We’ve been talking reporting, events, best practice and sharing insight and knowledge from the Virgin Money Giving website.

From speaking with various charities – large and small – we received a fair few questions about reporting, so here are some hints that we hope will help.

Fundraisers and events

To manage fundraisers and events, sign into your reporting and use Reporting > Flexible Reports > Fundraising Pages. This report will show you a full list of all fundraising pages, any contact details, the event the fundraisers are undertaking, and how much the event has raised. The report also shows you how they are doing against any target you’ve set.

Reconciling donations

To check what have we paid into your bank account go to Reporting > Standard Reporting > Payments. The report is filed under Statement Summary and shows you the payments you have received and gives a breakdown on donation, Gift Aid or both.

Once you know what has been paid you can see the detail making up the payment for your finance reconciliation. Have a look in Reporting > Flexible Reporting > Payments. There are two reports, one for donations and one for Gift Aid (depending on which you have received you will use one or both of these reports). This will show you who made the donations, whose page it was made to and how much it was for.

Standard Reports

We also got asked about Standard Reports. These are fixed in place and are available for quick reference. They can be printed out but can’t be exported as spreadsheets.

For a more detailed picture the flexible reports hold much more information and they can be edited to suit your needs or used as a spreadsheet. You can also edit any flexible report to only include the information you are interested in.

Looking up Fundraiser details

If you want to quickly find the details of a fundraiser, you can sign into your charity account and click on Reporting and Manually Allocate Report Codes. Using this screen you can search for a fundraiser, get their contact details and view their page in just a few clicks.

If you missed out on our workshops we can set up a Webex sessions so that you can see our screen as we go through your questions and get you set up for using the site. If you would be interested in one of these sessions contact help@virginmoneygiving.com or contact us on 08456 10 10 45.

It’s now just over a month since many of you ran the 2012 Virgin London Marathon and by now the legs should have (hopefully) stopped aching.

If you ran this year’s marathon and fundraised on Virgin Money Giving then you should have received an email from us with a short survey.

Our ‘quick click’ survey is your opportunity to tell us how you found your fundraising experience and will help us to provide the right support for future fundraisers.

What’s more, as a thank you for completing the survey everyone who submits their answers by 29 June 2012 will stand a chance of winning a place in the 2013 Virgin London Marathon. But don’t worry if you’re not so keen to run again – you can gift your place to a friend or your favourite charity.

Terms and conditions apply

Last month we  unveiled our new logo and started using it at the Virgin London Marathon. Since then we’ve been busy behind the scenes working on new ‘donate now’ and ‘start fundraising’ buttons for your websites and blogs as well as new flyers for our member charities to use. We’ll also be updating the Virgin Money Giving website.

If you’re a member charity and you’d like to pre-order our new free fundraiser flyers just drop us an email to help@virginmoneygiving.com. They’re available in  either A5 or A4,  just let us know how many you’d like of each.  Our fundraising flyers are a great tool to pop into any packs you send to your fundraisers, so make sure you get your orders in.

We’ll get them in the post to you once they’re printed.

Over the past few weeks the Virgin Money Giving charity support team have been out and about meeting up with some of our member charities.

We’ve held a series of free workshops in London and Manchester, with Newcastle next on our tour.

Chatting with some of the charities we wanted to highlight some of the features of Virgin Money Giving that can help charities make more from their fundraisers and events.

• Using a fundraising page as an appeal page -  You can create specific event and then fundraising page to support any appeals your charity runs. Encourage your charity supporters to donate through this page, instead of directly and you can easily tell how much money you’ve raised through the appeal your reports.
• Event Deep links are special web addresses that you can use to send to your fundraisers or add to your website. They link directly to a specific event (e.g. the Virgin London Marathon) and pre-populate the fundraising page with your charity, making it even easier for them to get started and ensures they select your charity for ‘open events’.
• Quickly look up fundraiser details – If you want to quickly find the details of someone raising money for your charity, simply sign into your charity account and click on ‘reporting’ and ‘manually allocate report codes’. From here you can search for a fundraiser get their contact details and view their page in just a few a clicks.
• The thank you message - is a great way to contact your fundraisers and donors. These messages can be tailored to say what’s important to you – either about your cause or to promote events you have. Someone sponsoring their friend could be inspired to do something similar.

We also got asked a lot about the charity reporting on Virgin Money Giving, and we’ll be covering some of the top tips on how to make the most of your data in a future blog post.

Further help and tips can be found in on line our help guides, or get in touch with our charity help desk – they’re here if you need them.

If you think you’d be interested in attending future workshops please email us at help@virginmoneygiving.com with your Charity Name and location. We can then let you know of any future workshops happening in your area.

Following the recent trend in fundraisers cycling their way to their charity total, Jim Windass is taking to the saddle to cycle from LA to Chicago, along America’s historic Route 66, for Dove House Hospice.

Jim’s taking on this huge personal challenge to raise £10,000 (hopefully more!) in memory of his late wife Christine, who was lost to cancer in July 2010.

