Justgiving.com blog

Good luck to Grant Logan and the rest of the team who will be attempting to pull a Boeing 757 jumbo jet 100 metres along the runway at Lasham Air Field this weekend, in their wheelchairs.

You might remember Grant from the amazing Ben Nevis challenge with The Wheel Life which we blogged about back in May. Obviously not content with climbing the highest mountain in Britain in his wheelchair, he's turning his wheels to a new challenge, this time in aid of the British Dissabled Flying Association.

If you're in the area, go along and cheer them on!

If you can't make it, you can always make a donation to Grant's Justgiving page or the 757 pull page here.

Guitar Hero fans at JG towers* were very excited (and a little bit envious) when we found out about the Guitar Hero Marathon that Sony Ericsson are doing this month, to raise money for The Honeypot Charity.

Some of their staff are dressing up and showing off their best guitar heroics on 26th and 27th September at their store on High Street Kensington and they're inviting everyone to turn up and cheer them on (or point and laugh at their costumes).

If you'd like to support the cause, you can make a donation - and unleash your inner rock jokes - on their Justgiving page :)

Rock on.

*Here's Jonno playing some Dragonforce (but not quite as well as this kid)

Remember back in August when we told you about our travels round the country, listening to your feedback?

Well we've been off on more travels, this time across the pond in Boston, Chicago and LA (yes the whole breadth of the states, east to west) talking to even more people, stopping off at our US office in Boston on the way.

It's been really interesting to hear what people have had to say about fundraising and donating to charity in the US and to hear some feedback on our ideas for developing the Justgiving and Firstgiving websites.

We'll be incorporating all of it into our work to make the sites even better, and we'll be telling you more about our progress with that over the next few months.

In the meantime, if you'd like to give us your feedback or you're interested in being involved in our research, just get in touch at suggestions@justgiving.com

It’s gone. Ryan Carson’s hair, that is.

As promised, he shaved it all off yesterday (apart from a pretty fierce mohawk the last we saw) to raise money for AbilityNet.

It all happened live on ustream.tv and things got so busy here at JG Towers that we had no time to blog it on the day. Doh :( Sorry about that.

But… it didn’t stop loads of you watching anyway and we were really happy to see people donating to Ryan’s Justgiving page as the event was happening. Yay!

He’s managed to raise loads already but donations are still coming in and he needs quite a few more to reach his massive target.

We like the way he’s come up with a clever system of incentives for your donations… just the kind of creative fundraising we love here at JG.

And thanks to the wonders of Twitter, we've been able to get a little message from Ryan this afternoon. He says: "JustGiving.com made raising $$ for charity unbelievably easy. Why *wouldn't* you use it?" Thanks for that :)

* Title of this post nabbed from a witty comment on the Carsonified blog

Back in June, intrepid cyclists Daisy Hutchison and Theo Solley set off on a mammoth bike-riding mission from Lands End to John O’Groats, to raise money for The Laura Case Trust.

Impressed by the ever-growing total on their Justgiving page and interested to hear more, we asked Daisy a few questions about their ambitious challenge, which they completed last month.

Congratulations! Have you got the feeling back in your legs yet?

Thanks! Happily we never lost the feeling in our legs - it got close around day 5 when I nearly fell asleep whilst pedalling, but that was more about total exhaustion. We did however regularly loose the feeling in our bums and fingers...

What was the hardest part?

The times when we had to carry on even though we were very tired, very sore and very bored! They were really tough. And because we were camping the whole way we had pretty heavy bikes which made hills hard work.

Top 5 hard bits, in ascending order of difficulty:

1) Much Wenlock - a pretty town but we would have been drier if we'd put our tent up in the deep end of the local swimming pool.
2) Cycling into headwinds - so tiring and depressing because you put in so much effort to go very, very slowly!
3) Devon - pretty in a car, punishing on a bicycle. 100 miles of tiny winding roads with relentless, ruthless gradients, and because the roads are sunk below the level of the fields, you rarely get a view over the hedgerows. Gruelling.
4) Navigating the horrific roads out of Bristol that take you under the M4 and over the M5.
5) A595 into Carlisle - the scariest road to cycle in Britain. A narrow single carriageway that ploughs up and down hills and is rammed with lorries thundering up and down. Scary!

And the best bits?

1) A tiny pub called the Crask Inn on a beautiful remote road just north of Lairg in northern Scotland. It had a lovely one-eyed dog and the best ham and cheese toasties.
2) Cycling into the Wye Valley in Wales - an incredibly beautiful, dramatic surprise.
3) We treated ourselves to an evening floating in the spa in Bath. At the end of our 4th day this was perfectly timed since our legs and shoulders were starting to get very cranky.
4) Hunting for local fishmongers and butchers so we could cook up a feast on our excellent Primus stove.
5) We loved meeting people along the way. At the end of our trip we were so struck by how kind, generous and funny Brits are - we give ourselves an awful press and we shouldn't! British people are ace.

