We’ve already told you that Justgiving is getting a new look and that some new features for fundraisers are on the way (exciting).
So, what are all these changes to the Justgiving website going to look like? Well, first of all, we’ve got a new logo:
You’ll see it in blue on our homepage and other information areas, but we want it to be a bit of a chameleon and change colour according to the company it keeps. So, in future, you’ll see it in different charities’ colours too.
We’ve also got a new thermometer:
At Justgiving, charity fundraising is all we do, and we want our charities and fundraisers to shine. So we’ve made a new thermometer that can take on the colours you choose. The starburst shape celebrates the wonderful things you do and it’s nice and eye-catching, wherever you see it.
And here’s how your Justgiving page will look (depending on the colour you choose):
We’ve worked hard to bring out the really important bits – the button that asks people to donate and the thermometer that shows how much you’ve raised. There’s also more space for your own photos (yay), and some new colour themes to choose from.
Plus, it’ll be much faster and easier for people to donate on your page, and they’ll also be able to choose a little icon to go with their name and message.
So how about sharing your page with other people?
As well as our Justgiving widget and Facebook app, you’ll be able to use the very handy ShareThis button to broadcast your fundraising through lots of different social websites and networks, from Facebook and Twitter to Digg and Delicious.
And what about making changes to your page? Well, we’ve also made your account much easier to use and added even more resources, including tried and tested tips from fundraisers on how to raise as much as possible.
And now you can extend your page for as long as you like, from your account – so if you want to carry on fundraising for a few extra months, you can.
We’re really looking forward to hearing what you think of our new look and features, so please let us know, emailing any ideas and suggestions you have to heather@justgiving.com
Alec East said
It’s great that you are improving the JustGiving service.
Is there any chance of an API so charities can create their own branded widgets and access the public info such as fund-raising stats / comments etc?
It would also be great to have more control over the user journey – e.g. If I send a visitor to JustGiving to donate / sign-up and have them redirected back to the original charity site after a donation.
That way non-profits can integrate JustGiving’s payment services into their own sites in a more coherent manner, instead of potentially losing them after the transaction.
Steve Bridger said
Well done guys! I know what a commitment you’ve all made to this new site.
Heather, I think you left the best till last. The ‘toolkit’ control panel really packs a punch.
jwaddingham said
Hi Alec, thanks for the comment.
We are currently researching with a number of charities the viability of an API and what form that would take. We have taken our first step into providing more integrated web services in the back end of the site through releasing data in xml (see here http://justgiving.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/how-we-are-working-to-help-charities-integrate-data), but we are still in the research stage for front end web services.
One of the biggest reasons we decided to update our technology platform was to make it more open, and allow services to be provided on other websites. Our research (with donors, fundraisers and charities), and feedback from charities and digital agencies alike, will help us decide how exactly to develop and provide those services, but it is the long-term direction we are taking.
Dogsbody said
Just as Alec said, I am VERY interested in an API and integration but we are not a charity.
Our event send all of our competitors to you to set up justgiving pages to raise money for the NSPCC but because we aren’t actually the NSPCC we have to rely heavily on them to do a lot of work. I would love to be able to come to your site and set up an event, pick the NSPCC as our preferred charity and be able to report on it.
Currently our event website has a list of all the people signed up to race, if the racer has told us their justgiving page I then go to justgiving and get a live feed of how much they have currently raised to put on this page. I have to scrape this data off your website (which will likely break when you redesign). I would love to use the RSS feed or the badges you offer on your site but they all use a unique user ID for each fundraiser instead of their unique website URL so I still have to screen scrape their fundraising page to find their UUID.
I love your company and what it does but integrating your business into our event is horrible
Thank you for listening
Dan
Graham Richards said
Hi Jon and the gang,
Just wanted to say what a crisp, clean site you’ve come up with. Love the colours, white space and graphics. A real Web 2.0 experience. Well done!
Graham ;0)
francesca garde said
i guess donating for the benefit of others is good thing to do. after all what’s our real purpose is to hold hands together to gather from all across countries to help those in need.
Bridget Rendall said
Have you managed to fix the bug between justgiving and facebook where new amounts are not immediately reflected in the profile link in facebook, otherwise the new look is exciting!!!
natalie said
Will the widgets change automatically?
