Justgiving's blog

Moving house - where the website lives

Well hey there.

Autumn is settling in. Sophie's gone on holiday. I've just finished a cup of tea. Everyone else is user-testing. So that can only mean it's time for some blog.

Last weekend, our Operations team (they're a bit like the A-Team, but with better aim) transferred ALL of Justgiving to its new digital home.

Charlie, head of Ops, made a groovy video which showcases the rather awesome-looking hardware we've got over at Qube.

Check it out:

Justgiving in ur Serverz doin ur Upgradez from Simon Doggett on Vimeo.

So what this means is Justgiving will remain plenty fast for the foreseeable future and John will be able to do lots of fun things with databases, without breaking everything. Well done Charlie, Tim, Hem and Sukh for such a smooth transition.

Back in the US

Remember back in August when we told you about our travels round the country, listening to your feedback?

Well we've been off on more travels, this time across the pond in Boston, Chicago and LA (yes the whole breadth of the states, east to west) talking to even more people, stopping off at our US office in Boston on the way.

It's been really interesting to hear what people have had to say about fundraising and donating to charity in the US and to hear some feedback on our ideas for developing the Justgiving and Firstgiving websites.

We'll be incorporating all of it into our work to make the sites even better, and we'll be telling you more about our progress with that over the next few months.

In the meantime, if you'd like to give us your feedback or you're interested in being involved in our research, just get in touch at suggestions@justgiving.com

New Facebook Profile Instructions

Whoa. Facebook's all changed and stuff.

Unless you've been following the new profile updates then you're probably either loving or hating the new boxy layout. We're pretty split here at JG, but the most important question which has been asked today by you lovely people is: how do I get the JG application in the right place?

Well, our knight in shiny social armour for this is Jon B, who emailed us a set of instructions last night:

- click the applications tab at the top of the page 
- click the justgiving logo which will take you to a full page dedicated to the justgiving application which looks very good may i add [sic] (crikey thanks Jon)
- then click the applications tab again and it has an option to bookmark justgiving   
- this brings up a new window where you can then tick the box to add to profile

hope this helps,

keep up the good work.

So there you have it, a quick and easy way to get your fundraising progress back to its rightful place on your profile. Nice one Jon.

Team Winners

There's wet. And then there's *wet*.

The epic journey to Battersea Park to take part in the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge involved failed tube rides, failed taxi hailing and a walk of at least 5km just to get there. There was even talk of jacking it all in and heading for the pub since it was 'bound to be cancelled'. But no, we persevered. For the team. For ourselves. For all that's right and good and sporting.

So we might have started about 45 minutes after the 'pack'. The bright side was we had plenty of room.

Mat and I set the pace at a leisurely jog, followed by a sauntering Kai and Jonno. The girls weren't far behind.

In monsoon-esque conditions, Tim and Mat stretched into the lead until the 5km mark. I had a sudden and unexpected burst of adrenaline (probably due to the two bottles of free Gatorade that were downed on the way to the start line). Mat and I were neck and neck down the final straight, sprinting the last 200m or so, which was extraordinarily out of character for both us since we're both as competitive as a pair of goldfish usually.

A short while later, we regrouped wheezing underneath a nearby elm tree and collectively agreed that Team Justgiving Winners will join forces once more in the near future for another challenging (but not too challenging) sporting event.

And it was very wet.

Official times:

Simon & Mat - 32mins 6 secs
Tim - A little bit longer
Kai & Jonno - A little bit longerer
Gemma & Sophie - A little bit after that

To the damp and victorious:

(L--->R) Tim, Gemma, Sophie, Jonno

Mud, mud, glorious mud

Some of us are doing the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge this evening in Battersea Park. We hear that some of the course is across the grass. So mud by now. But we can't really run in wellies... so muddy trainers it is :)

We all agreed to it months ago when was a long way off. Little did we know we'd be facing the prospect of doing it on the day when one newspaper says there will be "one month's rain in a day", "Experts warn UK to brace for monsoon" and "Low cloud front sweeps towards Britain from the west bringing huge storms". Yikes.

And it's all this man's fault. He's Tim Truman from our Finance team, who caught us out with his powers of persuasion.

But it's not the JG spirit to give up, especially when we see so many of our amazing fundraisers put themselves through *way* more difficult physical challenges. And this run is only just over 5k (gulp). So  if you feel like coming to cheer us on/laugh at us, we'll be there in Battersea Park from 6.30 this evening. In our Justgiving t-shirts. Unfit and muddy.

Wish us luck!

