JustGiving blog

We’ve had a couple of really entertaining months with our JustTextGiving video competition. We asked fundraisers and charities to come up with creative ways of using JustTextGiving to fundraise. We thought we would get a whole load of people simply showing their text codes on a webcam, verbally suggesting an idea, and then asking for a donation. Little did we know we’d get unique and creative ideas in videos featuring ninjas, parakeets, bald men, a massive sweet jar, a rubber duck, semi-nudity, and a piece of toast!

Your entries brightened our days and made us at JustGiving (and 20,000 other people who saw the videos) laugh, frown, smile, and stare in wide-eyed astonishment! We are so happy and proud of those of you who took part and suggested many great ways to fundraise creatively using JustTextGiving.

A MASSIVE THANK YOU !!!

The video entry with the most views has been noted, and we will now invite the judges in to pick two runners up who will win £200 donations to their charities, each. The winners will be announced on Wednesday 31st August.

We have an exciting roster of judges who have kindly agreed to come in to take on the difficult task of watching all of the entries with some drinks and nibbles, and picking two of the best. They will be joined by JustGiving’s Founder and CEO, Zarine Kharas, and we are pleased to introduce them to you now:

Ross McCulloch

Runs social media consultancy Third Sector Lab – they specialise in helping charities, social entrepreneurs and community groups build conversations online. They have recently completed social media strategy, training and website development projects with the likes of Oxfam Scotland, Think Research, Enable Scotland, Relationships Scotland and Enable Scotland. Ross has a strong third sector background, having previously worked in community planning, education and employability. Ross also sits on the Scottish Community Foundation’s national grants committee, having previously sat on funding panels for Fair Share Scotland and Comic Relief.

He is passionate about social media for social good, as well as organising the bi-annual Be Good Be Social events he is also the founder of ThirdSectorForums.co.uk – an online space for charity professionals to learn, debate and connect. You can read Ross’s thoughts on all things digital on his blog, and you’ll also find him blogging for both The Guardian and The Sunday Mail.

Rob Dyson

Rob has worked in the third sector for 11 years and is a trustee of CharityComms. In 2007, he founded the Third Sector PR & Communications Network on Facebook, to connect voluntary sector comms and digital people, journalists and fundraisers.

Rob writes for The Guardian’s Voluntary Sector Network, has a regular column in Civil Society online, blogs at AskCharity; and frequently speaks at conferences and tweet-ups on the third sector’s use of real-time web. Rob’s day job is PR Manager at young people’s charity Whizz-Kidz which includes its social media and real-time web strategy. He also blogs at robdysonpr.com.

Andrew Dunnett

Andrew Dunnett was appointed Director of the Vodafone Foundation in September 2006.   Andrew was previously an adviser to the Sustainable Development unit at the UK Department of Trade and Industry with specific responsibility for the CSR Academy, the lead initiative of the DTI’s CSR programme.

Andrew has fifteen years experience in corporate responsibility, community investment and public affairs, including advising organisations such as BTEC, the BBC, the Commission for Racial Equality and Thames Water. He also led a corporate community investment project in the City of London whilst Director of the St Ethelburga’s Foundation.

In addition to his work directing Vodafone’s foundation programme, Andrew is a Trustee of the M-Pesa Foundation (Kenya) and a Board member of the M-Health Alliance (USA).

Rachel Beer

Rachel Beer has worked as a direct marketer and fundraiser since 1995.  She co-founded Beautiful World – an agency that develops campaigns, programmes and strategies for charities across fundraising, marketing and communications – and is the creator of NFPtweetup – a regular series of events to help charities understand and get results and value from social and other digital media.

Rachel has worked with a huge range of charities and not-for-profit organisations and has held roles both charity and agency side.  She is well known as a fundraising expert, digital specialist and marketing and communications strategist for the third sector and she regularly blogs, speaks and is published on these subjects.

David Wood

David’s been an active user of JustGiving since 2005. He has raised over £50,000 for various charities, and part of his success is making full use of the tools that are available, from JustGiving’s API, entering every JustGiving competition that’s going, and using video – be it to encourage yes votes in the beard debate, explaining what the London Marathon/capoeira kit was all about, or spoofing the Old Spice advert to encourage people to up their fundraising with JustGiving.

He’s sold virtual coffee entirely through Twitter for the Meningitis Trust; proved that beards are best (both with his main fundraising partner in crime, Simon) and ran this year’s London Marathon in his capoeira kit amongst many other things.

He says “It’s an honour to be chosen as a judge, and I can’t wait to see how people are going to use the amazing new tool JustTextGiving!”

Tags: justtextgiving, justtextgiving competition, vodafone, vodafone foundation