Justgiving's blog

Table Switching

A timely product update and one of the biggest requests since the beginning of the interweb: welcome to table control.

What's that then?

Up until the end of last week you had no control over what appeared in the big donations table on your fundraising page. Well, now you do (click to go large):

Cool. How do I do it?

Edit your current fundraising page by logging-in to your account and you'll be able to switch each column on or off at your leisure. Don't worry, the columns will resize themselves so your page won't look all unjustified or anything.

Don't want to show the donation dates? Turn them off.

Embarrassed to see everyone's name or their amounts? They can go too.

Here's a few screengrabs from live pages already using this feature:

Kim's turned off her donation amounts and Gift Aid for her VSO Kilimanjaro challenge.

Graeme's switched off the donation dates on his London Triathlon page.

You can get rid of all the columns if you wish, but our recommendation is to always leave the comments switched on, since it's the comments that keep your fundraising page sticky and lets your supporters make their mark.

Let us know what you think! More cool stuff coming soon.

D is for...

Doing good, as our American cousins would no doubt say.

D is for Dina Rabinovitch. Dina is a writer and journalist (with a Guardian column), JG fundraiser and blogger extraordinaire. She's even been nice enough to honour us with a guest blogger post, writing about her inspirational story.

Other favourite people at JG Towers include the daring Derrick De Mel and Ducati-driving* Dominic Lacey, developer and CTO par excellence. Find out more about them in our About Us section.

D is also for 'Double Death Valley' Run, one of the more extreme fundraising efforts we've seen. Mark Cockbain is the impressively mad person undertaking this challenge!

Other D-vents include Dogathons, like the immeasurably cute Hettie's sponsored walk and Echo's Colchester Dogathon

The same idea is taken to a slightly more bizarre extent with the Dogathong, created by the barking mad Paul Colville, where they will be walking dogs and wearing thongs. As you do.

A more traditional fundraising event is the Dragon Boat Race. There are always a few corporate teams who race for charities, like Young and Gault's and NHS 24, or regular racers like Matt Thompson's team.

And from the sublime to the ridiculous, we conclude with one of the most imaginative pages ever built on Justgiving: a round of applause to Daniel Waite and his fundraising page, where he is raising money by Doing Nothing.

*He actually drives a Honda, but that doesn't alliterate

C is for...

Cutting straight to the chase:

C is for Clerkenwell. Our physical and spiritual home. We've just moved to St Cross street, sandwiched between Leather Lane and Hatton Garden. We really like it, check out photos of our place here.

It's also for Christmas. Not content with secret santa, dodgy office parties and goodwill to all men, much festive fundraising takes place during December. There are special Christmas appeals both at home and abroad. Not forgetting those lovely Christmas concerts that happen too.

Slightly more timely for May is Cricket. We always look forward to the first Test, but lots of JGers get their willow out for charity, including some big companies and matched donations. And don't forget about the Lord's Taverners!

That leads us nicely into companies. Corporate fundraising is big on JG. They're all on there, from the biggest banks and consulting types, to telecoms, media groups, engineers, law firms, supermarkets, people who make bar snacks, IT and technology groups and global brands. Actually we reckon there are more lawyers than anyone else right now. Tom wants to know if JG's working well for companies right now, so drop him a line if you've had any experience doing corporate fundraising through our site so we can make it better.

C is also for the Cannonball Run. Our logo is going on some posh cars for this year's event and we can't wait!

Finally, don't forget the Cutty Sark. Help the restoration appeal right here.

Missed A and B? A-Z has it's own category here.

Help Save the Cutty Sark

Anyone who's been to the BBC News website today will have seen the top story is about the devastating fire on the Cutty Sark this morning.

The news that one of London's most famous tourist attractions has been damaged has caused a great deal of sadness amongst the general population, as this feature, also on the BBC, shows.

The Chief Executive of the Cutty Sark Trust, Richard Doughty said:

A fire broke out this morning at 4.45am this morning at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, which was put out by the London Fire Brigade by 06.28am.

The ship was undergoing a major conservation project and everyone involved in the project is devastated.

It was a quarter of the way through and so much work has already been carried out.

To help raise much needed funds for the Ship, and to collect messages of support, the Cutty Sark Trust have created a fundraising page on Justgiving at www.justgiving.com/cuttysarkfire

At 18.20 today, only an hour and a half after the page was created, it has already received over £800 in donations. If you would like to lend your support to them, you can contact them directly on 0208 858 2698 or click on the widget below:

 

B is for...

After Simon's astounding announcement of our alphabetic adventure last week, it's time to move on to more bizarre, but brilliant, bits and bobs that make up the JG: A - Z   (Ed - enough with the alliteration already!)