What made you decide to do it in the first place?

Last summer we had a fantastic time cycling in the Outer Hebrides. On our journey home we met 3 girls at Inverness station who had just finished Land's End to John O'Groats. I felt a sudden flash of jealousy, and the seed was sown.

We love exploring Britain, and cycling is excellent fun, so pairing the two together was pretty logical. What perhaps made a little less sense was deciding to do it 2 months before we get married. The week before we left for the trip, I found myself having extraordinary conversations alternating between finding the perfect Big White Dress and Puncture Resistant Touring Tyre.

Can you tell us more about The Laura Case Trust?

It funds medical and educational projects in the UK and in Africa and was set up in memory of Laura, the younger sister of our very good friend Melissa. Laura was in her final year training to be a doctor when she died in a bus accident whilst working in a hospital in Uganda. Melissa was our cupid and introduced us - she is a wonderful friend so it’s important for us to show her and her family support by fundraising for the trust.

Even though it’s quite new, the trust has already helped support some excellent projects. It funds things that Laura would have believed important and also where a relatively small amount of money goes a long way on the ground.

One thing that Laura was very struck by when she was working as a doctor in Uganda was the dire lack of equipment. When asked by one of the nurses in the hospital she was working in whether there were differences between hospitals in the UK and Uganda, she said "Well, in the UK, there is usually only one person per bed, rather than the four here".

Earlier this year the trust gave a grant of £1500 to an inspirational young charity called READ International, which collects good quality second-hand school books in the UK and sends them to schools in Tanzania. Future plans for the trust include setting up a scholarship or bursary in Laura’s name, to help fund medical school for those who might not otherwise be able to afford it.

Are you surprised by how much you’ve raised?

We are amazed! Our friends and families have been so generous, and on wet, difficult, tired days the feeling of their support was so important.

We've also been astounded by how much total strangers have given us along the way. At the end of a long day's cycling we were sitting in a pub in Scotland writing our journal and nursing much deserved pints. We fell into conversation with the locals about our trip and ended up giving one man, a certain Stuart McConnachie, our Justgiving url. When we checked online the following day to see how our Justgiving page was doing, we were astounded to see that he'd donated £200. Just amazing, a real highlight of the trip.

Any good tips for other Justgiving fundraisers?

We met lots of people along the way who wanted to sponsor us, which was wonderful. We had an idea that it would be really good to make little business cards with our Justgiving url on it. Weight and space was a real premium for us, and little cards would be light and you could just keep them in your pocket. We didn't keep a blog (no time, and we certainly weren't going to carry a laptop!) so we updated our Justgiving page every now and then.

For us, the most important thing was teamwork. When Theo and I worked together as a team and acknowledged our strengths and weaknesses we found it so much easier than the times when we battled on as individuals. For example, I was good at getting us up hills, but hopeless at putting up the tent, and Theo is a brilliant map reader but found the rain a bit miserable. Plenty of brilliant analogies and lessons learnt for our forthcoming marriage!

A couple of times a year, a select band of happy JGers troop off to the various conferences organised by the lovely folks at Carsonified:

They are pretty awesome. We've made lots of friends at each event and seen really inspiring people speak, especially the Future of Web Apps conference (or FOWA, as the kids call it). FOWA is definitely the UK tech fixture. It's introduced us to all sorts of cool things, like MOO's awesome minicards, to tracking trips on dopplr or nodding furiously in agreement with everything the founders of Get Satisfaction said about customer service in the digital age. And live diggnation is quite something.

So we were excited to see on twitter today that head Carsonite, Mr Ryan Carson himself, is shaving his head, live, this thursday at 5pm GMT, following in the footsteps of Digg's Kevin Rose and the permanently hyper Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. It's all going down at ustream.tv and we'll have the link nearer the time.

We reckon his signature hat may well be seen more regularly as a consequence. Here's Kai and I as Carsonites last time we were visiting the good folks at Firstgiving in Boston:

Check out Ryan's Justgiving page here:

Reading my google alerts this morning over a bowl of bran flakes I came across a story that made me recoil in shock and fear - it was a story in the Wiltshire Times about a very brave man called Simon Guerrero.

Simon's fundraising for The Forever Friends Appeal’s NICU ‘Space To Grow’ Campaign to help them raise the £4.7 million they need. In his own words, he's doing this because:

I became a father on the 11th of June, 2008. My little boy, Oscar, needed a little extra help at the start of his life from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Bath's Royal United Hospital. The staff at NICU were fantastic and helped Oscar with the last little push he needed, so that he and his mum could come home.

