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July’s fundraiser of the month was an easy one.

Congratulations to the brilliant Nicole Dryburgh who's raised over £20,000 so far towards a neuro-rehabilitation room at King’s College Hospital.

 

Nicole has been a patient at King’s since she was eleven and knows all about how important this new room is going to be. It’s well worth reading the very poetic message on her fundraising page.

She was nominated by Claire McFarlane who said:

“Nicole Dryburgh is 19, she was diagnosed with a malignant tumour on her spine at the age of 11 and 2 years later a brain haemorrhage left her totally blind. Nicole is always fundraising, her next fundraising event is a 100ft abseil on 6th July – she is an inspiration!”

You can find out more about Nicole by visiting her website or reading her book. And you can have a look at Claire's fundraising page if you like too.

Good luck with the very daring abseil Nicole, and you win a £25 donation to King’s College Hospital Charity. 

Our Mike is a bit of a helpdesk legend.

He loves a chat, so he's ideally suited to his job of talking our lovely fundraisers and donors through their queries about Justgiving. He also puts up with the odd bit of flack from us about his chattiness (sorry about that Mike :) and we wanted to take the opportunity to show him a bit of appreciation. Mike - we think you're ace!

Now down to business. On 27th June, Mike's going to be jumping out of a plane (pretty brave if you ask us) to raise money for Help the Aged. The jump has already been cancelled once, making the lead-up to next Friday all the more exciting.

As he's so very near his target, we thought we'd give his cleverly-titled fundraising page a plug on the blog. So if anyone feels like showing their support and helping Mike smash his target for a good cause, you can do it here.

Good luck Mike! We're all going to be rooting for you! From the safety of the ground, of course. 

Congratulations to Grant Logan and The Wheel Life team, on making it to the summit of Ben Nevis!

Grant captures the tension and excitement of the climb beautifully on his blog.

Ken Hames, presenter of BBC's Beyond Boundaries and the one who came up with the idea in the first place, talked to BBC News about the climb.

You can still make a donation to Capability Scotland and Scope on The Wheel Life's Justgiving page.

 

We used to do a regular ‘Fundraiser of the month’ blog post to shout about an outstanding fundraiser or fundraising team. And although we’ve been blogging about a lot of amazing fundraisers lately, somehow the tradition of awarding the official title disappeared… until now.

We’d like to crown the 60 Lovely Ladies of Amsterdame08 our Fundraisers of the month for June 2008.

For a start, look at how many of them there are on their fundraising page! That’s a pretty impressive display of photos.

And secondly, what an amazing amount to have raised! Not just reaching their £30K target but smashing it, all in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Oh and they did a 4-day cycle ride from York to Amsterdam and back.

Well done Amsterdames! We hope you’re very proud of yourselves.

As a special Friday treat, we’d like to introduce a guest blogger, our very own internet-famous designer Kai Chan Vong...

I don’t know if you remember reading a few weeks back about Jonno and myself taking part in an awesome event called Nom Nom Nom, which really should have been named ‘nYum nYum’ (like you’re saying yum yum with a mouth full of good grub!).

Well the organisers have set up a raffle to raise money for Action Against Hunger UK , and they’ve been working hard to get you in on some amazing prizes...

• A fantastic meal for two at Konstam, which I’ve never heard of but looks very fancy in the photos! 
• A workshop at the cookery school at Little Portland Street. All the chefs are extremely lovely and (fortunately) darn good cooks.    
• Annual subscriptions to posh magazines Delicious, Food & Travel and Men’s Health.
• Travel insurance for a trip of your choice anywhere around this world (that rules out Mars).
• Some very pretty and yummy looking brownies from Everything Nice.
• A meal for two with the acting crew of Nabokov in their modern Tube Carriage office.
• A load of DVDs, books and some other prizes (all very wonderful if you ask me).

So what you waiting for, eh? Get yourself a virtual ticket and good luck!

There are some devoted Apprentice fans here at JG towers (step forward Liz Kessick), so we were pretty excited to find out that Nick Hewer from The Apprentice has made a Justgiving page.

