eJewish Philanthropy welcomes London journalist Celina Ribeiro with this post on donor circles: In a world where reinventions of the wheel are announced with startling regularity, a new kind of circle has emerged as a new and potentially valuable fundraising mechanism. Donor circles, practiced successfully in the US for more than a decade, are beginning to gain interest from British charities, but remain, by and large, unheard of or misinterpreted. Across the proverbial pond, the donor circle is often confused with the more established ‘giving circle’, however, assuming that the co-use of the word ‘circle’ means that circles ‘giving’ and ‘donor’ are in some way related is an understandable - but wrong - conclusion. Where giving circles are self-organized groups of donors … Continue Reading
Impact Reporting Takes Hold
Savvy donors are no longer interested in flattering self-portraits from charities. They want more transparency from impact reporting as the UK's Celina Ribeiro tells us. Donors are becoming more demanding. Charities can no longer hang ‘genius at work’ signs outside their doors and expect their supporters to wait patiently to be shown a finished masterpiece. Organisations are being asked to show works in progress and any mistakes that are made. As a result impact reporting is becoming an increasingly critical component of a charity’s work. Fundraisers may well find themselves at the centre of a push for increased transparency. The push for greater transparency from the funder side has gained steam over recent months. In this spring, the Big Lottery Fund this spring commissioned a … Continue Reading
JustGiving Admits New Website ‘Unacceptable’ and Offers Charities Refunds
JustGiving will refund fees charged since re-launching the website as the chief executive admits its performance has been “unacceptable”. A week after the relaunch of the site on 20 June, chief executive Zarine Kharas wrote on the company’s blog that the “performance of the new site is totally unacceptable”. JustGiving will now refund the 5 per cent transaction fee it charged on all donations made from when the website relaunched until Saturday 27 June. The website was plagued by multiple bugs after launch, most significant of which was the inability of users to log in and the collapse of the PayPal system. Also, confirmation emails were not sent to donors, pages did not load and widgets failed. Kharas told Professional Fundraising that most of the glitches in the website were … Continue Reading
SMS Donations ‘Will be Bigger than Payroll Giving’
eJewish Philanthropy welcomes London journalist Celina Ribeiro with this post on mobile giving: Text message donations could be worth up to £100m a year to the sector in five years time, according to new research released today. If cost barriers were removed the value of fundraising via mobile phone could reach £96m before gift aid, exceeding the annual income charities receive from payroll giving, nfpSynergy’s Joe Saxton told a gathering of politicians and civil society representatives in central London this morning. The research - the culmination of a year’s work by Charities Aid Foundation, the Institute of Fundraising and nfpSynergy - found that the high cost of making donations via mobile phone and charities’ ignorance of how to use the medium are the main barriers to civil … Continue Reading
Saying No
eJewish Philanthropy welcomes London journalist Celina Ribeiro with her post, Looking a Gift Horse In the Mouth. At what point should a charity ‘just say no’? At a seminar on ethical challenges for Jewish charities hosted by the Jewish Association for Business Ethics, I was struck by the comments of one of the speakers. Dayan I Berger, an expert in Jewish law, told his audience of Jewish charity representatives that they have an ethical and pragmatic duty to investigate the source of their donations. Indeed, sometimes, to reject them. Charities, in particular Jewish ones, have a responsibility “not to bring the institution of charity into disrepute by associating with or receiving tainted money,” he said. “It belittles the concept of charity altogether.” And when a charity … Continue Reading
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