On Tuesday 9 March we will be carrying out routine maintenance on the Virgin Money Giving website.
As a result the website will be unavailable between 00:01 Tuesday 9 March and 06:00 Tuesday 9 March.
Update @ 06:00
We’ve completed the changes to the website and Virgin Money Giving is now fully available again.
Today is the official launch of Run to the Beat 2010, 
and what better way to launch a running event set to live music than to hold a running challenge in a nightclub!
Celebrities, athletes and fun runners started a challenge to keep people running to the beat for 24hours on treadmills at Sound Nightlcub in Leicester Square. The challenge will see the runners keep going for 24 hours fundraising for Leukemia Lymphonia Research.
We were there to see them start their 24 hour challenge, Running to the Beat for non-stop on treadmills in the middle of a London nightclub! If you’d like to support them you can donate to their fundraising page here
Since we launched Virgin Money Giving we’ve been receiving lots of great feedback and suggestions for new features you’d like to see on our website. We’ve just made our latest updates to the website, including some enhancements and new features on fundraising pages.
All existing fundraising pages have now got the new layout, and if you’d like to add any of the new features you’ll be able to do this by editing your page.
There’s an example of an updated fundraising page below, and some info about what’s new. We’d love to know what you think, so why not post your comments on our blog?
Blogging
We’ve seen lots of fundraisers writing really interesting blogs about their training and activities leading up to their event. You can now include your blog on your fundraising page.
If you use Twitter and will be posting updates about your fundraising, maybe ‘tweeting’ live from the Virgin London Marathon course or as you cycle from London to Paris, you can now add your Twitter feed to your page.
Video
If you’ve got a video of yourself training or completing a fundraising challenge, put the video up on YouTube and then you can add it to your page. You can either add it under the photo gallery, inside your fundraising story, or both!
Photo gallery
If you add captions to your photos in Google Picasa they’ll now be brought through to your fundraising page. We’ve also increased the number of photos that can be displayed on your page in the gallery.
Share page
We’ve added ’share my page’ buttons to your fundraising page, so you’ve got a quick way to post a link to your friends.
Charity logos
We’ve moved the charity logos on your fundraising page to under your photo. This will help to keep them on the screen without scrolling, and if you’re supporting more than one charity, your donors’ messages of support won’t be so far down the page.
Need help with the new features?
To get you started with these new features there are some guides in our help section:
On 25 February we plan to update Virgin Money Giving with some new features. To do this the website will be unavailable between 21:00 Thursday 25 February and 08:00 Friday 26 February.
This will allow us to deliver the latest updates to the Virgin Money Giving website.
New help guides will be available for these new features, and we’ll be featuring whats new here on our blog, on Friday.
Update @ 06:00
We’ve completed the changes to the website and Virgin Money Giving is now fully available again.
On the 25th April the Red Arrows will be swapping their flying suits for shorts, t-shirts and trainers and taking on the 26.2 Mile Virgin London Marathon course.
The Reds are raising money on Virgin Money Giving in support of RAF Association’s wings appeal. The team hopes to raise around £40,000 for RAFA which provides friendship, help and support for past and present members of the Royal Air Force and their families.
The Red Arrows are supporting a major new Wings Appeal project called ‘Miles More Minute’. It will enable RAF personnel serving overseas to telephone home to their families more frequently, helping them to feel close to their loved ones even though they are thousands of miles apart.
The Red Arrows’ marathon team includes all nine Red Arrows display pilots, Red 10 and other members of the Red Arrows support team. In keeping with the family values of RAFA, some of the wives and partners of the pilots will also be taking on the challenge.
You can support them by making a donation to their fundraising page at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/reds
Keep an eye out for them at the start line, they’ll be the runners in formation with the smoke trails behind them!
The Bupa Great North Run ballot results have been published online. If you entered to run in the 30th race taking place on 19 September 2010 you can now check to see if you’re in by using their online ballot place checker.
http://www.greatrun.org/BallotCheck/
Congratulations to everyone who’s been successful in getting a place!!! According to their website this year over 100,000 people applied for a place and 54,000 runners will be taking to the start line.
If you’re one of the successful ballot entrants and will be running for charity, why not use Virgin Money Giving for your online fundraising? You can create your fundraising page online in just a few minutes.
Once your page is up and running don’t forget to use our Facebook application to help spread the word. We’ve also got some great tips about using Facebook and Twitter, and a guide on writing your sponsorship request emails.
To create your page for the 2010 Bupa Great North Run, just click the ’start fundraising’ button below.
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:
“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.
“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.
“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.
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.
There’s a help guide showing you how to do this too.
You can also add images into the content you add on your charity page.
Looking through some of the charity sites here are a few that caught our eye.
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.
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.
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:
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