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04-14-2008, 17:28 elizabeth@justgiving Joined on 09-29-2005 London Posts 228 Re: JustGiving commission Hi Fraky, We pass the funds raised on to our member charities on a weekly basis - so the funds are sitting in the JG trust account for the minimum time possible. This also means that funds raised go straight to the charity when donations are made - and fundraisers don't have to chase their friends around after the event asking for promised sponsorship. The 'traditional' method of paper fundraising (and chasing) meant that up to 30% of funds pledged never actually made it to the charity! Justgiving's systems ensure that they get there ASAP.   The interest that is accrued on donation amounts while in the trust fund is partially used to cover the bank's credit card fees - these fees are taken out of the Gift Aid reclaim payment which is passed to the charity after the initial donation is banked. I hope this answers your question - if you need more detail please email me at elizabeth@justgiving.com - I've got more details from our FD if needed. Kind regards, Elizabeth P.S. to PJ22 - a £100 donation from a UK taxpayer on Justgiving would mean that the charity would receive at least £118.40 once the Gift Aid has been reclaimed. The charity would first receive the £100 donation (at the end of the week) and then the Gift Aid reclaim amount (with JG and credit card fees subtracted) after the Gift Aid has been automatically reclaimed throu.gh our system approximately a month later. In general it costs charities approximately 15- 25% of every donation amount to actually process that donation (and Gift Aid) so we feel that our fee of 5% represents great value for money! *Elizabeth K* Justgiving Usability and Insight elizabeth@justgiving.com Justgiving    Report

07-01-2008, 17:51 Smike Joined on 07-01-2008 Posts 1 Re: JustGiving commission People should realise that it costs money to raise money. All charities have admin costs: staff have to be paid (not everyone can afford to work for free!), office space has to be paid for, utilities bills paid etc. A quick look at the finances of any UK charity will show that for every £ you donate directly to them, somewhere between 5p to 30p will be spent on admin, so it is mistaken to think that by giving money direct to a charity you are somehow going to get better value for your donation than by doing it via a middle man. If it wasn't a useful thing for the charities, the wouldn't sign up to it. Furthermore, don't overlook the benefit that Just Giving provides to the fundraisers themselves. Remember the "old days" with sponsor forms handed round - you could only get hold of people face to face to sign up and then you had to track them down later to get the cash off them. Loads of sponsors and, indeed, the volunteers themselves, fell by the wayside as the admin dragged on and became tedious. Using a website like Just Giving allows you to approach friends and relatives in every corner of the world and the money collection (and Gift Aid) is easily done in a few clicks. I am sure that this must result in more money being raised per head. All in all, I don't see why we should begrudge Just Giving running for profit as I am sure the charities benefit enormously as I have outlined above. However, I do think a fixed fee per transaction (perhaps on a sliding scale) rather than a percentage would look fairer to the doubters, since it seems pretty obvious that it takes the same amount of admin to handle a £100,000 donation and a £10 one.    Report

09-17-2008, 11:58 DaveyQuackster Joined on 09-17-2008 Milton Keynes Posts 1 Re: JustGiving commission I agree! I do feel that they should be clear about the charges. When people donate, do they get any sort of breakdown?    Report

09-23-2008, 14:12 elizabeth@justgiving Joined on 09-29-2005 London Posts 228 Re: JustGiving commission Hi Davey, There are a few places where you can find a fee breakdown on Justgiving. There is a link on every fundraising page which says 'see what happens to your donation' which links through to this page, which explains what happens to the donation and about fees: www.justgiving.com/statements/commissions_popup/default.asp There is also a video which explains things in a bit more detail when you can find here: http://www.justgiving.com/statements/about_us/fee.asp I hope this helps. We are trying to be as transparent about our fees as possible as we know that our service offers good value to our charity clients. If you have any other ideas about how we can help our users understand how the fees work do let me know! kind regards, Elizabeth *Elizabeth K* Justgiving Usability and Insight elizabeth@justgiving.com Justgiving    Report

