JustGiving’s charges queried by BBC journalist
Howard Lake | 2 November 2010 | Blogs
“Are the charges of charity-giving websites fair?” asks Nigel Cassidy, Business reporter at BBC Online. In particular, he questions the charges of JustGiving, since it is the market leader.
He quotes some users of the site who, not surprisingly, point out that there are other online giving sites that charge less and that they’d like to see a bit more money going to the charities.
What no-one will say is that JustGiving shouldn’t be making a charge, or that JustGiving doesn’t make its charges clear and obvious.
Advertisement
So, it is a non-story, beyond the fact that anyone in my view has the right to query the charges of a company providing services to a charity. But it’s not ‘news’.
JustGiving is a commercial organisation with currently an unparalleled record in generating over £700 million for charities since 2001. It invests a lot of money in providing new products and services, offers a lot of educational resources to charities, and attracts a devoted following of users, both charities and individuals.
Of course, there are other providers – which makes for a dynamic and healthy market, which surely only charities can benefit from?
Here is the BBC’s news item:
[The video at news.bbc.co.uk is no longer available because it was displayed using the deprecated Flash].
and here is a response from an individual whose charity uses JustGiving to fundraise:
And here is another:
[The video at https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z0tEYrK47fY is no longer available]
So, the BBC gives us: a commercial company charges money for its services (yes, folks, charities don’t get everything for free in this world), it does very well, it spawns competitors. But maybe it could charge a bit less.
That stretches my understanding of the definition ‘news’.
Related posts
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.