even crazier fundraising challenges, post them in our forum here.

Let battle commence

"She fell over, she fell over"

Football has a habit of producing ferocious battles between sworn enemies. Wide-eyed stares, crunching tackles and crashing elbows have been a feature of footballing wars of attrition for decades.

But how about this for the grudge match of all time...Good vs Evil.

Yes indeed: Superman lining up against Darth Vader, The Incredible Hulk man-marking Hannibal Lecter and Super Ted contesting 50/50s with Count Dracula. Game on!

Paul Tinworth and his mates were supping a few lagers in the pub, as you do, when they decided it would be amusing to stage a game of football between a team of smurfs and a team of garden gnomes (I want some of what you were drinking, Paul). The match was a huge success and raised a tidy sum for charity, so the event is being repeated. Only this time it's Super Heroes vs Super Villains.

Batman, Robin and Buzz Lightyear will go toe to toe with Dr Evil, Darth Maul and Mumm-Raa at Wooodford Park, Woodley, on Sunday 29 October. Pity the poor referee.

The two teams have put aside rivalry, animosity and taking over the world to raise funds for Cancer Research. Check out their page and sponsor them here.

Expect some flying tackles. Boom, tish.

A Heli-ted for Christmas

Just to keep the ball rolling on the amazing Richard Hammond fundraising page, the kind folks at Pistonheads.com have now thrown in an added incentive to donate to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance - if you make a donation of at least £10 by the start of November you'll receive this lovely teddy, complete with flight gear and a YAA t-shirt. Ahhhhhh...

Find out how to get a Heli-ted here...

By the way, wasn't it great to see Richard Hammond in the Mirror yesterday? He seriously seems to be on the road to recovery - with a little help from Lego!

Philanthropy or Poverty Tourism?

Big splash in The Guardian on Saturday about a new reality TV show that makes multi-millionaire businessmen live on state benefits for 10 days in some of the most deprived areas of Britain.

At the end of their tenure slumming it under the watchful gaze of the cameras, the participants in Secret Millionaire decide which members of their oblivious community deserve the £50,000 they've agreed to give away.

So the undercover millionaire receives a kind word from an unsuspecting shop assistant, or a smile from the single mum next door, and in return pops a whacking great cheque in the post.

Hmm...

Is this innovative, socially conscious programming that encourages redistribution of wealth? Or is it poverty voyeurism that encourages only viewing figures? Would the money not be better going to charities?

"The question of whether or not an individual might be deserving of a large sum of money is not really the heart of the issue as far as the people we help on a daily basis are concerned," said a spokesman for Refugee Action, with remarkable diplomacy.

What do you think? Has reality TV developed a conscience, or is the TV company the only real beneficiary?

Post a comment or have a natter in our forum.

Beefy makes great strides

Congratulations to cricket legend Ian Botham who has completed his latest fundraising challenge - walking through 17 cities in just nine days.

Beefy was joined on his jaunt by thousands of fans and a host of celebrities including Ronan Keating, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Michael Vaughan and Michael Watson.

By the time he crossed the finish line in London on Tuesday, he'd already raised a staggering £400,000 for Leukaemia Research and the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Of course Beefy is best known for slaying the Aussies (and everyone else) during his world beating playing days, but since he downed bat and ball, his indefatigable fundraising has seen him cover thousands of miles on sponsored walks that have raised in excess of £8m for children's cancer charities. Nice one fella.

Now, what chance of coming out of retirement to help the current crop of hopeless underachievers Down Under?

Visit Beefy's page at http://www.justgiving.com/sponsorbeefy.

It's like Fort Knox in there...

Our donation processing system that is.

Yes indeed. We've just launched a major upgrade of our donation processing system to incorporate the very latest leading edge payment technology.

Which means even greater security for you, greater efficiency in processing your donations and even lower credit card rates. All of which, we think you will agree, are wonderful things.

