# Online fundraising and donation – which service to use

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/05/01/online-fundraising-and-donation-which-service-use/
- Published: 2009-05-01T10:50:36+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

If anyone had any doubts as to whether online fundraising platforms are positively
supporting fundraising efforts, two key announcements this week must have blown 
them away.

[Bmycharity](http://www.bmycharity.com) announced that it had seen a 47% growth 
in online giving since this time last year coupled with an 8% increase in average
donation value (from £36.17 to £38.90).  Whilst [JustGiving](http://www.justgiving.com)
announced that its average donation declined by 8% from £32 to £29.50, fundraisers
for the London Marathon alone had raised more than £22 million using the site, which
is incredible.  Collectively, these services are doing a great job in supporting
the fundraising efforts of the ever adventurous and always generous British public.

## Advertisement

But the launch of [Virgin Money Giving](http://www.virginmoneygiving.com) in recent
weeks and its official tie-in with the London Marathon from next year has potentially
given Bmycharity and JustGiving charity clients another option to consider (aside
from the fact that their website collapsed last week). 

So which should we choose?  Given that charities have to pay some form of nominal
charge to register for these services and then a transaction-based fee to enable
fundraisers to support them online, understanding the various pricing models is 
key to choosing the right service for any charity.  I tried to draw up a comparison
table for inclusion with this article but after much crossing out and calculator
work, I only managed to draw two conclusions instead:

 1. The best priced deal will depend on how many transactions the charity thinks will
    be generated, over what time period and how much support they will need from the
    provider.  The transaction fees differ across providers and, when coupled with 
    the variable set-up charges, monthly contract options, volume discounts and additional
    service charges (such as debit card fees), it became clear that one size does not
    fit all. 
 2. All three (proven in Bmycharity and JustGiving’s case) can do the basics; collect
    donations, manage the gift aid calculations, provide basic reporting on campaign
    progress and enable fundraisers to create their own web pages to attract donors

Which is the cheapest basic service will be a maths exercise depending on each charity’s
own circumstances.  There are of course other factors beyond the pricing model to
consider as cost effectiveness and positive impact are not the same as ‘cheapest’.

As a communications specialist, anything which gives me the opportunity to provide
a relevant, positive and timely platform to engage with fundraisers and potential
supporters appeals very strongly.  JustGiving enables individual fundraisers to 
tell their stories on [personalised pages](http://www.justgiving.com/darrenmellor3)
and to incorporate a few paragraphs about the charity they support.  They also offer
charities a static [information page](http://www.justgiving.com/helpforheroes) to
explain a little about what they do.

Whilst there are thousands of charities registered (useful if you are looking for
inspiration), I couldn’t find any which really used their few paragraphs to try 
and encourage people to support them more broadly.  Lots of information but not 
so much engagement.

Bmycharity positions itself slightly differently in that it claims to provide charity
clients with the wherewithal to do just that.  On reviewing a few examples, I can
see how some of their more thoughtful charity clients are using this extra service
to good effect.  For example, breast cancer charity [Walk the Walk](http://www.bmycharity.com/walkthewalk)
uses its pages to encourage donations, inform visitors of future events, showcase
videos of events, link to twitter communications and, overall, tries to create a
sense of community for supporters by inviting them to ‘join in’ at various points.

Children’s medical research charity [Sparks](http://www.bmycharity.com/betfairskydivers)
goes a step further and offers alternative fundraising ideas such as inviting visitors
to use the charity service on ebay in support of the cause and giving its corporate
partner promotional space – mutual benefit.

Still others seek to recruit volunteers and to take the opportunity to show what
a difference people’s donations will actually make to the charity’s beneficiaries.

We don’t yet know what Virgin Money Giving’s offering will look like in the flesh
but I doubt it will be long before charities start to use the service and we will
have some real world examples to consider.

