2007 February « The Justgiving Blog

Archive for February, 2007

JG:Clinic part 2 – Fun with Photos

February 27, 2007 at 4:13 pm · Filed under Clinic ·Tagged Marathon des Sables, Moonwalk, Photos, Sahara

Clinic2
Do photos on a fundraising page make a difference?

The short answer is yes. Allow me to demonstrate:

Ben is doing the Marathon des Sables.

That’s in the Sahara Desert. It’s also the ‘toughest footrace on earth’.

Lots of sand? Check.

Would I recognise Ben? Check.

Ironic t-shirt? Check.

10/10 there. Here’s another:

Mooncar
Fay, Cathy and Nicola are doing the Moonwalk.

Amusing take on our cartoons? 10 bonus points.

Proficiency with Photoshop? Definitely.

Communicates the theme of the event? Check.

Are they smiley? Yup.

Here’s one more good ‘un:

Duncanstephen_pc
Stephen and Duncan are cycling through Ireland.

Do they have bikes? Check.

Proper looking ‘tour de france style’ bikes? Oh yes.

Lycra? Plenty.

Matching polo shirts, like they’re in a team? Indeed.

The point is easy. If you upload a really good photo that is easily recognisable, is relevant to your event and maybe a bit funny then it will definitely help your potential sponsors connect to you and what you’re doing.

What we don’t like seeing on pages so much are our stock cartoons. So if you’ve been putting it off, sort that photo out right now, and don’t forget that you can update it as often as you like, or even make a fancy animated one.

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Sir Ranulph

February 27, 2007 at 10:21 am · Filed under Inspirational fundraising ·Tagged Eiger, Marie Curie, MySpace, Sir Ranulph Fiennes

‘ten four!’

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is about to embark on his latest mission: scaling the North Face of the Eiger and raising £1.5m for Marie Curie Cancer Care while he’s at it.

There’s lots of coverage in the papers about it today, I know this because I read about it over various shoulders on the bus this morning.

On his page, Sir Ranulph states "Climbing the Eiger will be truly challenging, but with every step that our
three-man team takes, I’ll know that our efforts will be making a real and
tangible difference to the lives of terminally ill people and their families and
carers across the UK."

Best of luck to him, find out more on his MySpace blog.

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Charity Account Update: We’ve been listening

February 26, 2007 at 3:35 pm · Filed under Service updates

Derrick and Foluke have been busy working away on many fixes and updates to the Charity Account over the last few weeks, and we are happy to announce the release of an upgrade you’ve been asking us for:

Originally reports created in the Event Fundraising section of the Charity Account would only include details of fundraising pages that had received donations. This speeded up performance by omitting the details of those who had not raised any money. You asked us to include their details so you would be able to offer the fundraisers help and support.

We have listened, and now when you create a detailed report on fundraising
pages (based on expiry, creation or event date) you will receive data on ALL fundraising pages, including those without donations. This will enable you to better manage the relationship with those of your supporters who need the most help.

You may know that all fundraisers on Justgiving get an automatic help email if their fundraising page has not received any donations after two weeks. We point them to our general top fundraising tips here, but you could also give them some help specific to their event, or your charity.

Please note that the details of these fundraisers can only be found in the Event Fundraising section of the Charity Account.

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Let him eat cake

February 23, 2007 at 6:18 pm · Filed under Our News ·Tagged birthday, cake, pogues, tim, tottenham, video

It’s Tim’s birthday tomorrow. Here’s a picture of him eating the chocolate and cognac birthday cake we bought him. We ate the rest of it. And a sponge one too.

Tim’s our charity subscriptions dude. He does a lot of number crunching. And he sings the Pogues. And he supports Tottenham Hotspur, poor boy.

He’s one of the youngest people in the office. Tomorrow he turns 15.

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JG: Clinic Tutorial

February 23, 2007 at 11:25 am · Filed under Clinic ·Tagged animated gif, Fundraising, unFREEz

Just yesterday Simon was talking on the blog about a fantastic little way to really give your fundraising site a bit of oomph, an example of this is to create a small animation similar to one created by a chap called Will.

So often do we see plain fundraising sites where hardly anything is different… the image is just left default and the text is lacking anything inspirational. Be it in the form of text, images or anything else that just gives people an extra incentive to put money (that would otherwise go on a pizza down the local or an extra beer after that long day at work) to the charity you feel so strongly for.

123go

Well this all has to change and I will give you a tool that will instantly make you a hit with browsers, this super special spice will give that extra nice finish to your site and all you need to do is download it and follow the steps. 1, 2, 3… and you’re done! I’ve even made an animated gif you can click on to show you how it’s done step by step.

First head over to this site which holds a nifty little utility called unFREEz (this software is 110% free, and will never charge you to use it… how wonderful is that?).

Double click on the file icon. Okay… so maybe that’s a few more actions than you were expecting!

Next select those images you want to have as a little animation and now drag them over to the white box inside of UnFREEz. Next, make sure you’re happy with the Frame delay (I use 100cs for mine… which is around 1 second) and just click Make Animated Gif Button, name it something.

That’s all there is to it.

You can now show all your friends and family just how clever you are and I promise not to tell anyone this little quick fire tip to make you an instant hit at parties (it really gets the girls!). With this animated gif you can use it in y our Justgiving page, your personal blog or even in msn messenger if you’re clever enough to know how!