You may notice a few changes in the donation process as a result of this super duper upgrade, so we thought we'd better let you know about them:

1. Verified by VISA (VBV) and MasterCard SecureCode (MCSC)
The clever clogs at VISA and MasterCard, among others, have collaborated to create a new industry standard known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (or the more palatable 'PCI' for short).

So...we've introduced VBV™ and MasterCard SecureCode™, both of which provide additional protection for you by prompting you to provide a personal password every time you use your card online.

You can now register with VBV or SecureCode when you donate on Justgiving. If you don't want to, don't have to (but soon everyone will have to be registered, so you might as well get it over with!).

2. Security Code
This is the three-digit security code on the back of your payment card. Every time you make a donation via Justgiving, you will now be asked to enter your code.

3. Address verification service (AVS)
AVS verifies your personal address and billing information at the time of your donation against the information your credit card company has on file.

Phew. So that's that. Stick with us...

The other big change is that rather than processing donations in overnight batches, we now authorise each donation as it is made. In "real-time", if you want to get all techy about it.

Real-time processing helps us better handle major appeals and high peaks of transactions.

It also means that if your card is rejected, you will find out immediately via an on-screen message, and not via an email.

Nearly there...

One more thing to tell you. Our lovely partners Barclays have given us even greater discounts on credit and debit card fees, so more of your money gets to your charity.

Here's a lovely little table illustrating the new low low low charges:

Card	Fee (per transaction)
Maestro/Solo	22p
Delta	23p
Electron	23p
Visa	1.34%
MasterCard	1.41%

Oh yeah, one more thing. We also now accept Visa Electron™ cards for the first time. Yay, shout all you Visa Electron™ users!

In memory of the Beckham of the baize

Photo: BBC

Snooker fan Jake Coventry has created a fundraising page in memory of three-times Masters champion Paul Hunter, who lost his battle with cancer last week aged just 27.

Nicknamed "the Beckham of the baize", Hunter's poster boy looks, flowing locks and prodigious talent made him one of the most iconic snooker players of his generation. Many tipped him as a future World Champion.

Paul was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer in March 2005 but continued to play professionally throughout several gruelling bouts of chemotherapy. He died on Monday 9 October at Kirkwood Hospice in Huddersfield.

Jake's fundraising page has enabled snooker fans from around the world to donate to the NET Patient Foundation in memory of Paul. The Foundation provides information, support and friendship to people with neuroendocrine tumours and their families.

Jake says on the page: "Paul and his family have done a lot of fundraising for this charity. Needless to say that I wanted to donate, and I am sure that you will too."

Jake initially set a fundraising target of £1,000, but already the page has raised £2,900 and carries many moving tributes to a true great of the modern game.

Visit the page here: www.justgiving.com/snookerfans

sharecow.com?

Last year we had a bit of a dilemma.

We had to change our name in the US from Justgiving to something else because there was already another organisation with a remarkably similar name. Oh dear.

Thing was, we were all kind of attached to the name of Justgiving and were a bit gutted it would have to go. Fortunately due to a company-wide brainstorming session, the americans came up with firstgiving.com and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief over here since we wouldn't have to switch. No loss of brand 'equity' or any of that other stuff that James talks about lots.

So today we were talking about this, and in the heady days of 2005, web 2.0 and youtube and myspace and other sites that rule the world now were not making headlines as they do now. Molly was talking about Moonpig.com and what a great name they have. It's amazing how many sites these days can string random words together, drop some cunningly placed vowels or spell something completely wrong to get a great name. It seems to be a web 2.0 startup minimum requirement to do both of these things, for example frappr, digg, the aforementioned moonpig, blummy, spurl, avvenu and, er, ning.

Some of the names and domains we came up with are truly, truly horrid. Here's a shortlist in no particular order:

1. easygiving - too boring
2. givingdirect - too 'banky'
3. groovygiving - we're not hippies   
4. givinghub - just, no
5. givinglab - too geeky
6. givingspot - too adolescent
7. givingbug - too insecty

Not an impressive list I'm sure you'll agree. Of course we didn't fully capitalise on the moonpig naming system, which produced such gems as sharecow, badgermountain, giftpate and sunmouse. Tom also suggested 'Afino' which is greek for gift. Sounds good, but looks like an oil company.

