Charity Marathon place prize draw update

Over the last few months, we ran a series of prize draws giving charities who registered with us the chance to win five Virgin London Marathon 2010 places. We’ve completed two draws in September and November, here are the charities that were drawn out of the hat:

September

November

Alex and Emma from our team had the pleasure of calling our winning charities and here’s what some of them said on recieveing the news:

OCD-UK

Because of this fantastic opportunity offered to OCD-UK by Virgin Money Giving it will provide not only a fantastic personal challenge for our runners but for the charity it will provide financial stability allowing us to continue supporting children and adults affected by Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder for the considerable future, we are so grateful to Virgin Money Giving.” – Ashley Fulwood, OCD-UK.

Christian Lewis Trust

In the current financial climate, along with many other organisations that are entirely dependent on voluntary donations, Christian Lewis Trust has been struggling to maintain let alone enhance the services it provides to children and their families affected by cancer. The London Marathon has always been a highlight in the charity’s fundraising schedule as the income raised gives a massive boost to day to day fundraising initiatives. To have won five places for the Virgin London Marathon 2010 is a real bonus and has come at a time when the charity will more than ever appreciate the extra income these places will generate. Thanks you so much!” – Sharon Gosney, Christian Lewis Trust.

Children With Aids Charity

CWAC has had the most difficult year on record due to the impact of the global downturn. We have experienced an unprecedented increase in requests for help by young children who are infected or affected by HIV and the recession has impacted on our ability to deliver assistance to all those in need. Finding out that we have been awarded an additional 5 London marathon places by the Virgin Money Giving team has given the team a welcome boost and we look forward to working closely together to ensure that the 2010 event is the most successful on record.” – Lesley, Children with Aids Charity.

Congratulations to the winners, who each get five places in the race. We look forward to seeing all your runners on the big day.

How to make the most of your charity page

One of the features we built into Virgin Money Giving allows charities to create their own ‘mini-sites’ on and add as much content to as they like. We designed them so they could be branded up and charities could add extra pages.

Charities have been using them for a while now so we thought we’d post our top 5 tips on how to make the most of your area of the site and share some great examples with everyone else.

Our top 5 tips

  1. Turn your page the colour of your charity
    Choose your charity’s colour, or a colour that compliments your logo and we’ll apply this to the header, footer, and navigation area of your page. There’s a colour picker in your charity account which you can use to choose a colour, or if you have brand colours you can either enter these by their RGB values, or the Hex Code. If you’ve got a marketing or brand team they will be able to provide these for you.

    There’s a help guide showing you how to do this too.

  2. Show people what you do
    To help communicate the message of what your charity does and who it supports, use pictures. There are a couple of ways you can add images to your page. If you have a collection of photos you want to share, why not add the photo gallery widget. You just need to add the pictures you like to a gallery on Google’s free Picasa service, which you can either do first, or through our web-site when you’re creating your page. There’s a help guide on adding photos to your page

    You can also add images into the content you add on your charity page.

  3. More than just a description
    When you first create your charity account on Virgin Money Giving we’ll automatically add the description you entered as part of registration to your charity page, but you can make it so much more than this. You can add as much information to your page as you like about what your charity does and how the money raised will make a difference.
     
  4. More to say? Add more pages
    You can add as many extra pages to your charity page as you like. Either do this to add more content about the work your charity does, or your fundraising activities. If your charity has guaranteed places in events such as the Virgin London Marathon, or the Royal Parks Half Marathon why not create a page for this? You can use the space to tell fundraisers how to apply for one of your places and what support you can provide for them too.
     
  5. Spread the word
    Tell your fundraisers you’re on Virgin Money Giving. Make sure you link to your charity page on Virgin Money Giving from your own website, Facebook group, emails and anywhere that you mention online fundraising. We’ve got some buttons which you can make use of here.

Some great examples

Looking through some of the charity sites here are a few that caught our eye.

University Hospital Birmingham Charities

OCD UK

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Cecily's Fund

We’d love to know what you think of the charity page features or if your charity has built a page you really like why not share it with us, post a comment to the blog or email feedback@virginmoneygiving.com.

