DebRA raises £60,000 online within 24 hours
Howard Lake | 30 March 2004 | News
DebRA, the national charity working on behalf of people with Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) raised £60,000 online via Justgiving.com in the 24 hours after a TV documentary.
More than £60,000 was donated to DebRA through Justgiving in just 24 hours following a Channel Four television documentary, The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, on 25 March 2004. The charity collected £25,000 via the telephone in the same period of time.
The online total has now risen to more than £93,000, including almost £20,000 in Gift Aid. The total donated via telephone has risen to £34,000 and £41,000 by post. Online donations represent 55% of the totals donated.
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DebRA’s marketing manager Philippa Stannard valued the online giving facility highly. She said: “In the first 24 hours after the documentary, when our phones were ringing off the hook, our Web site was able to accept thousands of concurrent donations.”
The volume of donations received, many of them overnight, proves the attractiveness of online giving when staff are unavailable to handle calls. Soon after the programme ended, Justgiving was processing up to 2,400 simultaneous donations.
Zarine Kharas, Justgiving’s Chief Executive Officer, said DebRA’s success shows that “any charity can now scale up its operations massively in a matter of hours, with no upfront investment or extra staff.”
“The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off” documented the final weeks of Jonny Kennedy, who suffered from the genetic skin blistering condition, Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB). It showed him tirelessly fundraising on behalf of DebRA, the national charity working on behalf of people with the condition, until the last day of his life.
The film also featured model Nell McAndrew pledging to run the Flora London Marathon to raise funds for DebRA in memory of Jonny. Her online fundraising page on Justgiving has subsequently accepted more than £17,000 in sponsorship with Gift Aid boosting the total to over £22,000.
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.