No, the closest was the exceedingly uninspired givinglink. We even had a logo done:

hmmmm.

So the moral of the story is we're all grateful to still be JG and not GL. And the US guys are happy being Firstgiving so it all worked out OK in the end.

Pet Fit Club

Ten portly cats and dogs have been selected from a nationwide search to join the PDSA's Pet Fit Club and now they've been put on a 100 day diet and fitness regime, which hopefully doesn't involve any star jumps or ryvita! The pet who shapes up the best gets to take their owner off on a pet-friendly holiday, so the stakes are high for this bunch of porky doggies and rotund moggies.

Contenders for the title of Pet Fit Club champ include Chip (above), a 9 year old Labrador from Croydon, who weights more than Croydon's own superstar, Kate Moss! Chip is a substantial 66 kg and is 120% overweight. You can sponsor Chip's weight loss effort here.

The largest cat in the running is ginger tom Good Friday, who claws open boxes of biscuits when his owner's not watching. He's 8 kg of cat and 60% overweight. You can sponsor Good Friday here.

Check out the PDSA's Pet Fit Club homepage to see the other 8 contenders and to sponsor them. Good luck to them all....

Andy's Marathon Blog 5 - Across the Finishing Line

Well Guys, i made it !!

After 4 hours 30 minutes and 12 seconds, i crossed the finishing line in the Queens Park Stadium, Inverness. As you can see from the picture, I looked a bit of a state by the end of it!

My day didn't get of to the greatest of starts. Throughout the build up to the race, I had been making sure that i was adequately hydrated for the trials ahead. However, I probably overdid it somewhat. Judging by the queue at the 'portaloos', the majority of the 2,000 were in the same predicament. So i decided that it would be best if i left the scrum for the loos, and used one of the many fields around. Unfortunately, I didn't realise that the ditch i was stepping across was actually a small river, and managed to step straight in it. So now I was 10 minutes away from the start, with one foot absolutely soaking.

Anyway, there was nothing i could do about it. As the starter called us to the start. I was getting some strange looks from fellow competitors, as i appeared to be squelching after every other stride!

The klaxon went off and we were sent on our way with the help of a traditional Scottish band. Approximately three minutes into it, the heavens opened. Soon, no-one was looking at me strangely, as everyone had wet feet. And shorts. And vests. For the full four and a half hours the rain didn't stop. if anything, it got progressively heavier the longer the day went on.

Nowhere in the pre-race literature did anyone mention the hill at Mile 5. If i had knownthat it was that steep, I would have brought my climbing gear. Managed to reach the summit of that one, and so too the hills at miles 11,14, 17 and 19. The famous mile 23 hill arrived, but early, at mile 21. After a while though, I realised that this hill actually went on until mile 23. Just what you need after four hours - a two mile hill..

Was feeling absolutely exhausted by mile 24, but the crowds were getting bigger as we were heading towards the centre of Inverness and they really spurred us on. As i turned into the stadium, I looked nervously over my shoulder, checking that neither Lorraine Kelly nor Great Uncle Bulgaria were coming up behind me. Luckily, there was no sign of them. So i was free to wnjoy a relativiely relaxed finish.

A big thanks to the guy from Bracknell who I got talking to at around about mile 21. You really helped me through a tough spell, and i hope you managed to get the time that you were after. Also a big thanks to my travelling support of Angie, Ron and Isobel. It was great to see you out there at mile 18 and at the finish. And the way you all peformed at the pre-race pasta party, setting personal bests for pasta eating, was great.

And thanks to everyone who sponsored me. At last count my page was up to £1,067, which is fantastic. Here's to the next one....

