British Red Cross raises more online than offline for tsunami appeal
Howard Lake | 7 January 2005 | News
The British Red Cross’ emergency tsunami appeal was launched at midday on 26 December, the day of the disaster, and has raised over £3.3 million online.
Much of the total donated was raised during the first five days of the appeal during the holiday period, showing how important it was to have the website available throughout this period.
This is the first time that a British Red Cross appeal has raised more money online than offline. This is even more significant because of the scale of the giving: the response was more than 10 times higher than that to the Bam earthquake a year previously.
Charity website specialists Baigent, who manage the website for the British Red Cross, called in staff from their holidays to provide additional capacity for the site and donation facilities. The site, unlike those of some other charities, was able to cope with the sudden and massive demand.
According to figures compiled by independent website traffic analysts Hitwise, the British Red Cross website together with the Blue Peter Welcome Home Appeal site received 13.4% of all charity website visits during the week after Boxing Day.
Mark Astarita, Director of Fundraising for the British Red Cross said: “Traffic to the site increased dramatically overnight when we became the number one listing on Google, with news sites (BBC, Yahoo, Sky) and major internet properties such as Amazon and Apple linking to us.
“The British Red Cross is at the forefront of emergency response to international disasters, and with Baigent’s support we had the systems in place to raise £3 million in under one week.”
The website is set to become an even greater part of the British Red Cross’ communications and fundraising strategy in the coming year with a major redesign by Baigent, due to be launched this month.
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.