The Justgiving Blog

We were recently contacted by the inspirational Lisa Connell (left) about finding more charities to benefit from her website, www.rentadateforcharity.com. Have a look, it’s just been re-designed and is all lovely and shiny.

It’s one of the more imaginative ways we’ve seen people raise money on Justgiving and, as you may have guessed, the idea is simple – there’s an auction on the site where you can bid for the chance to go on a date with a celebrity, and the money goes to charity.

But Lisa’s story is a little more complicated than that, to put it lightly. I managed to catch up with her on email to ask a few more questions about her condition, the site and how she’s raising money…

Hi Lisa, can you explain the idea behind Rent A Date For Charity?

I set up Rent A Date For Charity back in October last year after having been diagnosed with an inoperable Brain Tumour. I was told I may never walk again back in 2006 and in June 2007 I was running in the London 10k run! I raised just over £3,500 for Brain Tumour UK mainly through sponsors on my MySpace page.

I had emails all the time from random people asking me if I would go on a date with them, and once I had completed the 10k run still unable to get work, I came up with the idea of Rent A Date. I thought, “put your money where your mouth is”!

So it began with myself and my cousin Luke on my MySpace page and then before I knew it the media interest was going wild! That’s when I set up www.rentadateforcharity.com. Almost everyone I know uses or has used an internet dating sites. Well, this site is different – not only do you guarantee your date by placing the highest bid but you also get to donate to a very worthy cause.

Seventy-five percent of the net bids for Celebrity Auctions go directly to the designated charity, brain tumour related or not. All my profits are distributed at the end of the year between the brain tumour charities only but we hope that this will soon change with our upgrade to allow all charities to become involved more.

How does it work?

It’s quite simple. Registration is FREE. You can place items, goods or services on the auctions or simply yourself. Charities should register too so they can keep up to date on our progress and events that are held.

How are you helping charities with it?

I donate all my profits from the auctions to brain tumour related charities. Other charities benefit from free advertising space and valued auctions such as Celebrity Dates. We ask all charities involved (non-brain tumour related) to simply bring celebrities to the auctions the more they bring the more money they can make.

I donate 75% of the NET Donation from these auctions directly to the charity. I have already donated a total of £17,338.67 since launching at the beginning of the year so I’m not doing too badly.

Sounds like you’re doing really well – how has Justgiving helped?

I wanted to use Justgiving because I wanted people to see where the money was going. It’s easy for me to say that it’s going to charity but to have a visual it proves I’m doing just as I say. The service I get from Justgiving is second to none. Very personal and professional. I only allow charities to register with our service on account of having a Justgiving account.

[for an example, see www.justgiving.com/braintumouruk-rentadateforcharity
and on Lisa's site (complete with widgets) here]

How can charities get involved in this?

Every charity has a patron. Every charity has contacts. If a charity wishes to get involved all they need to do is email me. I will require them to advertise our company logo and Justgiving widget we create on their behalf somewhere on their front page. In return I will place them on our charities list and try to bring them as much support as possible.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Yes, I want people to know that I have been working on this project around the clock 7 days a week. I work alone and only just recently have employed some volunteers. I aim to raise £1million before I die and I need charities to help support this cause by joining in with the fun.

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Great, thanks for speaking to us Lisa – we wish you all the best in your fundraising endeavours, and most importantly, your health.

As you can read on her blog, this takes up a lot of her time and effort so there are many opportunities for volunteers to help with the site and fundraising.