11-06-2008, 4:29 Cheeseplant Joined on 11-06-2008 Posts 1 Re: JustGiving commission Smike seems to understand why can't everyone else? I’m involved in managing a charity and I wanted to understand how Just Giving may help. I came across these posts about the commission and appreciate where some people are coming from BUT…. I do think there is far too much moaning about the 5% commission and especially the profits made. I haven’t used Just Giving as yet but from my own personal experience in raising money I can say that in every case I have always wrote a cheque for the total amount I have been sponsored and sent I to the charity and then spent weeks and sometimes months chasing people for the money promised, not because they don’t want to pay it but because its not convenient to write a cheque and post it to me, then they have to pay 20-30p posting it, the envelope costs about 5p and so on…thus a simple donation of £10 has now cost you 3-4% just posting it to the person who you promised it to. I have a friend who drops me an email every year without fail raising money for a charity taking part in a run and she doesn’t use Just Giving but another competitor site, I click on a link and send her ten quid just like that. The problem with most people is that they don’t even start to comprehend not just what goes on behind the scenes NOW but how many years it has taken people’s blood and sweat and time away from their families to create such an enterprise. I’m sure the infrastructure of Just Giving isn’t a couple of PCs on a desk in a garage, it will probably have several towers of servers with all kinds of kit that and I’m sure that they will need a duplicate/back up of this kit just in case the original kit fails, and I’m sure they need the room to be air conditioned every minute of every day, and I’m sure they need a high level of security for their building and this room to protect this equipment and information, and I’m sure they need robust security hardware for the servers to protect it from hackers, and I’m sure they need people to maintain all this equipment, etc etc etc that’s just the bloody equipment at a guess. If the people behind Just Giving become millionaires good for them, I’m sure they will lead their lives and their children’s lives and so on to be giving and helpful for a long time to come. Developing an idea which facilitates people giving where they once may not have done, making it easy, convenient and cost effective means more charities benefit. There is always a price to pay for convenience. I know for a fact that the charity receiving any donation spends it on salaries and sometimes perks etc look at Oxfam’s bloody head office what a scandal. If a charity receives funding they may take 15 possibly even 20% as a management fee distributing the rest to the cause, so if you get £50,000 drop into your account £10,000 can be taken off just for managing the fund???? I don’t disagree with this either but it helps put things into perspective.    Report

12-15-2008, 15:39 hutcho Joined on 12-15-2008 Posts 1 Re: JustGiving commission I can definately see the advantages of the site. One thing I'm not sure about is how much charities would normally spend processing a donation. The quoted statistic (15p-25p admin cost for fundraising) includes the cost of actively seeking donations, as well as processing. As Justgiving is simply a processor of donations, presumably it would be more economical to refer people directly to the charity's website?    Report

01-29-2009, 14:27 Riccardo Joined on 01-29-2009 Posts 4 Re: JustGiving commission Lots of valid points both way 1.  It's pretty clear that the establishment of justgiving has created value for charities, compared to the previous world of paper forms, misplaced pledges, chasing people up, and manually administering Gift Aid.  If the creators of this value have made a profit, good for them. 2.  Good ideas, good websites, and good customer service have come about partly due to a profit incentive.  Take a comparison with the Charities Aid Foundation account - the (non-profit) CAF offers far less to givers, but still charges a management fee that I regard as exorbitant. 3.  If anyone thinks the 5% fee is unreasonable, go ahead and set up a rival site charging 3%, or less - whatever is "reasonable".  The idea is out there and can easily be copied, if you can be bothered to do the work for less/no profits.  Let me know when it's up and running and I'll start using it. 4.  I strongly object to disingenuous posturing at jg, such as on the front page "our investors have yet to get a penny back" - presumably the business has been funded by VC who will not get a penny back until exit.  It's a profit-making organisation, and pretending otherwise is dishonest. 5.  Anyone is perfectly entitled to ask such questions as "where exactly do the profits go, how big are the salaries?" JG, as a privately-owned enterprise, is equally entitled to withhold the answers. 6.  Justgiving is a profit-making concern, and as such will live or die by the market.  As long as charities and donors continue to find it the best way to conduct their interactions, it should and will make profits. 7.  To those who complain about the commission, please think carefully before going straight to the charities - the additional admin costs you impose may exceeed the saving of the justgiving charge.    Report