It’s not my place to make a recommendation as to which service charities should 
use but I have noted a couple of things when reviewing what’s on offer.  Firstly,
charities do need to think about integrating their communications opportunities 
with fundraisers and use each platform at their disposal to the maximum effect. 
This means using the tools available to grow support and blowing our own trumpets
more broadly than simply offering fundraisers an online collection service. 

Lastly, I’m not even sure charities should be choosing a single provider.  Take 
the much (digitally) publicised case of Amanda Wilkie – @MandyPandy32 to her twitter
friends.  Amanda has successfully networked across twitter to both raise the profile
of Walk the Walk (her page on Bmycharity has attracted more than 22,000 visitors,
generating significant positive awareness for the charity), and to overtly ask for
sponsorship.  Amanda uses both Bmycharity and JustGiving to maximise her chances
of raising donations.  Consequently, this means Walk the Walk needs a presence on
both services to maximise the benefits.

Thoughts welcome as ever.

 

 * **[Bmycharity introduces 0% commission on online fundraising](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/10/01/bmycharity-introduces-0-commission-online-fundraising/)**(
   1 October 2009)
 * **[Online giving services for charities improve again](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/10/01/online-giving-services-charities-improve-again/)**(
   1 October 2009)
 * **[Online donations double at commission-free Bmycharity](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/12/09/online-donations-double-commissionfree-bmycharity/)**(
   9 December 2009)

## Comments

### By: admin

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/05/01/online-fundraising-and-donation-which-service-use/#comment-3636
- Published: 2009-05-01T15:43:00+01:00

Thanks Kevin. That is a very good overview, and I’ve seen it mentioned in a few 
posts on Twitter already.

I’ll just be fair to Virgin Money Giving and point out that it wasn’t their site
that went down on Monday (they don’t formally go live until this summer) but the
site of the Virgin London Marathon which opened up (briefly!) to registrations from
would-be runners.

### By: jonathanwaddingham

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/05/01/online-fundraising-and-donation-which-service-use/#comment-3637
- Published: 2009-05-01T17:03:54+01:00

Kevin, thanks for making the comparison, but I don’t feel like you’ve really delved
into the differences between the services.

You mention how Justgiving enables people to create their own page, get their own
message out on our site, but with content and internet visits more distributed nowadays,
you’ve neglected to mention how Justgiving is the only service to offer widgets 
people can put on their blogs/sites and a Facebook application that has been used
by over 300,000 people to raise money.

Connecting with the social web and people’s distributed online presences is vital
these days, and giving the estimated 9 million UK users of Facebook an easy way 
to fundraise is something only we provide.

PS, the reason Mandy also used Justgiving is that it gave her sponsors another way
to donate (via PayPal) – [http://twitter.com/MandyPandy32/status/1603637862](http://twitter.com/MandyPandy32/status/1603637862)–
this is something we added to our site in January after listening to our users, 
and is not a feature offered anywhere else. Because we are a profit making business,
we can put those profits back into the site to make it easier to use and enable 
people to raise more through providing new services. And with 10% of all donations
on Justgiving now being made through PayPal since its introduction, I can’t help
feeling that fundraisers are missing out on donations by other services not offering
it as a form of payment.

Jonathan Waddingham
 Charity champion Justgiving dd 020 7067 0923 email [jonathan@justgiving.com](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/05/01/online-fundraising-and-donation-which-service-use/jonathan@justgiving.com#comment-3637)
6-7 St Cross St, London, EC1N 8UA [http://justgiving.wordpress.com](http://justgiving.wordpress.com)

### By: guyaubertin

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/05/01/online-fundraising-and-donation-which-service-use/#comment-3638
- Published: 2009-05-04T19:59:32+01:00

An interesting article. We use both online providers as we feel that choice is important.

Both options have strengths and weaknesses: reach, branding, customisation, back
end reporting, gift aid reporting etc. It is fairly obvious: one party has a fundraiser
focus the other a charity focus. Example: above, Johnathan addresses the points 
missing in yiur article about their fundraiser options not charity ones, though 
I believe this is coming. As a result I tailor our approach to each based on their
strengths.

