December 2005 - Posts
We're all off to eat turkey and too much wine. Before we go, here's wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Thanks for using Justgiving this year. See you all again in 2006!
Mistletoe and Wine? I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day? Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer? Away In A Manger?
What will top our Friday poll of the best Christmas songs?
Ooh, the tension. Find out and add your own fave seasonal singalongs in our forum here.
Here's another one I had to let you all know about. The
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation have recently joined the JG community and we're extremely pleased to be working with them.
What's even better is they already have 8 fundraising pages after being live for only a few days!
Trevor Chanter's London Marathon page
is currently leading the pack with donations and we're certain that
JDRF's fundraisers will use Justgiving to fantastic effect.
If you'd like to build a fundraising page for JDRF then
click here
or you can make a donation
here
And in other news Molly has been
ravaged by bedbugs, so if anyone with a bug-free bed in the Putney
vicinity can help out then do drop her an email at molly@justgiving.com
Apparently her bites are 'itchy'.
Great excitement over the pond today as our sister company in the States undergoes a makeover and becomes Firstgiving.
It's still Justgiving USA in all but name, but with a brand new super snazzy site and logo. Doesn't it look smart!
Big hello to our friends in the Firstgiving office in Boston, MA - Mark, Thos, Maggie, Kurt, Beth, James and Laurel. If you are a US-registered charity, or want to raise money for one, pay them a visit here.
Today's Friday Poll asks...
What's your favourite food?
Check out our answers and add your own in the forum here.
Our Fundraiser of the Month for December is Matt Roles. Not only is Matt shaving off his beard for charity, he's persuaded a whole bunch of his friends to grow beards so they can shave theirs off too!
Check out Matt's page for a rogues gallery of the stubbly chins getting ready for the fund-razor (boom, tish). They're aiming to raise £1,200 for Oxfam and they're very nearly there!
If you've got a suggestion for the next Fundraiser of the Month, please let us know by leaving a comment here.
Here's a picture of our lovely office Chrimbo tree.
Jules hauled it all the way back from the fruit and veg shop round the corner, and Molly did the honours with the decorations. Doesn't it look fab. What's that though? Sniff. A distinct lack of pressies underneath it? Sniff sniff.
If anyone, for any reason at all (hint, ahem, hint) needs to know our address it's Justgiving Towers, 20-24 Old Street, London EC1V 9AP (the last day for posting parcels is 20 December, and our Christmas list includes iPods, Xboxes, Cake and World Peace)
If you're too miserly to send us presents (uncontrolable sobs), then the least you can do is post pictures of your own Christmas trees in our forum here. Best one wins £25 to the charity of your choice.
Even more excitement in the office with the annual 'Secret Santa' draw taking place. For the uninitiated, the idea is that everyone pulls someone else's name out of a hat (in a top secret, high security draw from an M&S Chocolate Roll container). You then have to buy a chrimbo present for whoever you draw - without them guessing who it's from of course.
The pressies get given out at our Chrimbo party on 21 December, so we've got two weeks to go cloak and dagger shopping for our unknowing colleagues. Last year's gifts included a padlock and some lemon curd, so if you've got suggestions for good things to buy, we might just need them!
More coolness. Brrrrr.
The Daily Mirror launched their Christmas Appeal yesterday, and they're raising funds for Help the Aged and Home-Start. We're helping Home-Start by powering their lovely donation page and by providing SMS donations. For the next four weeks there's going to be stories about Home-Start's work in local communities every tuesday, thursday and saturday. We're sure that the Mirror's 1.7 million daily readership will dig deep and support such a worthy cause.
Why not send an SMS to Home-Start? It costs about the same as a festive pint in the local and your support is going to help families across the UK. Text 'MIR' to 83338* to send your donation.
* Messages charged at standard rate. You will receive two confirmation messages, each charged at £1.50. Home-Start will receive your donation net of charges applied by mobile network operators and a processing fee. If you have any questions regarding this service, please call 020 7549 2222.
Big grin on my face today.
Since Frame is a member of the technology group (and a surprisingly well-dressed one too), he obviously doesn't own a suit. And the invite states the dresscode is '30s glamour'. Oh dear.
So we're taking the 'we'll just wear suits' approach as opposed to trying to look like gangsters or glamorous thirtysomethings. Let's hope he can find one before thursday evening.
