Virgin Money Giving site crashes on day of Virgin Money London Marathon
Howard Lake | 24 April 2017 | News
The Virgin Money Giving website was unavailable or difficult to reach for large parts of yesterday, the day of the Virgin Money London Marathon, the world’s largest single day fundraising event.
The outage caused problems for donors wishing to support a runner on the day of the event and to charities who had invested effort in maximising income from this major fundraising event.
In fact the Virgin Money Giving site was unavailable for a short period on the Friday night, the day before the Marathon.
@VirginMoney really frustrating that virginmoneygiving has been down most of the evening the night before the marathon.
— HannahB (@HannahBo2) April 22, 2017
Advertisement
Holding pages
The website at first carried a message stating “Sorry, Virgin Money Giving is currently unavailable” with a comment that work was underway to “restore normal service”.
This was changed to one which put the unavailability down to a “really busy” site, the result of “so many amazing people [who] are donating to their friends and family”.
Virgin Money Giving is really busy (at 1.02pm on Sunday 23 April 2017)
A Virgin Money Giving statement this afternoon referred to the downtime affecting just the morning of the event.
“Virgin Money Giving was not available for part of yesterday morning as a result of high demand. Some people may have had to try more than once but our analysis shows that everyone that came back to make a donation has been able to do so.”
The downtime generated criticism from would-be donors and charities.
Terrible that @VMGiving has been down all morning during #LondonMarathon – charities could be missing out on millions of £'s of donations!
— Laura (@aberquine) April 23, 2017
virginmoneygiving site is down due to heavy traffic. If you're trying to sponsor one of our amazing #marathon17 🏃 please pop back later.
— Demelza Charity (@DemelzaCharity) April 23, 2017
https://twitter.com/charlwaterhouse/status/856235933338927107
Others, including runners reported access problems today:
@VirginMoney #VirginMoneygiving still not loading for friends. I am loosing so much sponsorship over these issues! What is going on?
— Samuel Luke Bond (@MagpieTravels) April 24, 2017
@VirginMoney #virginmoneygiving I'm losing out on so many donations because the site keeps going down. What's going on? Awful awful timing.
— Joshua (@joshua_blake) April 24, 2017
Replies from the company on Twitter advised that this access could be due to browser caches needing to be cleared, with the assurance that donations were getting through.
https://twitter.com/VMGiving/status/856556761620283392
Others pointed to Virgin Money Giving’s positioning of itself in its marketing, contrasting its not-for-profit approach with the business model adopted by rival JustGiving:
I see Virgin money giving has gone down again… but it's ok, it has fractionally cheaper fees which is clearly more important… 🙄
— Luke W (@alukeonlife) April 23, 2017
https://twitter.com/kate_brennan/status/855014813524742147
Apology and an offer
Although the unavailability of the platform made national news
Virgin Money Giving, which hosts thousands of pages raising cash for good causes, is down on #LondonMarathon day: https://t.co/upQ02Rfae7
— PA Media (@PA) April 23, 2017
the giving platform’s Twitter account did not provide an update on the problems until 5.48pm on Sunday afternoon.
https://twitter.com/VMGiving/status/856187923888312321
The platform offered to add a donation of 10% on all donations to charity made for the remaining six hours of the Marathon day, together with the whole of the next day, today.
This 10% boost is available to all charitable donations today, not just those made to Virgin Money London Marathon runners’ pages.
Fundraising opportunity
Because of Virgin Money Giving’s offer, today is there an opportunity for all charities to secure a boost to donations via their site. Several charities have promoted this to their supporters.
Good message for fundraisers to pass on to anyone who might want to donate today/tomorrow, an extra 10% will be added on by Virgin https://t.co/G2p7CISzWg
— Daniel Fluskey (@danielfluskey) April 23, 2017
Because VirginMoneyGiving was not available part of day & to say sorry, they are boosting donations made today by10% https://t.co/oBfi7dwSnA https://t.co/96sZQpEa96
— Glass Door Homeless Charity (@GlassDoorLondon) April 24, 2017
#VirginMoneyGiving is boosting all donations made today on their site by 10%! Help fund our vital research: https://t.co/ERdjlMEzAb
— Brain Tumour Research (@braintumourrsch) April 24, 2017
How much is given to charity via the Virgin Money Giving site?
Runners in the 2016 Virgin Money London Marathon raised a record amount of £59.4m, setting a new world record for an annual single day charity fundraising event for the tenth year running.
By this point last year the site had handled £23m in donations to London Marathon runners, an increase of 12% on the year before.
Related posts
Virgin Money Giving to be fundraising partner for London Marathon until 2020
London Marathon runners raised record £54.1m in 2015
London Marathon runners raise £23m so far via Virgin Money Giving
Virgin Money Giving introduces separate campaigns pages for charities
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.