Bob, who’s never run a marathon before has been creating a series of video’s covering his experiences, from his first training session, to meeting Kids Company one of the charities benefiting from Mission:Possible.

I went to meet Bob and to talk about creating his fundraising page. You can see how we got on below:

You can catch up on all of Bob’s previous episodes over at virgin.com and his Virgin Money Giving fundraising page is at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BobFear.

If you’re currently fundraising with Bmycharity we can help you continue your fundraising. You can seamlessly switch to Virgin Money Giving in just a few minutes, to help you move your page we’ve but together a quick guide below:

1. Go to http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com and click ‘start fundraising‘.
2. Select the type of fundraising activity you’re doing.
3. Either search for the event you’re taking part in or enter the details of your fundraising activity.
4. Search for the charity you’d like to raise money for and set your fundraising target.
5. Create your account by entering your details and creating a password.
6. Add your fundraising story to your page.

No need to re-write your fundraising page

There’s no need to write your fundraising story from scratch again, you can easily copy this from your BMY Charity page:

• Go to your Bmycharity page.
• Select all of the text, right click, and choose ‘copy’.
• Then ‘paste’ this into your Virgin Money Giving page.

Keeping your fundraising total

If you’ve already made a good start with your fundraising, you can update the totaliser on your Virgin Money Giving page to show what you’ve raised elsewhere.

• Take a note of the total amount raised on your BMY Charity fundraising page.
• Add this amount in the ‘offline fundraising’ box just below the thermometer.

You can do this either when you create your new fundraising page, or at any time by signing into your account and choosing the ‘edit page’ link.

Letting everyone know about your new page

You can let everyone know where your new fundraising page is and we’ve got some tools to help you:

• Facebook:
  Add our facebook application to your profile, and share it with your friends.
• Email:
  From your fundraising account you can email all your contacts in your address book a link to your new page.
• Twitter, Facebook, linked in, and MySpace:
  You can share a link to your fundraising page on your social networks, click the icons on the right hand side of your fundraising page to send a link to your friends.
• Your Blog and Website:
  Add a button linking to your Virgin Money Giving fundraising page to your own blog or website, there’s a guide here showing how to do this.

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.

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

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.

Twitter

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:

• Adding a blog to your page
• Adding a twitter feed to your page
• Adding YouTube video to your page

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.