So far, so reassuringly praise-worthy. But it's what he's doing, or rather *not* doing, to raise money that horrified me - giving up cheese for a whole month:

www.justgiving.com/nocheese (complete with an ode to cheese)

Yes, that's no cheese for the month of August.

Here's a picture of how that made me feel (next to the cheeses of the world poster that lives on the wall next to my desk):

Like many of us at Justgiving, I'm a massive fan of the Parmesan, always set for a Raclette and get fumin' without no Gouda with cumin (one of my top 5 European cheeses) - this you will see if you search for "uber tartiflette", my favourite Reblochon cheesy dish.

So I went as pale as Wensleydale when I saw what Simon was up to and his promise that...

All meals and snacks will be audited before consumption to ensure cheese is not involved in any way.

This is clearly a man not lacking in Beaufort-itude, bravely Manchego-ing where no cheese lover has gone be-Roquefort.

I certainly couldn't Camembert it, but you too can support his Brie-lliant fundraising efforts at www.justgiving.com/nocheese

Simon, we Port Salute you.

We know we've been a bit quiet on the blog this last week.

Why? Well it's because we've been  listening to you. Or as many of you as we can track down anyway...

For the last 3 weeks, a few of us from JG towers have been venturing outside the office, even outside London <gasp> to talk to you about your experience of using Justgiving.

So far, we've been to Norwich and Bristol and today we're off to Birmingham. It's been brilliant to meet you and really interesting to hear your feedback and ideas. We'll be updating you again on all of this very soon.

In the meantime, you've been pretty busy yourselves. Here's a selection of just a few of the Justgiving pages that we've noticed:

Doug Harrison not only walked all the way from John O'Groats to Lands End, he also beat his fundraising target for Acorns Children's Hospice Trust.

Myles Dyer (aka 'vlogger' Blade376) raised money for Unicef through his 24 hour live webcam chat, as part of Stickaid 2008. Read more about it here.

Ryan O'Sullivan and his fiancee Lisa are going to be climbing Mont Blanc on their honeymoon, in memory of their friend Nathan, to raise money for Skilltrain.

And of our more famous Justgivers, Sebastian Faulks has been padalling from Henley to Wargrave in aid of The Mood Foundation and Kevin Murphy is swimming the channel (again) to raise money for The MS Society.

Phew. Keep up the good work :)   

Whoa. Facebook's all changed and stuff.

Unless you've been following the new profile updates then you're probably either loving or hating the new boxy layout. We're pretty split here at JG, but the most important question which has been asked today by you lovely people is: how do I get the JG application in the right place?

Well, our knight in shiny social armour for this is Jon B, who emailed us a set of instructions last night:

- click the applications tab at the top of the page 
- click the justgiving logo which will take you to a full page dedicated to the justgiving application which looks very good may i add [sic] (crikey thanks Jon)
- then click the applications tab again and it has an option to bookmark justgiving   
- this brings up a new window where you can then tick the box to add to profile

hope this helps,

keep up the good work.

So there you have it, a quick and easy way to get your fundraising progress back to its rightful place on your profile. Nice one Jon.

If you've ever watched the Pride of Britain Awards and managed not to get a lump in your throat... well we're amazed.  If you've never seen the awards, they celebrate some pretty cool and brilliant people and are well worth watching.

This year's awards are 76 days away now, which gives you plenty of time to:

a) buy a big box of tissues
b) vote for your fundraiser of the year here

Go on, have your say.

We'll be in front of our TVs on Wednesday 1st October to watch the results.

Here’s a remarkable fundraiser. Ben Stiff is going for the record as the youngest and fastest person to skate from John O’Groats to Lands End, as we speak, to raise money for CORDA.

He’s already crossed over into England, as you can see from his latest blog post.

Ben decided to take up the challenge after his close friend, Sophie, suffered four strokes and he was determined to do something to help the cause. His trip has already been in the news.

We’ve managed to get a quick interview with Ben, mid-journey, over email. Here’s what he told us.

This is a pretty unusual way to get from John O’Groats to Lands End – what gave you the idea in the first place?

I have been skating a long time, and after realising I wasn't cut out for the half-pipe I bought myself a longboard and started using skating as a mode of transport, rather than a means on showing off.

How long have you been skating?

About 7-8 years now

What’s the furthest you’ve ever skated before?

In training I have done days of 50 or more miles, but the hills up here certainly take a lot out of you.

How are you going to manage the uphill sections?