Cost differences between the 2 are smoke and mirrors (though their websites would
like to disagree)…much depends on the size of the total amount of donations an organisation
is putting through the varying parties. Paypal is an interesting one and prior to@
Mandypandy we have never been asked for it…

One thing not mentioned by the article is the opportunity that online donation systems
can miss out on is the charity thanking properly the actual donor. Neither party
provides a proper in-house solution to this – the text available to thank donors
specifically is paltry; the onus is put back on the charity to do it through their
own systems by way of providing a data file of only those that want to be contacted
again by the charity…which means it doesn’t always get done and the thanking is 
then limited. This is one of the single biggest opportunities that charities who
use online systems should really try to get around.

@Mandypandy has done an incredible job at raising awareness of the charity and raising
a heap of money. But Twitter is only part of the options available to fundrasiers(
if they ‘get’ it) and charities but in our experience it works better for our fundraisers
than us. On the flip side Facebook and our own recently launched forum provide a
better vehicle at communicating our message to the thousands of walkers taking part
in our events and helping them directly with fundraising ideas.

Will be interesting to see what happens with Virgin Giving…

Guy Aubertin
 Commercial Director Walk the Walk

### By: benbrabyn

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/05/01/online-fundraising-and-donation-which-service-use/#comment-3639
- Published: 2009-05-05T08:54:50+01:00

Hi Kevin

Thanks for this survey of the services available. You’ve highlighted one of the 
key differences – that we (uniquely) provide our client charities with the opportunity
to communicate, recruit and develop individual and corporate relationships through
their sponsorship pages, through a real-time content management service.

I should explain **why** we do this. We believe that a sponsorship page is a fantastic
opportunity for a charity to communicate and engage, as well as collect donations.
By helping our charity partners to engage we lower their cost of supporter recruitment
and we also boost their average donation values and conversion rates.

We don’t provide a Facebook application since this removes the opportunity for the
charity to get these messages across (it’s very easy to link direct to a Bmycharity
page from Facebook – thousands of our users do this).

The numbers speak for themselves – our donation averages are higher than Justgiving’s
and the gap is growing.

We don’t currently offer Paypal because the charges are higher than for alternative
cards, and if you compare the fundraising performance of Amanda Wilkie’s Bmycharity
and Justgiving pages you will see that (at present) she has raised more than 40 
times as much through Bmycharity (for her story check [http://bmy.typepad.com](http://bmy.typepad.com)).

Choice is healthy in any market and Virgin Money’s approach indicates the value 
that their marketeers associate with fundraising pages. For those charities that
want to use this opportunity to build relationships with supporters rather than 
appear as just another charity asking for money, or as a marketing conduit for Virgin
Money, we exist to provide an alternative.

### By: kevin baughen

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/05/01/online-fundraising-and-donation-which-service-use/#comment-3640
- Published: 2009-05-05T09:49:44+01:00

Jonathan, thanks for your thoughts. Looking at the various players and how much 
detail there is to review, I couldn’t have done any more in less than 1000 words!

You are absolutely right that I was bound to scratch the surface and, being the 
comms person I am, focused on those services of most interest to someone like myself.

Thanks for adding more detail which I am sure brings a broader perspective to the
discussion – much appreciated.

Kevin Baughen is the founder of Bottom Line Ideas (www.bottomlineideas.com) and 
a volunteer speaker for Cancer Research UK

### By: kevin baughen

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/05/01/online-fundraising-and-donation-which-service-use/#comment-3641
- Published: 2009-05-06T09:30:59+01:00

Guy makes a really interesting point regarding closing the feedback loop and thanking
donors for their support.

 [Bryan Miller’s latest blog on See the Difference](http://bigtweet.com/c/b/twitter/rachelbeer/6Svwr)
suggests that they may have some of the answers – at least in video form.

 Kevin Baughen is the founder of Bottom Line Ideas (www.bottomlineideas.com) and
a volunteer speaker for Cancer Research UK