Quite a lot of people have the widget from my page on their blogs.
I am hoping they won’t have to download a new one.
http://www.justgiving.com/theyarnyard
Chris Merrick said
well done guys this is looking good
Helen Gallacher said
Well done team, a lovely fresh makeover, a credit to you all.
Sarah-Jane Johnston said
This is all great when will the changes become live?
Pete Knight said
Thanks guys, that’s just what I always wanted! I particularly like the additional control you’ve given us, makes me feel like it really IS my web page.
Pete
Mark said
Thats great news that you are releasing an API, something I think a lot of people will benefit from, including you guys! I was in need of one when i was building my sponsorship page.
Good to see JustGiving is on it!
Susi Jenkins said
Well done – looking forward to using it. Good reminder to me to get going – my Breast Cancer walk is 5th July and I’ve not started fundraising yet.
Matt Richards said
Hi, looks great. Will the facebook app now keep up to date with the correct total ? Mine and others is ‘stuck’ on a total from weeks ago
Richard said
Hi
This is great news I personally raise a lot of money through Justgiving also the agency I work with do a lot of rund raising sports events and we also work with charities and companies who use justgiving.
API’s are really needed (I cannot stress this enough) – JG seem to be a bit behind on this one… So I was eager to read your post at http://justgiving.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/how-we-are-working-to-help-charities-integrate-data/ – unfortunately this link is dead…..
We’ve had to write our own code to scrape the fundraising webpages and pull out the sponsor messages in the html to display within external sites. The less work like this we have to do the better for you, your charities and the fundraisers…
Will Webster said
How exciting!
Can’t wait to see the new site live. I will wait in anticipation to set up my London to Brighton donation page on the new release.
Will
Michael Murdoch said
This is great. Can’t wait to at this to our website http://www.lovebox.org.uk !
Lynda Wilson said
Brilliant! Can’t wait for these functions to become available. This will be great in making the page interesting, concise and above all, open-ended so we can harness a sustained and prolonged fundraising effort without time constraints!
LET US KNOW WHEN THIS WILL BE AVAILABLE AS WE CAN’T WAIT!!!!!!!!!
Jennie said
I think it look great. How about being able to add music to the page?
Is this possible
Well done, it’s bang up to date..love it
Jen x
matt said
when will these great improvements take effect
Stephen Auker said
Donations have taken a dive since I started to so get my £50,000 target is going to require a lot more effort. So any changes JG have made to help me to do that, and very welcome indeed.
I do have some (3) corporate sponsors now, which is great and I will be running for one of them this next Sunday at the Stoke on Trent half marathon and getting £500 to boot. Thanks to http://www.castlecomfortstairlifts.com for the sponsorship.
Follow me on Twitter @NimbleRunner
Stephen
Apryl Sheppard said
The new page sounds fantastic, i need all the help possible to raise the on line giving for Breakthrough Breast Cancer an there is plenty of time until September to do this. Hoping the changes will make all the difference for the charity. Thanks!
sean caulfield said
looks good, especially like the idea of being able to add more photos. When are the changes up and running ?
http://www.justgiving.com/seancaulfield
heatherbird said
Hi everyone, thanks for all your comments – we’re really glad that you are as excited about the changes as we are.
Firstly, it’s great that you are all dying to know when the new site will go live, we are currently in the very final stages of testing it to make sure it can handle absolutely everything we can throw at it. Once we are satisfied that everything is spot on we will go live, this should be within the next few weeks if not sooner
@ Natalie – If you are using a fundraising widget anywhere on the internet it will change over to the new version automatically so you don’t have to do anything to update that.
@ Jennie – Currently you won’t be able to add music to your page but part of the reason we are so excited about the new Justgiving site is that the new platform will allow us to make changes to the site much more quickly – it is great to hear your suggestions so that we can constantly improve the website. If you have any more ideas please email them to suggestions@justgiving.com
Ed said
I don’t like you or what you’re doing. Just like the banks you are making a profit out of people’s efforts to raise money for charity, which the Government should do in the first place – I don’t like them either.
Adrienne said
Hi Everyone
It all soundz great , l’m looking forward to updating my page and making it look brighter.