And yes, there will be pics of us air-kissing Naomi Watts later in the week. Or maybe next week...
We just had to share this brilliant piccy with you. This is Joan, getting her claws into a mobile phone to encourage SMS donations to help safeguard the health and welfare of her feline friends.
The snap was commissioned by the Feline Advisory Bureau (FAB), and shot by top animal photographer Jane Burton. FAB recently signed up to Justgiving SMS and has already raised almost £500. Joan is now the face of their campaign to encourage text donations.
Claire Bessant, FAB's chief executive said, "We already influence the care of 1 million cats a year, and through the use of text messaging we hope to make it easy for cat lovers of all ages to support us."
With Joan doing the publicity, who could resist donating? Go on. Text CAT to 83338 to donate £3 to FAB.*
* Messages charged at standard rate. You will receive two confirmation messages, each charged at £1.50. FAB will receive your donation net of charges applied by mobile network operators and a processing fee. If you have any questions regarding this service, please call 020 7549 2222.
This week's frivolous Friday poll asks...what was your favourite childhood TV show? Check out our choices and post your own in our forum here.
We've hanging out the bunting this week and extending a warm Justgiving welcome to our newest charity partner - Oxfam.
Oxfam is a development, relief, and campaigning organisation that works with others to find lasting solutions to poverty and suffering around the world. It was formed in 1942 as he Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, and has grown to become one of the most influentional and admired charities in the world.
Here at Justgiving we've been huge fans of Oxfam's innovative approach to fundraising and particularly its early adoption of new media technologies, so we're seriously excited to be working with them.
Check out Oxfam's website for some uber hip online offerings, including its Generation Why micro-site and a range of top notch blogs: the main Oxfam blog, the Summer Festivals blog and the Coldplay tour blog. Download choones from Oxfam Music and look no further than Oxfam Unwrapped for your Christmas shopping.
And of course, here on Justgiving you can donate to Oxfam or create a fundraising page to raise funds for any event or occasion.
Oxfam supporters have been wasting no time getting started, with two pages online already. Matt Roles is getting sponsored to shave his prodigious ginger beard, and then grow a new one. Ed Lyons, meanwhile, has created a page to collect donations instead of house-warming gifts for his friend Mark.
We need your help! (And you could earn some cash for Christmas as well.)
Are you based in London?
Do you have time you could spare during regular office hours? (10am – 6pm)
We're
looking for 6 people who would be willing to attend a 40-45 minute
user testing session on December 9th, 12th, 13th,
14th, 15th, 16th or 19th. The sessions
will cover various aspects of the Justgiving.com service and will take place in
our central London office, located near Barbican tube station in EC1.
Each user will be paid 40 pounds cash for attending a session. You do not need to be an expert user of Justgiving.com.
If you are interested in participating in one of these sessions,
please click on the following link to fill out a short survey. This
survey will determine whether or not you belong to the demographic we
are looking for this round of testing:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=956431501786
If you aren’t eligible this time we
will keep your details on file and contact you the next time we are
conducting a round of testing.
Please note: the survey will be closed when we’ve found enough eligible users.
Many thanks in advance for your time and for helping us make Justgiving even better!
If you have any questions contact me at mailto:elizabeth@justgiving.com
Following last week's favourite book poll, this week we've asked the JG team...what's your favourite film?
Frame: Withnail & I
Jason: Dark City
James: The Graduate
Tom: The Party "Blake Edwards directing, Peter Sellers at his comic best as Hrundi V Bakshi the bungling Indian actor and Claudine Longet just sublimely beautiful. Hilarious from start to finish, as groovily 1960s as it gets and I never tire of watching it. Hell, worth watching just to see a three-wheeler Morgan."
Ben: Twelve Angry Men
Molly: The Rock
Jules: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Zarine: Casablanca "Only one answer surely"
Simon: Top Gun
Robbie: Gladiator
Elizabeth: Casablanca "It’s a bit of a cliché but it is so damn good I keep going back to it. I think I’ve seen it about 10 times!"
Derrick: Lord of the Rings
Paul: Silence of the Lambs
Neil: Gladiator "Nothing to do with men in skirts, just awesome soundtrack and sets."
