May | 2007 | The Justgiving Blog

Archive for May, 2007

New and Improved Help on Justgiving

May 31, 2007 at 10:33 am · Filed under Service updates ·Tagged Help

Following last month’s news of a new help section in the Charity Account, we’ve now released an improved help section on the main Justgiving site.

The new area can be accessed by going to www.justgiving.com/statements/help/help.asp

So what’s new?

The homepage has been reorganised to be more intuitive for the user: they can use keywords or browse our top 5 questions (based on our website stats).

There is also a Google custom search box that searches only the help section to find the answers to any question; users can also browse the most appropriate section for their needs, whether they are fundraising or donating.

From the results of our user testing, these sections have also been updated to simplify the layout and make it easier for the required question (and answer) to be found.

Still, if the answer cannot be found, anyone can still contact us, and get through to our Helpdesk Heroes, Jules and Mike.

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Table Switching

May 29, 2007 at 1:07 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

A timely product update and one of the biggest requests since the beginning of the interweb: welcome to table control.

What’s that then?

Up until the end of last week you had no control over what appeared in the big donations table on your fundraising page. Well, now you do (click to go large):

Cool. How do I do it?

Edit your current fundraising page by logging-in to your account and you’ll be able to switch each column on or off at your leisure. Don’t worry, the columns will resize themselves so your page won’t look all unjustified or anything.

Don’t want to show the donation dates? Turn them off.

Embarrassed to see everyone’s name or their amounts? They can go too.

Here’s a few screengrabs from live pages already using this feature:

Kim’s turned off her donation amounts and Gift Aid for her VSO Kilimanjaro challenge.

Graeme’s switched off the donation dates on his London Triathlon page.

You can get rid of all the columns if you wish, but our recommendation is to always leave the comments switched on, since it’s the comments that keep your fundraising page sticky and lets your supporters make their mark.

Let us know what you think! More cool stuff coming soon.

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Table Service for Fundraisers

May 29, 2007 at 12:12 pm · Filed under Service updates

On Friday, our Product Team released another update to Justgiving fundraising pages: page owners now have the ability to select which columns of the donation table appear on their page.

This functionality has already been used by Kim Svatek at www.justgiving.com/kimsmtkilitrek where she has hidden the Amount and Tax Bonus columns:

Other early adopters of this new feature are Keri Hilson, Debbie Pierson and Nicola Brady.

To set this up on a page, you need to log-in at www.justgiving.com/account and go to the ‘edit this page’ option, as per the instructions in our help section here.

This update has been something many users have been requesting in our monthly surveys and the examples above show how it is already proving popular.

For some fundraising pages, like sporting events, there is a strong competitive element where donors see how much others have donated and match or raise it. For others, like Wedding or In Memory pages, showing the amount of individual donations may be less appropriate.

Now, any or all of the columns on a page (Display Name, Date, Amount, Tax Bonus, Comment) can be hidden by the page owner should they so wish.

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First Charity Breakfast Talk

May 25, 2007 at 5:45 pm · Filed under Best Practice

Yesterday James Kliffen and Sam Knight from MSF were the first to star in our brand new Charity Breakfast Talks. We invited a few representatives from the 2500 charities who use Justgiving to listen to our enlightening guest speakers.

Their talk was all about community fundraising: people going a little bit crazy and creating their own fundraising events.

Everything from bus-hopping around the UK and being a James Blunt fan to playing four 18-hole rounds of golf in a day and riding a motorbike around Australia have raised funds for MSF.

And if it’s technological wizardry you’re after check out this Welsh lady, who’s making great use of the Justgiving widget on her own website:

And how about these guys, using Myspace to promote their efforts?

Wateraid were also at hand to talk to us about their recent successes, with a plethora of people building Wedding pages. No need any more for a Gift List or the superfluous toaster.

Raising money in lieu of pressies for your birthday, or anniversary, civil partnership, Valentine’s day or Christmas are all becoming more and more popular too.

A big thank you to MSF and to Wateraid for sharing what they’ve been up to.

A detailed summary of the talk is available to download from your Account Management area in your Charity Account, or here: Download charity_breakfast_talk_24_05_07.doc

Watch this space for a round-up of the next Breakfast Talk!

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London’s Air Ambulance on the Airwaves

May 24, 2007 at 4:37 pm · Filed under In the News ·Tagged johnny vaughan, london's air ambulance

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Johnny Vaughan, host of the Capital FM breakfast show, made an appeal this morning for donations to London’s Air Ambulance charity.

According to the Capital Radio news section,

Johnny was so moved by his visit to meet the team behind London’s Air Ambulance he’s launched a campaign to raise money to buy them a second emergency helicopter.

To do this, he spoke to the charity’s Chief Executive, Andrew Cameron, who mentioned their website and Justgiving donations page on air. The full interview can be downloaded on the Charity’s blog here.

Since the show is listened to by over 800,000 people a day, the charity has received more donations than usual, with many donors using the new leave a message facility to say they heard the appeal on the radio.

As with the Cutty Sark Trust page this week (linked to on the ITV news site, the Metro and yesterday on page 3 of thelondonpaper amongst many others), if you receive a large amount of publicity, make sure you let people know where they can donate online – for London’s Air Ambulance, it is www.justgiving.com/londonaa

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