02-05-2009, 23:58 just1moreperson Joined on 02-05-2009 Posts 2 Re: JustGiving commission Also don't forget there's alot worse out there. Take all the adventure fundraising challenges around these days. Cycle London to Paris, climb mountains etc. They take a huge chunk of money from your overall amount raised.    Report

02-18-2009, 17:57 Riccardo Joined on 01-29-2009 Posts 4 Re: JustGiving commission That's a very good point about the events - I'm doing the etape du tour this year, and have been allocated a place by a charity (for a cause I'd otherwise support) that promises to give me £600 back to cover my costs if I raise £1000.  I'm not prepared to ask family and friends to contribute this much to something that I want to do for "fun".  Alternatively, if I told them up front where the money was going, they wouldn't contribute. So I'm going to cover the costs myself and raise money for a different charity.     Report

02-18-2009, 17:58 Riccardo Joined on 01-29-2009 Posts 4 Re: JustGiving commission Elizabeth - any reply to my paragraph 4, dated 29 Jan, above?    Report

02-20-2009, 17:33 heather@justgiving Joined on 02-20-2009 Posts 3 Re: JustGiving commission Hi Riccardo, Thanks for your interest, in response to question 4, dated Jan 29th, we truly believe that we are not being disingenuous when we write “our investors have yet to get a penny back” because our primary investor and majority shareholder is an individual, as opposed to a VC, who believed in Justgiving’s vision when every other VC wouldn’t. From this you can see that he took a significant risk and without him we would not be the company we are today and would not be able to help thousands of charities in the way we do. We think it's fair that he is compensated for his investment as soon as we feel we are able to do so, rather than on exit of the company (which we have no intention of doing at the moment). Having said that we don’t yet feel the time is right to pay dividends to our investors as we are still heavily investing in the business so that we can provide the best service possible to our users and charities. I hope this answers your question, Thanks Heather    Report

02-28-2009, 20:24 kabbeyabbey Joined on 02-28-2009 Posts 2 Re: JustGiving commission Can someone help us. We cant understand our fundraising statement. It says: "You have raised a total of: £475.00 Gift Aid plus supplement: £35.26" So we assume we have got a total of £510.26. If we look at the commission example it appears to deduct a total of around 90p off every £10 donated. That leaves a net figure of about 90% of the total. 90% of £510 is about £460. But the statement also says: "Donations summary You have donated: £370.00 Gift Aid plus supplement: £5.64" That's a total of £375.64 not £460.00. It is only 73% of what was collected. How Come?    Report

03-02-2009, 10:24 heather@justgiving Joined on 02-20-2009 Posts 3 Re: JustGiving commission Hi there, I'm sorry that there is some confusion, if you could send me the address of your fundraising page I will look into the problem and get back to you. Thanks Heather    Report

03-03-2009, 14:36 kabbeyabbey Joined on 02-28-2009 Posts 2 Re: JustGiving commission It may just be that we dont understand. Our address is www.justgiving.co.uk/kathleenwalker    Report

03-04-2009, 17:17 heather@justgiving Joined on 02-20-2009 Posts 3 Re: JustGiving commission Hi Kathleen, I think the confusion is arising from area within “your account” section that you are looking at. If you go to the “your account home” tab within “your account” you will see that there are two sets of numbers: your Fundraising summary (the amount that your page has raised) and your Donations summary (the amount that you have personally given to charity through the website). You will see in that window that these two numbers are different and that the amount raised for the Alzheimer’s Society from your page is indeed £510.36 whilst the amount that you have personally donated (including Gift Aid) is £375.64. I will send you an email with the screenshot of your account. I hope that this makes sense now, if you have any other questions please let me know. Thanks Heather    Report

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