GiveNow.org one year old
Howard Lake | 31 August 2003 | News
CAF, the AOL Time Warner Foundation and AOL UK are celebrating the first anniversary of GiveNow.org, the online giving site they founded, by making a number of enhancements to the site, including the addition of a volunteering section.
The enhancements follow a usability survey of some of the site’s users. The homepage will be redesigned to give greater prominence to news, while charities will be able to upload their own images or choose from a stock of photographs to accompany their news and diary dates.
There will be greater differentiation on the areas of GiveNow.org meant for donors and charities and navigation throughout the site will be made clearer, say the founders.
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GiveNow.org aims to encourage “greater involvement by visitors and charities” so the site is introducing a number of new
features. In partnership with do-it.org.uk, the UK’s largest database of volunteering opportunities, GiveNow.org will host a volunteering section for those visitors wanting to give their time. In addition, a new search facility that incorporates the Charity Commission database will enable
donors to find and donate to any of the more than 180,000 registered charities in England and Wales.
To help charities make the most of GiveNow.org, CAF and AOL will be designing a online toolkit complete with a ‘how to’ guide for posting logos, mission statements and news. The toolkit will include a downloadable button for charities that already have their own Web site, enabling them to link donors to their GiveNow
donation page, while those charities without a web presence can request a unique URL address to add to their own fundraising materials.
Designed to offer all UK charities a platform from which to promote their
cause, target new audiences and fundraise online, GiveNow.org has already
generated donations for over 350 voluntary organisations.
According to Karen Astbury, research and development officer at CAF: “In our pilot year, the site has raised over £90,000 for charities across the country. Visitors have given between £5 and £3,000 each, but what is particularly pleasing is the high number of donors that have made their
gifts tax-effective. 92 per cent of GiveNow donations were made via Gift Aid compared to a national average of just under 30% for offline donations.”
AOL UK’s director of policy Camille de Stempel added: “GiveNow.org is proving to be a valuable resource for a number of UK charities, particularly smaller organisations that do not have their own Web site.”
Many of the enhancements, including the redesigned homepage will be unveiled
at the CAF Annual Conference and Exhibition, One Great George Street, London, on Thursday 13 November 2003.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.