Ollie’s Story

Thousands of people raise money for good causes by running the London Marathon. Ollie’s sister Georgie is running the Marathon on her behalf to raise money for CLIC Sargent. We’d like to share Ollie’s story with you.

Ollie is 18 and was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma (bone cancer) in January 2009.

She originally went into hospital with backache in November and following scans had an operation. It was only after the operation that a biopsy revealed she had cancer. Ollie then began a series of 14 chemotherapy sessions with the last one taking place this November.

The months following the end of the chemotherapy will be very challanging, with the fear of relapse and also returning to school to re-start her AS levels.

Supported by CLIC Sargent, Ollie is recording a webumentary to give an insight into her treatment, progress and personal experiences. Ollie is posting regular video updates on the CLIC Sargent website, one of which you can see below where Ollie is in hospital talking about her chemotherapy treatment.

Ollie’s sister Georgie will be running the 2010 Virgin London Marathon to raise money for CLIC Sargent with her boyfriend Ben.

Their training has got off to a good start. They’re both currently running 5-6 miles in a loop around Abersoch, North Wales 5 times a week, with their route currently including a run up nearby hills and along the beach.

Georgie said she’s finding the running is getting easier, and she’s starting to enjoy it more and more. Instead of listening to music while they run, they prefer to chat, but she said as the distances increase they may run out of things to talk about, and will no doubt have to start listening to music.

Georgie’s fundraising page can be found at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/runningforollie. You can follow Ollie’s story on CLIC Sargent’s website.

If you’ve got a place in the 2010 Virgin London Marathon you can create your fundraising page here.

Richard Branson talking at ‘Raising funds from the Rich’

As well as officially launching Virgin Money Giving on 14 October, Sir Richard Branson attended Action Planning’s annual conference ‘Raising funds from the Rich’ to deliver a keynote speech and take questions.

If you weren’t able to attend, or you’d like to hear the speech again it’s available in full below:

Virgin Money Giving official launch

On Wednesday 14th October Virgin Money Giving had its official launch.

The morning began on Potters Field in London under the view of Tower Bridge. We’d set up a stage and borrowed a London Routemaster Bus to help set the scene. Following Virgin’s sponsorship of the London Marathon it seemed only right to mark the occasion by getting together and having a go at the iconic 80’s ‘Running man’ dance.

It was great that people from many different charities could join us, and we all had a lot of fun dancing around to Beardyman who provided the beat box backing track.

Sir Richard Branson joined in too, arriving with the dancers, dressed in a lion costume.

A huge thank you to Cancer Research UK, Macmillian, Save the rhino, Save the Children, Clic Sargent, Oxfam, Barnardo’s, British Heart Foundation, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Breast Cancer Care and the guys at Virgin Active and Virgin Money for being there.

Take a look at the Virgin Money Giving flickr stream for more pictures, and to see the videos visit the ‘Run with Richard YouTube channel‘.

If you’d like a chance to ‘Run with Richard’ in the 2010 Virgin London Marathon head over to his fundraising page at www.runwithrichard.com where there are details on how you can enter the competition.

And if running the marathon seems a little daunting why not have a go at creating a video of yourself, friends or work colleagues doing the running man dance. There’s a video showing you how to do it on the ‘Run with Richard’ YouTube channel and some great examples of people having a go. For every video uploaded Virgin Money will donate £5 to Sir Richard Branson’s marathon fundraising page.

The Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon

Cheer board at the finish line

A Virign Money Giving cheer board

Last weekend the Virgin Money Giving team were out and about in Hyde Park for the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon.

We were there on Sunday to help cheer along the runners and to give out our cheer boards for friends and families of runners to decorate.

There were lots of boards being waved by the finish line with some great messages of support on them, along with our very own helpdesk team cheering and clapping as the runners came past.

It was also great to see everyone who popped into our marquee in the Brakes Food & Fitness Festival for a chat.

A huge well done to everyone who took part especially all those running for charity.

The Royal Parks Half Marathon is the first of many events we’ll be visiting through the year, keep an eye on our blog to find out where we’ll be next.

It’s great to be able to meet the people using Virgin Money Giving and to see you completing your fundraising activities for all those amazing causes.


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