Jonathan: Escape to Victory
Will: Deuce Bigalow : Male Gigolo
Sonal: Grease
What do you make of our choices? Let us know your own favourite film by posting a comment here.
Olympic champion James Cracknell and TV presenter Ben Fogle are about to embark on an incredible journey across the Atlantic to raise funds for Children in Need.
The dynamic duo are competing in the Atlantic Rowing Race - a gruelling battle against 50 foot waves, hurricanes and even sharks en route from The Canary Islands to The West Indies. James and Ben will row non-stop, 2 hours on and two hours off, for the entire distance of 2937 miles, with the aim of raising £50 for each and every mile.
"This is the toughest thing that either of us have ever undertaken," say James and Ben on their fundraising page.
"Everyone of you that supports us, drives us on another mile and every pound you donate helps a child in need. Please give as much as you can afford."
James is a Justgiving virgin (welcome James!), but Ben is a seasoned online fundraiser. In 2004 he raised almost £2,500 by completing the Marathon des Sables for WWF and earlier this year he completed the Safaricom Marathon for The Tusk Trust.
You can visit James and Ben's page and sponsor them here.
Talking of creative fundraising ideas (see yesterday's post about bouncing boobies), how about this one...
Jeanette Carney and her friends at Software AG are getting sponsored to ride rollercoasters!
"We are hoping to raise £1000 for the Donna Louise Trust by going on the six big rides at Drayton Manor," says Jeanette on her fundraising page. The team hit their target by completing the stomach churning challenge last month.
Any more for any more? Leave a comment here and tell us about your wacky fundraising ideas, or post in our forum. There's Amazon vouchers for the best.
We've seen some creative fundraising ideas in our time. Oh yes.
There was the guy who changed his name by deed poll for charity; the guy who's sleeping in a ditch for a year for charity; the employees who all grew moustaches for charity etc. etc.
But now we've seen it all (literally, parp parp!). Tania and Laura, known collectively as The Booby Sisters, have been flashing their ample assets in exchange for donations.
"We walked from The London Eye to Parliment Square whilst bouncing our boobies to raise money for Cancer Research," explained the girls. "It was a really good day."
Don't fret chaps. If you didn't see the girls in the flesh (honk!), they've posted photos on their website*. And you can get an eyeful of their fundraising page here.
* Not terribly work safe, it has to be said.
A big welcome to our newest charity partner - Children in Need.
As everyone knows, tonight is the big night. You can help make this year's appeal the biggest ever by creating a fundraising page here or making a donation here.
Last year, the BBC Children in Need appeal raised more than £34 million to improve the lives of children and young people throughout the UK.
Wowee! What a response we got to our SMS offer.
Back in October, we launched Justgiving SMS by offering a free service to the first 100 charities to sign up. And boy did they sign up! The 100 free services were snatched up within three hours and the subscription forms didn't stop there. We were so overwhelmed by the response we twisted our CEO's arm until she extended the free offer to the first 200 charities. Even then we couldn't satisfy the demand...
So it looks like donating via SMS is going to be all the rage. We'll keep you posted with developments and as soon as the service is fully up and running, we'll let you know how you can donate to your favourite charity by text message.
If you're a charity, find out more about Justgiving SMS and how to sign up here. The free offer might be over, but it won't break the bank. Charites can sign up to Justgiving SMS for a measly £85.
Wahey! The champagne corks were popping here at JG Towers over the weekend as we welcomed our 100th forum member.
gingando from Glasgow bagged the coveted 100th registered user crown by signing up on Sunday. We love handing out prizes for spurious reasons, and we're in an extraordinarily good mood today, so we've sent her an Amazon voucher to say thanks!
Our forum has been live for three weeks now and has attracted 189 posts to 147 threads on everything from skydiving to head-shaving to getting married at mile 13 of the London Marathon.
If you haven't already, register now and chat to other fundraisers, share hints and tips to raise more money online, regale us with your fundraising stories and post pictures to win prizes.
Go on, join our gang.
Our Fundraiser of the Month for November is DJ Darren Hartland.
Darren aims to raise £10,000 to send sick and disabled children on the holiday of a lifetime by DJ-ing for 96 hours non-stop, and breaking the World Record in the process.
Read Darren's story here. Visit his page and sponsor him here.
If you want to nominate someone as a future Fundraiser of the Month, please drop me an email at james@justgiving.com or post details in our forum.