I think if I just take things one step - literally - at a time, then I can progress without too much trouble, but the hills present more a problem when I'm going down them as they eat away at the only means of braking I have; my shoe. I just put my foot from the board to the tarmac to slow down and it takes the sole off quite quickly.

You’re raising money for a great cause – have you fundraised before and how’s it going? Have you got any tips to pass on?

I have been involved with local fundraising events, but nothing of this size. The site is a great idea, roadside collection is a little harder as we are of course trying for a world record. But a smile and a wave goes a long way and a few passers by have stopped and handed us money, which is a great boost to a great cause!

You’re aiming to become the youngest person to do this, and the fastest – how do you rate your chances?

Pretty good I hope, there has only been one person to do this before me, and he did it in 34 days. I am hoping to do it in 27, so it's quite a chunk off his time but if all goes to plan it should be successful.

Thanks for sparing the time to talk to us Ben. Good luck with the rest of the trip - we’re looking forward to reading all about it.

If you'd like to supoprt Ben and help him reach his fundraising target, you can sponsor him here.

There's wet. And then there's *wet*.

The epic journey to Battersea Park to take part in the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge involved failed tube rides, failed taxi hailing and a walk of at least 5km just to get there. There was even talk of jacking it all in and heading for the pub since it was 'bound to be cancelled'. But no, we persevered. For the team. For ourselves. For all that's right and good and sporting.

So we might have started about 45 minutes after the 'pack'. The bright side was we had plenty of room.

Mat and I set the pace at a leisurely jog, followed by a sauntering Kai and Jonno. The girls weren't far behind.

In monsoon-esque conditions, Tim and Mat stretched into the lead until the 5km mark. I had a sudden and unexpected burst of adrenaline (probably due to the two bottles of free Gatorade that were downed on the way to the start line). Mat and I were neck and neck down the final straight, sprinting the last 200m or so, which was extraordinarily out of character for both us since we're both as competitive as a pair of goldfish usually.

A short while later, we regrouped wheezing underneath a nearby elm tree and collectively agreed that Team Justgiving Winners will join forces once more in the near future for another challenging (but not too challenging) sporting event.

And it was very wet.

Official times:

Simon & Mat - 32mins 6 secs
Tim - A little bit longer
Kai & Jonno - A little bit longerer
Gemma & Sophie - A little bit after that

To the damp and victorious:

(L--->R) Tim, Gemma, Sophie, Jonno

Some of us are doing the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge this evening in Battersea Park. We hear that some of the course is across the grass. So mud by now. But we can't really run in wellies... so muddy trainers it is :)

We all agreed to it months ago when was a long way off. Little did we know we'd be facing the prospect of doing it on the day when one newspaper says there will be "one month's rain in a day", "Experts warn UK to brace for monsoon" and "Low cloud front sweeps towards Britain from the west bringing huge storms". Yikes.

And it's all this man's fault. He's Tim Truman from our Finance team, who caught us out with his powers of persuasion.

But it's not the JG spirit to give up, especially when we see so many of our amazing fundraisers put themselves through *way* more difficult physical challenges. And this run is only just over 5k (gulp). So  if you feel like coming to cheer us on/laugh at us, we'll be there in Battersea Park from 6.30 this evening. In our Justgiving t-shirts. Unfit and muddy.

Wish us luck!

From our high-altitude helpdesk hero, Mike:

Well, I finally jumped out of a plane over Headcorn, near Maidstone, Kent. Although I was born in Wimbledon, which was Surrey at the time, my father and his forebears are Kentish Men, so I felt quite at home landing in the Weald.

It was an amazing experience and brought together lots of symbolic strands in my life: coming home (l lived on the Continent for over twenty years), a desire for speed and weightlessness, which is partially satisfied by regular swimming, cycling and running and last, but not least, raising money for Help the Aged through Justgiving.

Justgiving has been my livelihood for the past two years. Manning the Helpdesk telephone has brought me into contact with dozens of our fundraisers who have jumped for charity. They inspired me to do the skydive. Why not me, I thought? I’ve always wanted to do a parachute jump. And why Help the Aged? Have a look at my fundraising page www.justgiving.com/icarus. The ageing population is a reality facing the industrialised countries, so the level and quality of care available for the elderly is going to become increasingly important. And I’m one of the most aged Justgivers!

And Icarus? I lived for six years in Brussels, which is home to a Pieter Breughel masterpiece “The Fall of Icarus”, about which W.H. Auden wrote a wonderful poem Musée des Beaux Arts. So my skydive has flattered my vanity, but thanks to all my generous sponsors has not passed by unnoticed - unlike the Icarus of Breughel or Auden.

Mike

p.s. If you are a film buff like me and watch to the end of my video where I blabber on about A Matter of Life and Death then check out this wikipedia entry

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!