Keep up the good work
Top Posts « WordPress.com said
[...] A sneak preview of changes to Justgiving… We’ve already told you that Justgiving is getting a new look and that some new features for fundraisers are on the [...] [...]
Harish said
Great job as long as the charges are kept to the minimum or is all these expenses been donnated by someone? I hope so because every penny will help someone who most needs it.Keep it up.
Ricky Thakrar said
Looking good!
John Katon said
Hi, contrary to a previous post, somebody has to make the effort. If we all sit down and wait for the government, banks or anyoone else to make the move we shall be here for ever. Have just joined and hope that the new look will be in force quickly. Presentation is everything and people will look for a professional page and be more willing to donate. No disrespect but it looks a bit amateurish at the moment. Also how soon will the widget start working please and when will you answer some of the questions asked on this page?
Vito said
Hey it looks like the new look, I wish you even more success:)
David Beasley said
Hi,
I was very happy with the previous page presentation – it was very clear in my view! Now you have to scroll down many more pages to see/print the same length list of donors; I can’t see what has been gained by the much more spreadout layout.
When I went to my new-look page for the first time today, my event photo had been replaced with a large star! On selecting a subsequent page of donors the picture re-appeared. A bug?
Secondly, the charity logo is not being displayed with the smmary description, neither does it display if the page is refreshed. This is a major glitch that must be fixed a.s.a.p.
I work for a small charity (The Bless Network) which has occasional specific fund-raising events that are appropriate for sponsorship, so having a monthly flat fee is a significant drain on our limited funds, all of which we have to raise. Can the monthly fee not be scaled to the size of a charity’s turnover? – it is inequitable that small charities pay the same fee as large organisations with several times the turnover. Although we could de-register after each event, this would be an administrative pain.
I look forward to hearing from you.
David Beasley, The Bless Network
********************************
Ham said
Well, great look,yes.
But who the hell had the idea of rolling out a new website at what must be the peak season for charities?????????? Could they possibly have come to IT from local government?
This midsummer weekend, there must have been tens of charity events running. And the Justgiving servers and service? on its back.
Difficulties rolling out a new service – that’s understandable. Scheduling it for now? Inexcusable. I’ve been trying to re-vamp my page, and struggled. I’ve been contacted by a couple of people who could not donate because of server issues. That must have been repeated across the service. What would the impact have been, delaying the rollout to, say September?
Simple question: who is accountable, and what do they have to say for themselves?
Ham said
Oh. And one more thing. The x-browser support now fails. In Opera (9.6) you don’t see the “Donate Now”button. This may be fixed in a later release but remember what they say “At Justgiving, charity fundraising is all we do”. You should NOT be excluded because of the browser you are using. X-browser support should come BEFORE pretty.
Again, who is accountable?
underblog said
I’m sure lots of work has gone into this, so I hope these comments are taken as constructive criticism and don’t discourage your good work. It LOOKS nice. But as an average user (donater), it’s now much harder to keep track of people’s comments as there is far more wasted space and they’re split across more pages. Can we squeeze them up and have more on a page?
Custom colours are fine, but black text on some of the coloured backgrounds is less readable. Is it possible to give the comment boxes with white backgrounds?
I’m not sure having to wait a few seconds to see what percentage of the target has been raised is all that great either. OK, the little filling up circle is a cool effect first time you see it. But every subsequent time it’s just a pointless delay. Go here and you have to wait minutes! http://www.justgiving.com/atheistbus/
OK so most causes won’t overshoot their target by 2791%, but those that do have more visitors so it still inconveniences a lot of people.
Having a standard graphic in the prominent position, with the event/charity pictures squeezed to a sidebar make each page less distinctive too. This is a shame as people are motivated to donate by a cause, not by a fundraising target.
underblog said
One more thing: On the donating page, it says:
“So far, I’ve raised £x for Charity.
Help me reach my target of £y.”
Except on the page I visited x was bigger than y so the sentence doesn’t make sense!
Alice Noyes said
It would be good to be able to support multiple charities for an event. For example the next event is in aid of two charities, but I can only select one to receive the money.
The new site would be ok if it didnt keep crashing.
Melanie Abbott said
Have just tried to donate but error message came up.
Please reslove this as soon as poss. it could well put people off donating as it is a hassle.
Need confirmation that donation has gone through….. not happy