How Race for Life is using JustGiving’s APIs
Howard Lake | 2 February 2011 | Blogs
I work within the Digital Department at Cancer Research UK and my role is to get as many people as possible fundraising online. This is made easier by our partnership with JustGiving, who work tirelessly to help us reach more people and raise more money.
Tesco and Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life 2011 opened for entries on 17th January and this year we are hoping thousands of women will come together to raise over £80 million to fund Cancer Research UK’s life-saving work.
For 2011, the focus has been on simplifying the Race for Life entry process and making it as easy as possible for people to create their online fundraising page as part of that user journey. The introduction of the JustGiving APIs has allowed us to integrate the event entry and page creation processes – making it easier and more tempting than ever before to start fundraising online.
The APIs enable us to recognise if people have used JustGiving before so that we can provide a customised user journey for both new and existing online fundraisers. By the end of the Race for Life entry form, their JustGiving page is ready and waiting for them and by either simply logging in or creating a password for their account they can go straight to their page.
All Race for Life fundraising pages reflect the colours and theme of the event with default images and a message that participants can add to or update to make their page their own. Our supporters go to great lengths to transform their pages by adding photos and their own messages that never fail to be inspiring.
As well as being able to send their friends and family a link to their page fundraisers can also share their page and fundraising progress on Twitter and Facebook straight from JustGiving. Recent research from JustGiving indicates that a ‘like’ on Facebook is effectively worth £5, highlighting the importance of social media integration. And with 71% of the adult UK population now on Facebook it is no surprise this is the highest source of traffic to fundraising pages.
This is a new approach for Cancer Research UK in 2011 and our first foray into using the APIs JustGiving have made available. It’s still early days, but we are already seeing more people than ever before opting to fundraise online.
If you want to take part in Race for Life you can enter now at www.raceforlife.org or via the hotline: 0871 641 1111.
Joanne Warner (@JoanneWarner) is a Senior Team Manager at Cancer Research UK.
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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.