Justgiving's blog

For Dina

Dina Rabinovitch, the journalist, blogger and fundraiser died yesterday.

We'd like to pass on our thoughts to her family and all those who knew her. She wrote some great stuff for our blog which has helped many others to raise more money.

Together we can help her hit that target for the CTRT appeal.

Guardian lead story in G2.

Watch her total grow:

Scary stuff!

It's a scary day here at JG towers. Our logo has been infested by bats (thanks Kai!) and it seems that suddenly there are tons of frightening fundraisers out there...

There's Dianne and Paula who are spending the night at the haunted Edinburgh Vaults...

Jason who's going to be hanging out with paranormal investigators and a clairvoyant medium at Woodchester Mansion...

And Angie (pictured) who is spending Hallowe'en night in a haunted jail!

YouTube Fundraising

Moneysavers: online communities can do amazing things

Quite a few of us at JG Towers get Martin Lewis' emails from the Money Saving Expert website.

We're amazed at how the whole community has rallied around Claire Farley's birthday fundraising page in aid of the Meningitis Research Foundation. Thanks to Ian, their fundraising manager, for calling us first thing this morning.

To read the whole story check out this post in the MSE forums, and once you've done that, donate to Claire's page here. She's truly smashed her initial target, so let's see how high it can go.

Well done guys and Happy Birthday Claire!

Visiting Martin

A group of intrepid JGers made it to the wilds of Buckinghamshire to visit Martin in hospital. Martin's one of our support developers and he's been recovering from spinal injury for most of this year. We're really looking forward to welcoming him back.

Here are the highlights of the trip on Friday:

* A flu-ridden Sabitha and Rasha running for a train at Marylebone - it was only 30 metres and we almost had to get the defib machines out - then again 30 paces for Will, 130 for them.

* Arriving to find Martin asleep at the table in the hospital cafe.

* Rasha breaking her fast with a massive slice of cake within 5 minutes of arriving - and it then being too stale to eat.

* Us finding the most manic cabbie in the county who seemed to squeeze as many trips as possible in-between bookings, even if the fare was waiting - even if the fare was an old woman - even if she was disabled.

* Ryan having his mid-afternoon "pub platter for four" whilst we sat and chatted.

* Molly taking charge of Martin and wheeling him backwards into the pub on two wheels to shouts of "What the *^@$'s going on?!" with all his usual Irish charm.

* Us missing the train home by 1 minute because no-one wanted to run to catch it (especially Rasha and a now close to death, Sabitha).

* The 20 minute wait being an opportunity for Ryan to go and buy more snacks from the post office.

* Everyone getting home far later than intended but agreeing it was worth it having had a jolly good afternoon:

(Notes about the above - Sabitha was not drinking Lager and Martin hoped you'd find it amusing to see him with his foot up on the chair - even if it took him 5 minutes to get it there.)

He's pretty much finished his physio and rehab and we're looking forward to having him back at work really soon.

Another Über Tartiflette

Just over a year ago, I wrote about my favourite thing in the world, Tartiflette. I write again now as I cooked this mystical French dish (loved by many, smelt by even more) for the office last night because I'm a really nice, generous person.

Well, actually, it's part of Gemma's new "Taste sensation" idea - where one person cooks something special for the JG team every week. So far we've had a perfect pie, baked by Gemma's fair hands and some fabulous flapjacks courtesy of Molly (which she served whilst I was taking a webinar - grrr)

Now, those of you who know me well will appreciate that I'm very humble and don't like to sing my own praises (Ed. who you kidding?), but you want to see what it looks like, admit it:

Yes, it's even been cooked in a bona fide Tartiflette branded dish (thanks Mum)!

Now if you're curious as to what it is exactly and how it's made, here's my recipe:

Download jonnos_perfect_tartiflette_recette.doc

The key to a great Tartiflette is undoubtedly the reblochon cheese. It's not as hard as it used to be to come by, but a good cheese makes a big difference (the smellier the better, in my opinion).

And as seems to be the vogue at the moment, the popularity of anything is measured by how many people belong to a Facebook group for said programme/team/cheese.

And Tartiflette is no different: there are currently 177 members of The Tartiflette Appreciation society on the site. (although I'm the only one to have supplied photos. Tsk)

Plus, you really should check out reblochon's own propaganda ministry website at http://reblochon.fr as the adverts are extremely French and pretty, er, cheesy...

Sporting

Let's ignore all the relevant sporting roundups from this past weekend. I think we won something. Maybe two things.

Anyway, one of my favourite European Tour golfers Ian Poulter (the one with the hair/trousers etc), recently got married to long-term partner Katie.

Considering that professional golfers are doing rather well these days (even when they don't win anything), they've chucked out the John Lewis gift list for a suite of fundraising pages instead; one for Dreamflight and one for the Willow Foundation.

He'll win a major next season. Seriously.

Bigger Than Microsoft

FOWA was great. Well done Ryan and the team. There is now lots and lots of work to be done...

So What's Up?

Well, since you ask, quite a bit.

A whole armada of us are heading off to the Future of Web Apps down in Docklands this week. Personally it's one of my favourite events of the year and there is some seriously cool and inspiring stuff being talked about.

Last friday, we were all running round Soho pulling off challenges in a very fun JG day-out. We had very short spaces of time to 'take a picture of something risky' and re-make historical events via interpretative dance. It was awesome.

Here's Rich daringly eating a whole very, very hot chilli:

It was all brilliantly organised by the Connection Game, so if your company away-days sap your will to live, then check them out! More craziness on our flickr.