It’s sometimes curious how the social element of social networking works. I met-up with JustGiving’s Jonathan Waddingham at the London bloggers meetup in March. He said that he subscribed to my Tweets because I managed to grab the @wadds Twitter moniker before him. Sorry fella. He’s @jon_bedford if you want to follow him.
Jonathan was good enough to agree to a Q&A interview about his role at JustGiving, attitudes to charitable giving in the recession, his love of cooking and his favourite greasy spoon in London. Read on.
Describe your job
I’m responsible for the communications to Justgiving’s 5,500 charity clients. That involves writing our email newsletters, posting the charity focussed stories on our blog and speaking at various conferences on the subject of online fundraising and how charities can make the most of the web.
I’ve recently been working on researching how donors attitudes to giving have been affected by the credit crunch on Justgiving, and always keep my eye open for success stories or innovative uses of the web to share with charities. Writing things like our recent introduction to Twitter, fundraising & Justgiving – explaining how sites work, sharing our insight and online fundraising know-how – is what I love doing.
What is JustGiving’s model?
We’re a social enterprise and we take a 5% transaction fee on the donations we process. Any profit is re-invested back into the company to improve the site, extend the platform, and provide more services to help people raise money for charities online.
There’s a great video explanation of our how fees work using the medium of Playmobil toys…
Is charitable giving suffering in the recessionary climate?
I mentioned some research we’ve been doing earlier, and it’s fair to say that the economic climate has had an effect on donations. What’s been interesting is that whilst people have told us that they’ve been thinking harder about how much they give, not everyone is giving less – some people have actually started giving more.
How about sharing some numbers? (site stats, users/campaign, money raised etc)
Sure thing. Last year, we helped people raise just under £150 million (including Gift Aid) for UK charities on the site. In total, we’ve helped over 7 million people raise over £400 million for more than 6,500 charities since we launched in 2001. As for site stats, we’re approaching our busiest time of year (with people raising money for the London Marathon) so we had a shade over 6 million visits to the site in March, from around 4 million unique visitors which generated almost 15 million page impressions.
We are the largest online fundraising platform in the world so it takes quite a few techies to keep us up and running. In fact, 45 people work at Justgiving, supporting donors and fundraisers, charities, the website and all our donation processing systems.
Tell us about some of the most spectacular uses of JustGiving?
Ooh, good question, there have been quite a few. I would have to pick the appeal set up to raise money for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance after they saved Richard Hammond’s life after his crash on Top Gear. The campaign started with one post in a motoring forum and spread virally to raise £190,000 online in a week.
Another similar case would be the Atheist Bus campaign –again this had an amazing viral spread that seemed to capture people’s imagination and led to £110,000 being donated online in a week. It’s still going strong, having raised almost £150,000, and it’s pretty much the world’s most expensive forum, where many people are having conversations on the fundraising page by making a £2 donation every time they leave a comment.
And which JustGiving campaigns are most memorable?
Again, this is a tricky one. We see so many amazing people using the site every day, it’s hard to single some out – it’s the campaigns by everyday, normal people with a personal, often terribly sad, reason for raising money that are the most memorable and inspirational. I especially loved Emily Thackray’s “Emily’s Angel’s” page. She suffered from Cystic Fibrosis and yet was determined to walk/run a 5k to raise money for the CF trust. Her blog told the heart-wrenching story of her battle with CF and her determination to do the event – you could not read her story without shedding a tear.
She’s since had a double lung transplant and now runs her own charity (Live Life Then Give Life) who’s aim is to save and improve the lives of organ and tissue transplant patients in the UK. We even got her to come speak to the whole company once – she’s just an incredible person and inspiration, and we were all in complete awe of her.
Why the fry-up as your Twitter avatar? Which is your favourite greasy spoon in London?
I think it just fit the avatar space really well when I first joined Twitter a year ago and was looking for a photo. I love cooking, and do have a oft-mocked tendency to take photos of memorable meals I’ve cooked, so it shows that bit of my personality – plus it’s my most viewed photo on flickr… I sometimes feel like I get more comments on twitter about my avatar than anything I say, which is nice, but it does mean no one who knows me on twitter recognises me when I go to a real life tweetup!
And my favourite greasy spoon? Ooh, whilst I’ve heard lots of good things about the S & M cafe I’ve still yet to go, so I would have to say Café Delight next to Clapham North station. It’s not gourmet quality, which isn’t really the point of greasy spoons, but it wins on quantity and having black pudding and bubble & squeak. That’s a killer combo.