Dove House Hospice offers palliative care for people over the age of 18 with life-limiting illnesses. It is the only hospice in the Hulland East Riding area of Yorkshire.

Dove House cared for Christine in a difficult time for Jim and his family, providing an invaluable service. They totally rely on fundraisers like Jim just to keep going, raising the essential funds required to maintain the lifeline that Dove House Hospice provides.

Jim will start his epic journey at the Loving Heart Hospice in Los Angeles, and he’ll follow the ‘Main Street of America’ – Route 66. His route winds through Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, Arizona and New Mexico, connecting California to Illinois– finishing over 2,400 miles later in Chicago!

He’s starting on 4 August, and will hopefully finish 3-4 weeks later. His big ride will be supported by a variety of events, including a music night and upcoming public spin cycling challenge.

You can sponsor Jim and find out more about his challenge on his blog and facebook page.

First off – think of a theme for your video. Maybe take inspiration from a movie or music video. This could be you out training, or talking about the event or charity you’re fundraising for. We’ve seen fundraisers filming while out running (even as they cross the line at marathons), talking through their fundraising efforts or holding cake sales to boost their total.

You can go as technical as you want – but your epic production doesn’t need super expensive HD video kit. A smartphone or digital compact/SLR camera that shoots video should do perfectly.

There are plenty of free tools to help with editing and post production, including iMovie (bundled with most new Apple computers) and Windows Movie Maker. Both are relatively easy to use and allow you to cut your clips and add on screen text (such as your Virgin Money Giving page address). If one of your mates is a budding director why not rope them in to help.

Here’s a couple of video’s we’ve seen fundraisers using:

Paris to London Run  by Anna and Victoria

Alex from Virgin Balloon Flights

When you’re happy with your video upload it to YouTube and make sure you add it to your Virgin Money Giving page too. There’s a handy help guide that tells you all you need to know on how to add it.

If you’re taking part in an event a few months away, why not look at updating your page and videos to let people know how you’re getting on (you can add more than one video to your Virgin Money Giving page).

Have you made a video for your fundraising page? Why not share the link in the comments below and we’ll update this post with more of your examples.

Over the past few months you’ll have seen some of our fundraising competitions, offering you the chance to win a donation to your Virgin Money Giving page.

We’re really excited to  announce some of the winners – a huge well done to everyone.

Darren Lambe was the prize draw winner of the ‘Raise over £700 competition’ for his Virgin London Marathon fundraising efforts. Darren ran for Kidney Research UK.

For the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon prize draw, winner Heather Brown received £500 towards her fundraising for Tommy’s.

Congratulations are also in order for Adam Mumford, fundraising for Breast Cancer Care, Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research and the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation. Adam’s name  was drawn  for the Blenheim Triathlon competition and will see the £500 split between his causes.

Martin Cowley,  fundraising for MND Association, won the Virgin Active London Triathlon prize draw and finally Wesley Douglas was drawn as the winner of the Etape Caledonia prize draw. Wesley’s £500 donation will be going to Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Remember to keep checking our blog as we’ve got more competitions coming up. And why not recommend us to your fundraising friends – you could be a winner in our monthly ‘Recommend a friend to Virgin Money Giving’ prize draw too!

We’re carrying out overnight maintenance to the Virgin Money Giving, including the updates we need to make due to the e-privacy directive.

As a result the website will be unavailable between 22:00 16 May & 06:00 17 May

If you have any questions please call our team on 08456 10 10 45 or email us at theteam@virginmoneygiving.com. We’re here Monday to Friday, between 9am and 5.30pm.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, but it’s important for us to carry out this type of maintenance to ensure the website runs efficiently to support your fundraising.

We’re making some changes to the Virgin Money Giving website to support the new ‘EU Privacy and Communications Directive’ which you’ll see the first time you visit our website. As part of the changes we’ll advise you that cookies from our website to be saved in your web browser.

Cookies are harmless text files that help to make the interaction between you and our website faster and easier. For example, they can remember that you’re signed in as you move about the website or information you supply as you set up a fundraising page.

What cookies don’t do is store any personal or confidential information about you. They can’t look into your computer or read any personal information or other material on your hard drive. Cookies can’t carry viruses or install anything harmful on your computer.

We advise you to keep cookies active during your visits to our website because parts of the site rely on them to work properly. For example, you won’t be able to sign in to your account or make a donation if cookies are disabled.

In just under a month Small Charity Week will be launched giving charities the chance to raise their profile, gain knowledge, fundraise and celebrate their successes.

Taking place on 11-15 June the week is split into five themes:

• I Love Small Charities Day.
• Big Advice Day.
• Policy Day.
• Fundraising Day.
• Celebration Day.

Each of these days and events have been arranged to give small charities free help and advice. Policy Day on 13 June also sees the launch of the Small Charity Policy Forum and Small Charity Localism research.

The week culminates with ‘Celebration Day’ which will include a mini charity festival in central London and small charities having their films profiled on the Community Channel.

You can find out more about being a part of the event by checking out the Small Charity Week website. To book any of the free initiatives email info@smallcharityweek.com