JustGiving targets big brands to plug funding gap
Online fundraising service JustGiving is launching its first corporate platform, targeted at FTSE 100 companies, in the hope of plugging the gap left by the decline in public sector funding and individual donations to charities.
The platform allows companies to use JustGiving’s fundraising software on their own branded websites and includes extra features including leaderboards and a running total of the entire amount raised by employees.
Head of partnerships Howard Bell says corporate giving will be a big focus for JustGiving in 2011. Until now the website has not had direct relationships with companies.
Bell says: “Charities are increasingly focused and dependent on companies to provide sustainable income. There have been lots of gaps as a result of the decline in public sector funding.”
Bell says the platform enables companies to organise its employees into groups so that departments can be pitted against each other to raise more funds.
He adds: “It creates fun, develops interest and motivation, which in turn draws more people in and ultimately leads to more funds collected by the charity.”
The new platform has been in development since September when market research revealed 80 of the top 100 companies in the UK had a “significant” number of employees already using JustGiving. It is due to go live in April.
JustGiving raised over £190.2m for charity including Gift Aid in 2010 from over 550,000 individual fundraising pages.
