Welcome to our new monthly product update! Our teams are always working hard behind the scenes to launch new innovations, helpful account features and fundraising tools that are designed to help you and your supporters raise more and do good through JustGiving. Over the past year we’ve told you about our big updates (personalised QR codes, livestreaming and our Strava integration to name just a few) but we know that sometimes it’s the small changes that can make the biggest difference. So, in our new monthly product updates we’re going to share a round-up of what our teams have been working on.

Let’s get started and take a look back on what was new in January 2021!

Two new fundraising email journeys

You may remember that last September we launched a new and improved fundraiser email journey. We’re delighted to share that our CRM team have now launched a further TWO new email journeys (show-offs).

Fundraising Page donor journey

With over 20 years’ experience in online fundraising, we’ve been able to analyse what behaviours help people raise more money online, including that donor sharing can help fundraisers to raise up to 7x more! This new email journey is designed specifically for people donating to Fundraising Pages, sending them data driven recommendations that encourage them to rally behind their favourite fundraisers.

The new journey contains 21 personalised and segmented email variants, with donors receiving emails that best match the timing of their donation and the content of the Fundraising Page that they’ve given to. It’s a new journey that we’re going to keep perfecting over the next few months, and we’re aiming to share overall engagement and behavioural metrics with you later in the year.

In Memory fundraising email journey

We want to make sure that the tone of the emails we send to people raising money in memory of someone is appropriate and empathetic, which is why we have launched a new email journey that is unique to this group of fundraisers. In the past 12 months alone, they’ve helped to raise over £17.5million for charitable causes, so we want to take good care of them.

The in-memory email journey consists of 15 personalised email variants, and the overall look and feel is warmer, more sensitive and encourages fundraisers to still make the most of their page in a tailored way that leaves them feeling reassured and supported.

Donation refund report

Last year, we asked you if you’d like to see refunds in your JustGiving account report and a resounding 82% of you said yes. We’re pleased to say that this is now available in your charity reporting!

We process refunds on the behalf of your donors and previously donations made through JustGiving would appear in a Donations report up until the point they’re refunded, before being removed. Now, through the new Donation Refund Report, you’ll have greater visibility of your donor transactions and you’ll easily know why a donation has been removed from a report. If your JustGiving account is linked to your charity’s CRM system, then this also means that donation changes can be easily updated on your system to help keep all of your data consistent. Plus, you still have all of the handy functionality that you get with our other reports, such as creating your own templates and filtering the columns you need in excel.

If you have any questions, then you can read the helpful guide created by our support team.

Donate button text testing

We’re always looking for ways to optimise JustGiving pages and make them more user friendly, particularly for people who wish to make a donation. Our teams have been testing the text that shows on our donate buttons, looking to see if we can make the buttons more inspiring and result in more people choosing to make a donation to their chosen page.

We’ve successfully run button tests across Fundraising Pages, Campaign Pages and Crowdfunding Pages, using the words:

• Donate (this was used as our control for the testing)
• Donate today
• Donate now
• Give now
• Back fundraiser

‘Give now’ received the most positive response across all pages, resulting in an 8% uplift in donations made on JustGiving Fundraising Pages! We’ll continue to test throughout the year so that we can ensure we’re using language that is a clear favourite for donors (and ultimately that helps to raise those extra pounds for your charity).

Streamlining fundraiser streaming set-up

We have an awesome, dedicated livestreaming area on our website for fundraisers who would like to use livestreaming (broadcasting a live video online) as a way to fundraise. If a fundraiser wants to connect a Twitch page to a JustGiving page that they’re managing, then they’re directed to log in and update a few details in their account so that they can access and make the most of handy donation buttons and overlays. Previously, once someone logged in, they had to manually type in the URL of the JustGiving page that they would like to fundraise for. Although it was a small step, we found that it was putting some people off and resulting in them not completing the set-up. We have now removed this barrier by automatically populating the URL for them once they log in, making it quicker and easier to start livestream fundraising!

Tell us your ideas and feedback

All of the product updates, innovations and new launches are done with YOU in mind, so share your ideas and platform feedback with us! Tell us what you’d love to see on JustGiving by using our Ideas Bank.