Mike survived his skydive

From our high-altitude helpdesk hero, Mike:

Well, I finally jumped out of a plane over Headcorn, near Maidstone, Kent. Although I was born in Wimbledon, which was Surrey at the time, my father and his forebears are Kentish Men, so I felt quite at home landing in the Weald.

It was an amazing experience and brought together lots of symbolic strands in my life: coming home (l lived on the Continent for over twenty years), a desire for speed and weightlessness, which is partially satisfied by regular swimming, cycling and running and last, but not least, raising money for Help the Aged through Justgiving.

Justgiving has been my livelihood for the past two years. Manning the Helpdesk telephone has brought me into contact with dozens of our fundraisers who have jumped for charity. They inspired me to do the skydive. Why not me, I thought? I’ve always wanted to do a parachute jump. And why Help the Aged? Have a look at my fundraising page www.justgiving.com/icarus. The ageing population is a reality facing the industrialised countries, so the level and quality of care available for the elderly is going to become increasingly important. And I’m one of the most aged Justgivers!

And Icarus? I lived for six years in Brussels, which is home to a Pieter Breughel masterpiece “The Fall of Icarus”, about which W.H. Auden wrote a wonderful poem Musée des Beaux Arts. So my skydive has flattered my vanity, but thanks to all my generous sponsors has not passed by unnoticed - unlike the Icarus of Breughel or Auden.

Mike

p.s. If you are a film buff like me and watch to the end of my video where I blabber on about A Matter of Life and Death then check out this wikipedia entry

Sponsor our Mike!

Our Mike is a bit of a helpdesk legend.

He loves a chat, so he's ideally suited to his job of talking our lovely fundraisers and donors through their queries about Justgiving. He also puts up with the odd bit of flack from us about his chattiness (sorry about that Mike :) and we wanted to take the opportunity to show him a bit of appreciation. Mike - we think you're ace!

Now down to business. On 27th June, Mike's going to be jumping out of a plane (pretty brave if you ask us) to raise money for Help the Aged. The jump has already been cancelled once, making the lead-up to next Friday all the more exciting.

As he's so very near his target, we thought we'd give his cleverly-titled fundraising page a plug on the blog. So if anyone feels like showing their support and helping Mike smash his target for a good cause, you can do it here.

Good luck Mike! We're all going to be rooting for you! From the safety of the ground, of course. 

Food! Raffle! Action!

As a special Friday treat, we’d like to introduce a guest blogger, our very own internet-famous designer Kai Chan Vong...

I don’t know if you remember reading a few weeks back about Jonno and myself taking part in an awesome event called Nom Nom Nom, which really should have been named ‘nYum nYum’ (like you’re saying yum yum with a mouth full of good grub!).

Well the organisers have set up a raffle to raise money for Action Against Hunger UK , and they’ve been working hard to get you in on some amazing prizes...

• A fantastic meal for two at Konstam, which I’ve never heard of but looks very fancy in the photos! 
• A workshop at the cookery school at Little Portland Street. All the chefs are extremely lovely and (fortunately) darn good cooks.    
• Annual subscriptions to posh magazines Delicious, Food & Travel and Men’s Health.
• Travel insurance for a trip of your choice anywhere around this world (that rules out Mars).
• Some very pretty and yummy looking brownies from Everything Nice.
• A meal for two with the acting crew of Nabokov in their modern Tube Carriage office.
• A load of DVDs, books and some other prizes (all very wonderful if you ask me).

So what you waiting for, eh? Get yourself a virtual ticket and good luck!

China earthquake

 

Lots of you have been getting in touch to ask where you can raise funds and donate to help out with the China earthquake relief efforts. We’ve got a couple of options for you here.

Graham from China Children and Teenagers’ Fund got in touch with our helpdesk this week and let us know about their appeal.

They’ve donated thousands towards medical and shelter relief already and now they need help raising money to restore schools and orphanages in devastated areas.

We’ve also been in touch with Mothers’ Bridge of Love who are raising money here for children suffering the consequences of the earthquake.

While we're still on the subject of food...

OK so now we're calming down a bit after last weekend's nom nom nom event (although Kai is still bouncing at all the traffic going to his flickr stream as a consequence), there's one more bit of foody goodness to cover.

Our friends at Macmillan Cancer Support are gearing up for this year's 'World's Biggest Coffee Morning' on the 26th September.

To make things interesting, they're after recipes to be submitted to them because they're making a recipe booklet made up from everyone's favourite coffee-accompanying treats. Like cake. We are into cake.

You can submit a recipe at www.macmillan.org.uk/recipecomp and for each entry Somerfield will donate £1 to Macmillan.

You've got until the end of May to submit your favourites.

[nom nom nom]