He’s driving a quarter of the way round the world in an old Renault 4L to raise money for Hope and Homes for Children and he’s already gone a long way towards reaching his fundraising target.

Sponsor Nick here and keep reading to find out what he had to say to us yesterday... 

How did you get involved with Hope and Homes for Children?
Well it’s one of the authorised charities picked by the organisers and it was the one that appealed the most. 

You’ve chosen a pretty exciting challenge – a trip to Mongolia – 10,000 miles in an old car…
Yes but the car’s in great shape – it’s done about 67,000 miles and I have every confidence in Renault. I’ve taken one of these cars all the way through Morocco in the past and they’re very reliable.

Is that what made you decide to do it?
Yes partly that. I like doing these drives through different landscapes and I also like mixing in different cultures. I find people are invariably very kind. 

It’s a long way from the corporate London lifestyle – what are you going to miss most?
Nothing. Just family. I think it’s incumbent on us all to be uncomfortable once in a while, so we can appreciate what it’s like not to be so comfortable.

What are you looking forward to/dreading the most? 
I’m sort of dreading some of the desert stuff, because it’s very demanding on the car and also on the person driving it. But I’m looking forward to having done it!

How have you found using Justgiving?
I’m delighted – it’s absolutely marvellous. I’m going to blog about the challenge and link to my page from there too. 

Oh good – we’ll link to your blog as soon as it’s live! Any special message for all your Apprentice fans before you go?
We’re always looking at people undertaking difficult tasks and it’s about time we did one of our own. It’s easy to criticise, but let’s see how I get on!

The 2008 candidates have propelled past tactics of online engagement and fundraising to even greater success. Take a cue from the top political campaign strategists and social networking online experts in how to leverage the Internet as a strategic relationship tool that is changing philanthropy, advocacy and politics.

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As the Internet continues to evolve, old-fashioned, face-to-face conversations are being overwhelmed by Web 3.0 tools. Find out how to enhance, rather than replace, your conversations by maximizing the year-round event experience for your constituents.

Since working with Convio, the Paul Anderson Youth Home (PAYH) has significantly expanded its reach, strengthened its brand and increased revenue by using a strategic, integrated eCRM approach.

Some organizations don’t have the staff or know-how to begin using the Internet as a channel to engage constituents and raise funds. For these resource-constrained nonprofits, Convio Go!provides the essential tools and online expertise to help you grow your constituent base and increase donations.

Working with Convio, Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity raised more than $100,000 online in just two quarters.

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We're very proud to present a new Justgiving homepage, designed by our very own Will Colley (aka the designer with the brightly-coloured trainers). We hope you like it.

   

To mark the occasion, you can read our interview with Will. But before you do, we'd like to show you 1) a photo of Will and 2) a photo of his famous trainers:

   

So Will, you’ve been with Justgiving for a few months now – how are you finding it?

Great, everyone’s been very welcoming. I think that it’s because of the business that we’re in, everyone works as a team and is really willing to help, so you don’t get the feeling that you’re working alone or that anyone is too important that you can’t approach, so yeah very happy to be part of the JG team.

Did the idea of redesigning our homepage come from you or were you given a brief?

Well, I was given a brief and a fair bit of freedom to come up with something, but really it was helped along with the user testing that Liz was doing at the time. That really helped me not to get too caught up in what ‘I’ wanted the home page to look like. This is easier said than done when you’re a designer! I do try hard not to get too focused on what I want, but to try to deliver a good clear vision of what the company needs to help users to navigate the site.

What were your aims/guiding principles in the redesign?

My aims were to create, dare I say it, a beautiful page to look at that didn’t confuse the user with too much noise on the page. Meaning that the design should let the user find the things that they need without confusing them with clutter or too much visual noise. Also, a strong composition laid out in a coherent way with as much content ‘above the fold’ as was possible.

What are you most pleased with about the page?