Andy

Release - Editing donation messages

Just a quick note to announce we have just released a new piece of functionality which will allow people making sponsorship donations to edit the display name and personal message they leave with their donation.

Whilst we have taken great joy in the "I've said something really embarrassing on his page and didn't realise his mum might read it" helpdesk calls, we felt the time had come to allow donors to edit these messages themselves after they had been posted.

Hopefully they will find this saves a few blushes for our users and will also free up vital helpdesk time to respond to other pressing questions such as "I've collected some clothes - where do I send them".

Nearly but not quite - Fundraising Page v2

Well here I sit at Paddington station awaiting my ride home - Cornish pasty in hand (and £1 lighter for wanting to sit down and eat it). I thought as I've spent the money to put jean to leather (incidentally fist time I've sat on a denim chair ;-)), now might be a good time to give you a bit of an update on the progress of the Fundraising page upgrade we've been working on recently.

Not content with ridiculing me personally on a daily basis, Liz the JG usability guru has recently enrolled the help of an outside usability agency to pick holes in my work too.

Given the importance of the changes we want to make we thought it might be a good idea to get some extra external testing done of the new fundraising page layouts. Whilst most of the work seems to have been validated, we've had some really good feedback on a couple of things and need to do a little more work to get everything just right.

The number of new features we are adding to pages means the current layout is having to change somewhat and, as always, this means squeezing more stuff into less space.

So we've whipped the project out from under the noses of our tech team who were itching to get started and are now re-jigging things a little.

We don't expect the tweaking to take long but we'd rather do before anything is put live as it's easier to manage now than when you've got your whole user-base up in arms.

So what are these new features I speak of. Well, things which have definitely made the cut include multiple images on a single fundraising page, the ability for someone to create a sporting page for an event such as a marathon that is also in celebration or in memory of someone or something, the ability for the page owner to determine what information appears in the sponsorship list on their page and a few other things.

We have also re-built the page from the ground up using the latest in design standards which should not only make it more accessible to people with disabilities using screen readers but have also laid a lot of the ground work for getting future changes out there faster.

So in the meantime, please bear with us. We are working as hard as we can to bring you all these new features but we're trying to get them at least 90% right on our first release.

Über Tartiflette

I think it's safe to say that we're an office of 'foodies'. Not a day goes by in the small kitchen at JG Towers without someone making a healthy salad or toasting something in the Lean Mean Fat Grilling Machine

But it's not only in the office where the adventures in food take place, so I feel as if I should take this opportunity to introduce the world to the Tartiflette, a fine example of which you can see above.

Suffice to say it was made by my own fair hands  with the very smelly reblochon cheese provided by our helpdesk man, Mike, after one of his trips to France.

I discovered this exciting dish whilst living in the lovely city of Grenoble, France for a year. If you ever visit, have a drink in the world famous Le London Pub where I used to work :)

If you like cheese, especially very smelly cheese, give it a go!
The (very simple) recipe can be found here

Congrats to the Great North Runners!

Just another JG shout out to congratulate everyone who managed to finish the gruelling Great North Run yesterday.

It was especially exciting to see some JG celeb fundraisers on TV, along with everyone else slogging across the Tyne.

There was Carol Vorderman (and friends)- she was resplendant in a bright orange jacket and aviator glasses, walking the route in a tribute to her friend, the late Countdown presenter Richard Whiteley.

Then I clocked BBC News' own Sophie Raworth, who looked to be on form. She wound up having a great time - 2 hours and 16 minutes!

And finally, it was great to see our fundraiser of the month, Findlay Young, bashed and bruised and with stitches in his forehead, but still on track to finish his 'Great World Run'. What a trouper!

Well done to ALL of you out there!

Fundraiser of the Month, October 2006

Our fundraiser of the month for October 2006 is Findlay Young.

Findlay Young who has twice survived thyroid cancer has just completed an incredible 24 half marathons in 24 days to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

Read his amazing story here. Visit his page and sponsor him 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.