Today brings us examples of the letter B:

B is for the BBC. Yes, Auntie's workers have been great users of the Justgiving site over the years, with many of their most famous names (and shows - see A for Apprentice) appearing on our very own site.

From Evan Davis to Adrian Chiles, Commentator to Eastender (Ian Beale, Carly and Dawn), Editors to Cameramen to Presenters, they've all been at it.

The most famous of all is of course the "get well soon" page for Richard Hammond, which raised the most money of any fundraising page in the history of Justgiving - a staggering £190,000 (see the whole story here)

From the BBC we move to Channel 4, as B is also for Big Brother. It seems a lot of the contestants fly straight from Davina's questions to a PC and create a fundraising page: Jade's, er, memorable Marathon effort had a page here, as did Kinga and Michelle Bass.

Never to be outdone, Aisleyene even gave up smoking for charity, and Rula Lenska went on a Trek to India (to swap CBB stories with Shilpa perhaps?).

No self-respecting fundraising list could ignore the humble Baked Bean, and there's been countless examples of bean-based-fundraising on Justgiving: especially the world famous Captain Beanie (here with some bemused members of JG in 2006).

His current page is for a  Beans-on-toast-athon but he's also done the Flora London Marathon in 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007! What a guy.

B is finally for Birthdays: we see more and more people ask for donations instead of presents, and two famous fan based examples are for Alan Rickman and Dan Radcliffe (who had another too).

But for us mere mortals, inspiration can be found with Oli Lewington who asked readers of his blog to donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust instead of giving presents. And we musn't forget the amazing Cecily, who we loved so much, she got her own blog post.

A is for...

Today's blog post is brought to you by the colour green, number 18 and letter A.

Jonno and I are going to tag-team the official Justgiving A-Z. It's an index of great fundraising ideas, interesting stuff from the website itself and a commentary on other things that make us tick. A bit like those '100 best' compilation shows on Channel 4, but minus the C-list celebrity soundbites and four hour running time.

So let's start at the beginning with the letter A:

A is for the Apprentice. Many Brentwood wannabes have fundraised through JG, including series one winner Tim Campbell, season two winner Michelle and current Amstrad hopeful Naomi. Even Sir Alan's aide Margaret has visited JG towers. We love it.

It's also for aerobics. We're often struggling to get down the gym, but there's loads of JG users who've stepped up with aerobathons, like Anne here, Judy and staff from Vie, our new local gym in Clerkenwell.

Don't forget abseiling either. Plenty of JGers like flinging themselves down a mountain / building / submarine (!) attached to a length of lightly reinforced string, all to raise funds for amazing causes.

Jonno's back with the killer B's next week.

All Your Newbies Are Belong To Us

It's wednesday; a day of figuring out who's going to get fired on tonight's Apprentice, and a day of annoying people we've recently hired with banal questions. This time in the hotseat is Mat Chambers, who is a new developer on the Sys Dev team. Those guys just love their data. Seriously.

So Mat, what inspires you as a developer?
Problem solving. It's not so much about the code, as making things work.

What's your most treasured possession?
My memories of diving, as they've provided me with some of the best sights I've ever seen. And sharks are amazingly cool! And turtles too!

Which word or phrase do you most overuse?
Like. Something along the lines of, 'You know, it's like, over there....' I've only started doing it this year and it's like, annoying me!

What's your favourite website and why?
That would be Google. Where else can you find out that there was a farmer in Illinois in 1870 with my name spelt properly and everything, all in less than two seconds?

Marmite. Yay or nay?
Oh YES YES YES YES YES. And yes. Does that answer your question?

Tell us one thing that none of us have found out about you yet...
I have a collection of Hawaiian shirts, and summer's coming so get your shades ready!

Thanks Mat. If you're interested in joining Team JG then check this out, we're having a hiring frenzy at the moment.

A new Newbie - Josie Brennan

In all the excitement about our new office move, we've forgotten to introduce our latest new person from New Zealand, Josie Brennan (we're all about the new at the moment).

She's already been here a month and it's now time to ask her, like Liz and Kai before, the tough questions John Humphreys wishes he could ask:

Where would you like to live?
Paris

What would your super power be?
Reading other people’s minds

Who would play you in the film of your life?
A young Jean Seberg (Who's she, Ed asks, breathlessly googling the name...)

What is your favourite book?
Two favourites – The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and V by Thomas Pynchon

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“sweet”

What's your favourite website?
It’s trashy (and not work suitable), but I'd say www.perezhilton.com

What kind of biscuit would you be?
Anything chocolatey! (a Tim Tam perhaps?)