Good luck Darren, from everyone here at JG Towers!
To the very nice lady I spoke to last week, I now understand that the Microwave Word document you insisted you were going to send me was not in fact the instruction manual for your Panasonic Cook & Defrost Deluxe, but a
Microsoft Word document containing information pertaining to your selected charity.
The confusion which arose from this exchange clearly left us both a little shaken; we had what can only be described as a 'reheated conversation', and I would like to apologise for not having made the connection sooner. Please feel free to send me the document - my address is tom@justgiving.com.
Best regards,
Tom
Former Arsenal and England goalkeeper David Seaman is finally chopping off his famous ponytail. Phew!
The notorious appendage will be lopped
by celebrity coiffeur Charles Worthington live on ITV's This Morning
programme next Wednesday.
David hopes he can raise £10,000 for The Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK through his Justgiving page by granting the wish of millions and consigning the infamous tail to history.
He said: "I have been a dedicated
supporter of The Bobby Moore Fund for two years, along with my wife
Debbie. The fund is very close to my heart as my mother in-law sadly
died of bowel cancer, which is why I have chosen to get my famous
ponytail cut off in aid of the Bobby Moore Fund's bowel cancer
research."
Well done Dave. It's a fabulous gesture, and in any case, it's about time that pony got the chop!
You can visit David's page and sponsor him here.
Seriously amazing online fundraising stuff, and my first blog post;
James is speaking at a conference today (and no doubt trying to avoid
defining what a podcast is) so I have been granted esteemed access to
the blog. I can almost feel the power.
This week we've been presented with another first. Bob Avery
has created a fundraising page for Harris Hospiscare, a specialist care
hospice in the Orpington and Bromley area. What makes Bob's page
special is he's raising funds to celebrate his retirement from HSBC,
which is something we've not seen someone do on Justgiving before. Bob
has raised almost £1000 in under two weeks which is an outstanding
achievement. Top marks to Bob for coming up with such an innovative use for our fundraising pages and making it a big success.
You can visit Bob's page here
I hope James remembered to iron his shirt.
Another amazing Earthquake Appeal page to report on.
Tonight at 8pm Alice Crossley plans to start a 24 hour period without food or shelter to raise funds for the Red Cross.
Alice says on her page: "I am allowing myself only water, with clothing / small blanket just warm enough to withstand the night cold and a plastic sheet in case of rain. I plan to be static at a site in Central London - sponsors will be updated of this location, and can pop down to witness anytime, if you wish!"
Donations are flooding in with £4,500 already donated. Visit Alice's page and sponsor her here.
We're incredibly excited to be launching our new text message donation service today.
Justgiving SMS will
enable our charity partners to accept donations by text message.
Anyone, anywhere in the UK, can simply send a text to donate £3 to the
charity of their choice.
We're giving the service away free to the first 100 of our charity partners to sign up, so if you're a charity, click here to find out more.
Otherwise, keep your eyes peeled on the Justgiving Blog for news of how you can donate to your favourite charity through Justgiving SMS.
Brentford Football Club manager Martin Allen has raised more than £6,000 in just a few days through his Justgiving fundraising page.
Martin is cycling from Knowle Hill via the A4 to Brentford Football Club on Tuesday 29 November 2005 to raise funds for the club, and avid Bees fans have been flocking to sponsor him and leave messages of support.
Martin was given the nickname "Mad Dog" during his playing career, so it might be a good idea to sponsor him!
Visit Martin's page here.
For the second successive quarter, we've been awarded a Top 10 ranking against other UK websites in two Hitwise categories. Yay!
For the quarter ending September 2005, Justgiving ranked:
- No.3 by visits in the Community - Humanitarian category
- No.9 by visits in the Business and Finance - IT and Internet category
Hitwise is the world's leading online competitive intelligence service (phew, that's a mouthful). Each quarter, it gives a Top Ten Award to the Top Ten websites across each industry it monitors.
So thank you everybody for making us a Top Ten site by using Justgiving so much!
Since our last post, Amaar Khan and his friends have raised even more for victims of the South Asia earthquake. Their fundraising page has collected almost £10,000 for the Red Cross and Red Crescent in just nine days. Well done guys - an incredible effort.