I think that the some of the calls to action, especially the ‘Find out more’ are the most pleasing, but also the fact that the two main searches are in prime real estate areas, and that the blog is ‘above the fold’.

What are your design inspirations? What sites/designers do you like?

I get inspired by lots of things I see every day, corny as it may sound!!! Normally when I’m cycling or doing exercise.

As for sites, the guys at cpluv do a great job at posting cool stuff. Also the guys at Positive Hype are doing some very cool stuff, and Fadi and Marco with their team at Pod1 do some really inspirational client work.

What are you working on next?

Well we are totally focused on Version 3 (aka v3) of the Justgiving site. At present, I’m researching everything from navigation to footers, layouts - you name it I’m checking it out. So I’m trying to move away from client work and stay focused on v3. Knowing that we have a really good designer called Nick joining us next week, I hope to be able to make a serious dent into the v3 beast. Mind you going to Italy next week… :-)

Here’s an urgent appeal.

Ropafadzo is fighting Aplastic Anaemia and Hope for Children is appealing for funds to pay for the treatment she needs.

You can help by making a donation here. Simon from Hope for Children promises to make sure your funds get to the right place.

Driving 3,000 miles across Europe over six days, stunning scenery, winding roads, wild parties… it’s the Cannonball Run Europe 2008 of course!

This year’s event runs from 6 – 12th July and looks like a lot of fun. We've just found the first of the Cannonballers' fundraising pages - check them out:

www.justgiving.com/cb4kids

www.justgiving.com/davidward1

Or make your own fundraising page here!

Let us know if you've got a page for this event and we'll add it here...

Here’s a fundraising page that caught our eye recently.

Mark Walker is raising money for Brake, in memory of his brother Ian, and he’s just completed a coast-to-coast mountain bike ride with a team of friends which he’s been blogging about here. 

We’re impressed by their persistent work to keep Ian Walker’s memory alive and by the amount of progress they’ve made towards a pretty hefty target. Mark also managed to find a handy way for supporters to track their progress along the route.

When we contacted Mark yesterday, he said:

I am absolutely delighted that we have completed the challenge, something which I am very proud to put my brother's name on. The Justgiving page has been an ideal portal for receiving donations but we did receive the odd complaint that the website, for one reason or another, would not accept donations, but other than that it has been absolutely ideal and painless.

We’re so sorry that some of you have had trouble donating lately. We know the site’s been slower than usual because of heavier traffic and charities’ end of year reporting and we’re in the process of moving to some new, faster servers to solve the problem. In the meantime, if you’re in any doubt as to whether we’ve processed your donation, please contact our helpdesk at help@justgiving.net

Congratulations Mark and the Minorplanet team for making it to the end of a tough challenge!

 

Lots of you have been getting in touch to ask where you can raise funds and donate to help out with the China earthquake relief efforts. We’ve got a couple of options for you here.

Graham from China Children and Teenagers’ Fund got in touch with our helpdesk this week and let us know about their appeal.

They’ve donated thousands towards medical and shelter relief already and now they need help raising money to restore schools and orphanages in devastated areas.

We’ve also been in touch with Mothers’ Bridge of Love who are raising money here for children suffering the consequences of the earthquake.

OK so now we're calming down a bit after last weekend's nom nom nom event (although Kai is still bouncing at all the traffic going to his flickr stream as a consequence), there's one more bit of foody goodness to cover.

Our friends at Macmillan Cancer Support are gearing up for this year's 'World's Biggest Coffee Morning' on the 26th September.

To make things interesting, they're after recipes to be submitted to them because they're making a recipe booklet made up from everyone's favourite coffee-accompanying treats. Like cake. We are into cake.

You can submit a recipe at www.macmillan.org.uk/recipecomp and for each entry Somerfield will donate £1 to Macmillan.

You've got until the end of May to submit your favourites.

[nom nom nom]

They did it!

Congrats to Kai and Jonno who managed to make a fabulous 3 course meal at Nom Nom Nom yesterday. Here's the evidence that they pulled it off!