What's your secret talent?
I’m not too bad at the Six degrees of Kevin Bacon game

Tell us one thing about you that we'd only ever find out if we gave you one of these silly questionnaires...
I used to do surf lifesaving, and competed at the World Surf Lifesaving competition in Sydney 2000. (Ed - that maybe explains the Nouvelle Vague choice of actress...)

So, if there's ever a flood again at JG Towers, we know Josie will be here to save us all, thank goodness for that!

Settling in Nicely

A brand new week, a brand new set of JG Towers. This is our third home and it's certainly the poshest yet.

Check out the flickr badge below to see our moving photos.

www.flickr.com justgiving's St Cross Street Move (a.k.a. the Old Street exodus) photoset

New stars!

Hello!

Just wanted to introduce you to our new fundraising stars on the Justgiving homepage - fabulous Alla, who is trying to become the first Russian woman to swim the English Channel solo (you go girl!) and the dynamic duo of Siân and Sarah who plan to cycle from London to Paris on a tandem next month.

Best of luck to them all....!!!

Fundraiser of the Month, May 2007

There could only really be one Fundraiser of the Month after this year’s Flora London Marathon, and it has to be David Rogers, who died aged 22 after completing his first ever marathon run.

David was a fitness coach at the David Lloyd gym in Milton Keynes. He became ill after crossing the finish line on April 22 and was later taken to hospital, where he died.

He was raising money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, in memory of his Grandad and a friend Mark Williams. You can see David’s page here.

After his death dozens of fellow marathon runners showed their respect for David by donating on his Justgiving page. The page has now raised over £12,500 - almost £12,000 of which was donated after his untimely death.

We send our condolences to David’s family and friends

You Win, and Actually So Do We

We had a great email from John, who is the Chairman of a charity called To Transplant & Beyond. The background is simple: every now and then we have an email back-and-forth with A Small Charity who don't see the value in paying for a Justgiving subscription.

Molly came up with the great idea of making them a bet:

if they weren't totally happy using Justgiving, we'll donate the costs back to them.

Here's what John wrote back:

Hello Molly,

As Chairman of “To Transplant & Beyond” it’s my duty to eat a large portion of humble pie and say:

You Were Right!!!

Joining/using Justgiving is one of the best decisions we as a Very Small Charity have done.

You believed in your company to the point where you said  “if I was not happy you would donate the costs of us using your service”

Well I am more than happy, I have had donations from America, China and Australia, as well as the UK.Joining would have been worth while just to get the Gift Aid, which I would never have got round to ever setting up if it had not been for Just Giving’s help and advice.

Once again - You Win and Actually So Do We

Thank You

John

We like happy customers. High-fives all round. Check out more quotes and the JG news feed.

Bye bye Old Street, Hello St Cross St

As you can read in our Charity Blog, we're moving office this Friday, after 3 long, at first spacious, more recently cramped and sometimes even damp, years in Old Street.

To mark this momentous occasion, and in a fit of literary pique, I thought I'd pen a quick poem to commemorate the highs and lows of our time at number 20 (and Kai did some brilliant colouring in):

So. Farewell then 20 Old street.
Serving as our offices has been some feat:
Through floods and buds and extreme heat,
And Christmas trees that are hard to beat,

There're so many stories we could tell,
that would make it so very hard to sell
You to another company
But I'm too nice to tell them, me.

You've been our home for 3 long years,
So no doubt we will shed some tears,
when lorries arrive at JG Towers,
After we've been packing up for hours

To load up all our wires and leads
(not forgetting Molly's chillies).
For our spiritual home in Clerkenwell,
It's time for us to bid farewell.

*Apologies to Private Eye's  Poetry Corner 

Cannonball!

Coming up in the first week of July is Cannonball Run Europe. Yes, think Burt Reynolds movie, fast cars, girls in jumpsuits, roughly half the rat pack, that sort of thing.

The Cannonballers have been using Justgiving for ages to raise funds for their nominated charity and this year is no exception. So far we've got:

Team Clapa - Colin and Paul are raising funds for CLAPA. Check out their page to see why.

Craig and Phil are raising funds for BLISS for their run. No word on the car yet but their page says they're in talks with Bentley, BMW, Nissan and Subaru, so the Justgiving Bentley might exist after all.

Just added is Craig and team Fastnet 993 who are supporting the RNLI in a Porsche 911! They're already nearly halfway to raising their target of £3000.

Dave and Bruce have their very own website and are raising funds for the Action for Brazil's Children Trust in their trusty beemer. Good luck guys!

Stephen is raising money for Cancer Research UK in a big Mercedes. Check out his progress here.

We'll be adding more Cannonballers as soon as they're on the site!

Video Video

Kai made a video of stuff from the FLM Expo the other week. Much fun was had. Thanks again for coming along and giving us all the great feedback.