Many other individuals and groups of friends have set up Justgiving fundraising pages to aid the relief effort. Sohail Ahmad and his friends are asking people to sponsor them to undertake a 7km run, and their efforts have already raised more than £6,000 for the Red Cross.
In just over one week, Mehvish Khan's page has raised an incredible £30,000 for Friends of The Citizens Foundation which builds and runs schools in rural parts of Pakistan.
Almost £17,000 has been raised for Islamic Relief by Sameer Alam's page which has pooled the fundraising efforts of Accenture Muslim Network, BT Muslim Networks, Civil Service Islamic Society, Canary Wharf Muslim Professionals Network and Muslim Professsionals UK.
Employee fundraising has seen thousands more raised through pages created by PwC Muslims, HSBC Islamic Society and Savapoint.
Well done to everyone who has put so much effort into fundraising for earthquake victims in the past week. You really have made a difference. The money you raise is paid directly to your chosen charities at the end of every week, meaning funds are quickly available to spend where they are needed most.
You can help earthquake surivivors by making a donation to one of the pages featured here, or raising funds through your own fundraising page. To find out which charities are working in the affected area, take a look here.
Proving that individuals really can make a difference, Amaar Khan and his friends set up a fundraising page on Justgiving to raise money for those affected by the earthquake in South Asia. They have raised £6,000 in just 48 hours for the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
Amaar takes up the story: "A few friends met up at my house on Monday evening and we decided to try and raise some money for this disaster. A friend of mine found your site and we decided that we would start here. We send out an email to all our friends and families and they started donating. More and more people were interested and more people wanted to join us on the run. It was a great feeling for all of us.
"Since then there has been no turning back and we are trying to get as many people involved as possible now. This was the ideas and motivation of Amaar, Falak, Shoib, Saima, Murtaza & Nadia. We couldn’t have done it without each others help. Thanks everyone."
Visit Amaar's page here.
To create your own fundraising page, click here.
At the beginning of every month our techno bods stay up all night pushing buttons as a whole host of improvements to our site go live. They’re all looking a bit bleary eyed this morning, so that must mean the site’s had its monthly makeover.
Here’s what’s new this month:
1. Contacting your sponsors
Loads and loads and loads of you have contacted us to say you’d like a simple way to email all the people who donated to your fundraising page once your event is completed. And your wish is our command!
We’ve added a check box in the donation process so each person who sponsors you can opt-in to be contacted by you. If the donor ticks this box, their email address is visible to you on a new screen in the “See who has sponsored you” section of the “Page management” area of Your Account.
When your sponsors opt-in, their email addresses will automatically be added to your online address book within Your Account, and hey presto, you can easily send an email to them all to say thanks.
2. Making it easier to tell friends about your fundraising page
We’ve redesigned the screen you see when you’ve successfully completed building a fundraising page. Instead of the confusing email options, it now points you directly to your account. From there, you can quickly and easily send emails to promote your page.
3. Access to your page even when it’s expired
Once a fundraising page has expired, it used to be the case that you could no longer access it to see who sponsored you. That was rubbish, so we changed it, and now you can!
4. More email templates
We have created two additional email templates within your account area. Whereas previously you could only send a “please sponsor me” email, you can now send a “update on my progress” email, and one to say “thank you for sponsoring me”. Cool, huh?
Oh, and there’s loads of other stuff as well, but it was mostly boring complicated stuff, so suffice to say we hope it will make your life easier and your time on justgiving.com more enjoyable. Let us know what improvements we should make in November by emailing suggestions@justgiving.com.
Right, we’re all off for Jason’s birthday drinks. He’s 30 you know. Happy birthday Jase!
Hello everyone –
Welcome to the Justgiving Blog!
We’re keen to keep you updated with all the exciting things that happen here at Justgiving HQ, so we’ve set up this blog where we can post news, views and other fun stuff on a regular basis.
You’ll be the first to know when we make improvements to the site, or when we release exciting new products invented by our team of technological wizards. We’ll flag up fundraising pages we like and share top tips to help you raise more money. And lots of other stuff like that.
We’ll also use the blog to introduce ourselves a bit better, so you’ll get to know us as well as our website.
Please leave us comments by clicking on the 'comments' link below. Let us know what you think of the blog, or tell us jokes, or give us recipes for nice cakes. Whatever you like.