And so it should be! justgiving has made it far too easy to stick up a “look at me: aren’t I good” sponsorship beside every little 10k run you do. What happened to achieving for the hell of it?

And as a web developer by career, I am on the side of those who say 5% sounds excessive.

There is some lively and passionate debate here!

Charities choose to use JustGiving. These charities are free to run their own fundraising or to use websites similar to JustGiving.

Any charity that wants to offer the most to those it supports will ask itself two questions. How do I generate the most money? And how do I minimise the cost incurred in doing this? Many charities believe that JustGiving offers the best (not perfect) answer to these questions, as illustrated by the volume of donations given this way.

Those of us who are keen to maximise the money going to charities need to also ask two questions. Can charities really do this cheaper themselves? And if they can’t, is JustGiving the best outsourced option? These are questions to be engaged with, not speculated or pontificated about.

Without having access to company finances it is not possible to definitely answer the first question. What we can say is that given the scale benefits JustGiving now enjoy, it is unlikely that for small and medium sized charities, internal fundraising is cheaper. There may be odd exceptions here and there but on the whole this is likely to be true.

The second question is more interesting. For a business that has very few variable costs, charging 5% + VAT sounds high. However, debating whether it is reasonable or not misses the point. If there were a cheaper way to do what Justgiving does, then why doesn’t an organisation emerge to do it? This is not a rhetorical question. Maybe it is because no one has the financial backing (JustGiving’s shareholders sustained £5m losses in the organisation’s early years). Maybe no one can bring together the right combination of charity and IT people (after all, charity types are not usally javascript types). Maybe no one can manage as well as their charasmatic CEO – or, maybe JustGiving are providing the best service at the lowest cost.

It is impossible to theorise definitive answers to these questions. What we can do though is make the market challenge JustGiving’s operating model. If there is a operating model that can service charities better, or an alternative operating model that can offer the same service at a lower cost, then those who are concerned about what they see as a JustGiving rip-off should try to create it. It is little use complaining and then doing nothing.

As a for-profit entity JustGiving will rise or fall in the face of competition. What will emerge is a either reluctant acknowledgement that financial transactions do actually have a cost – or, a serious challenger to the incumbant monopoly.

So, what I am saying? I’m saying that we don’t know whether JustGiving is expensive or not. What we do know is that it is wide open to competition from a better or cheaper operating model. So if you think you can do it better, I warmly and sincerely invite you to do so. Less of the JustTalking, please.

All in all services like justgiving, charitiestrust were some of the first to make it possible for individuals to raise funds in a trustworthy manner without the kind of overhead charities have. Once people realised this was a)possible b)extremely popular, hopefully a newer generation will come making it slicker, easier, and leaving more to the charity.

What would make an immediate difference at justgiving is perhaps if they were more transparent about it, and perhaps allowed the fundraiser to choose to cover the fees. They would know what the fees are, be able to offer to cover them (a bit like Kiva’s option do donate-a-little-to-them when you make a loan) – and either way know exactly the amount the charity really got.

I posed the question..

Cmash is the forum for the debate and a valuable one too if this debate is representative. As Alec points out, many individuals/orgs benefit from their service provision to the charity sector – I am included here. The question always comes down to ‘fairness’ of terms and that is obviously a subjective area. With competition in the JG market place, it would imply that the buyer has choices?

We don’t want to censor on Cmash, so let’s keep this, and other debates, clean and worthy of our intellects.

Have a good weekend all

Vicky

Vicky… “charities… also have to accept the rise and rise of justgiving as a charity brand in its own right, taking limelight from their own brands and marketing efforts.” You must be confusing JG with Virgin, surely? We will see.

I talk to charities all the time. I’ve heard absolutely no zero evidence of this “taking the limelight” accusation. Those that think this (if there are any) are on the path to irrelevance, for the power shifted long ago to the donor, and donor activists. Donors as partners.

JG and Bmycharity were a godsend to charities. The web will supply the tools for people to self-organise and fundraise, allowing charities to focus on what they do best: delivery and being the gatekeepers of social impact.

It’s not Justgiving’s fault if they need to make a charge for their services. Or is it your bank’s fault for making charges to administer your account, or an accountant for doping your book keeping? Charities are consumers too, they have the right to choose how and what they use to bring in donations.

I know a hospice that has its own Worldpay account to keep online donation charges to a minimum, but they lso use the excellent service offered by Justgiving for sponsored event donations, because they can’t beat it and it would cost more to set up their own.

Pete is sdaly wrong about paper forms for getting in donations. Sadly many charities lose a lot of £ from people who don’t cough up before or after the event. Justgiving and the other service providers offer an instant way to donate that meets the lifestyle of many younger people in particular.

Even CAF’s online service makes a charge and they are a charity!

Pete, get a life.

I think we are losing sight that at the end of the day Just Giving are a business and not a charity. They are here to provide a service, and one that there was a definite gap in the market for. they also have staff and overheads to pay, just like any business and charity. No I don’t work for JG by the way! I can only go by personal experience of dealings with them.

Working for a charity for 12 years I have always found them open, transparent and accountable, with staff that will always go that extra mile to help if there are any enquiries. No-one has mentioned for example that JG do all the paperwork and claim all the gift aid back on behalf of the charities – that’s a lot of paperwork for a small to medium sized charity to cope with!

Again from personal experience, I truly believe that we as a charity would not have received as much revenue from fundraising events if it were not for Just Giving. We hold one huge annual event for example which is heavily attended by individuals and corporates alike. Emailing contacts with a button ‘donate now’ or similar is instant. You will find that people will remember to donate and find it easier because they simply get their credit or debit card out, leave a message maybe on the page and bosh it’s done and forgotten about.

I don’t like asking people to sponsor me. I don’t mind sending them an email though. It’s then up to them. It’s all down to personal choice at the end of the day. We issue paper sponsorshop packs and forms, but also information on Just Giving. We have a saying in that its not the challenge of doing a sponsored event that’s hard, it’s collecting the money afterwards.

If you really think 5% is bad, perhaps I should refer you to the National Lottery so called set up for good causes, which donates only 28p in the £1 to good causes, the majority of that going to opera houses, ballets or similar. Again ok if that’s what you are interested in, but better spent being given to the charities and organisations which really make a difference to this country and the people who live in it at grass roots.

Point made I think.

I have not had a problem collecting money – most people give the money up front before the event happens. Okay, I might not get the chance to boast of my achievement so much this way, but the charity does get all the money and all the gift aid too. None of it is siphoned off in fees etc.

Justgiving are NOT being honest. For example, they list their fee as 5% but then add VAT on top of that. How would you feel if your favourite chocolate bar was priced on the shelf as £1.00 and that became £1.15 at the till?

They also claim to take their spoils from the gift aid – but again that is a misleading statement since they calculate their 5% + 15% fee over the whole amount.

(it doesn’t even end there, as they are collecting fee for others too)

I agree that this could be a useful service Alec – but it’s been setup to use that “could” as an excuse to take money that would otherwise have gone to the charities into justgiving’s profits.

Look at this from another angle – lets says someone asked you to donate money for a good cause and in return she would sit in a bath of beans – but she would deduct 10% of what you give as a reward(profit) for herself. Would you think that was acceptable?

If justgiving had been setup as a charity themselves then their overhead would have been lower – the fees they collect for themselves and others would have been lower too. The charities – all charities Alec, would have got more of the cash.

But they’re not a charity – more of a parasite.