Happy New Year!
By Polly | January 9, 2008
We got the year kicked off in high gear here at Everyclick.com with a fantastic piece by Katie Allen in Monday’s Guardian. The article has been making the rounds online (you can always Digg it as well!) and it contains some hints about where Everyclick is going in 2008.
2007 was a great year for wugging, and we’re aiming to make 2008 even better – three times better in fact. That’s a million pounds raised in 2008 for your favourite charities, with more charities being added all the time.
The good news is with more people reading about us in the Guardian, that goal becomes even closer. But getting there is going to be a group effort, so if you know someone who might be interested in Everyclick, let them know about the site. If every user were to tell just one person about Everyclick, we’d be tens of thousands of pounds closer.
Entries are still flooding in for our Charity Challenge. We already have over 320 entries so far. Entrants range from national and international charities like Friends of the Earth, Sightsavers International and Crisis
Make it a New Year’s resolution to get the word out – and happy wugging!
Topics: Guardian, Charity Challenge, charitable giving, Wugging, Everyclick | No Comments »
Have yourself a wuggy little Christmas…
By Polly | December 21, 2007
It’s been an exciting year of growth for Everyclick. Sometimes I refresh the website to see how much the counter has gone up in the last few minutes. I get a thrill when I think about how many people are using the site—even as I type this—to raise money for a cause they care about. Christmas is a good time to reflect on charities and charitable causes.
Everyone has a favourite, whether it’s their school, Save the Children or any of the other thousands of charities that Everyclick supports. For example, we heard from Liz Ramkoleea, who uses Everyclick to support her charity, Children of the Andes. Here’s her story:
Where did you first hear about Everyclick?
I heard about Everyclick from an email contact of mine who had saved the Everyclick message as a footnote.
Can you tell us more about your charity contacting you because of Everyclick?
Everyclick emailed me to pass on thanks from my charity, Children of the Andes, for using Everyclick and to say the system was helping their fund raising. They gave me a link so that I could check how much money had been raised via Everyclick, and so far I have raised approximately £5 just by using Everyclick as my main search engine.
How is your charity using the funds you’ve raised?
Children of the Andes are working to provide homes and education for children living in poverty on the streets in Columbia.
What else do you do to support your charity?
I send regular donations to my charity.
Do you think the web is changing the way people support their charities?
Yes, I do think the web is changing the way people support their charities, by making it so much easier to do so.
What’s your story? Why did you choose to support your charity with Everyclick and why do you support that charity? Was a friend or loved one directly affected by something? Is it a cause you care deeply about? The floor is open, share your stories with me here, either in the comments or through email. I look forward to hearing your reasons for spreading cheer this holiday season.
On behalf of the entire Everyclick team, I thank you for your support this year—and look forward to working with you to support thousands more charities in 2008.
Have a very merry Christmas!
Topics: charity search, charitable giving, Wugging, Everyclick | No Comments »
Do the Santa Swing!
By Polly | December 12, 2007
Very excited - today we have launched of Everyclick’s Christmas “viral.” The Santa Swing embraces the latest technology allowing users to add their photo and record a message by phone through Santa’s recording studios.
Had some very amusing comments and already been sent some interesting combinations.
So go on, do the Santa Swing and spread some Christmas Cheer! It makes me giggle every time I see it!
Topics: Fun, Santa Swing, social networks, Everyclick | No Comments »
Take a look at Ronnie the Rhino!
By Polly | December 10, 2007
I mentioned previously that we are adding new features all the time to the new Everyclick site. Well, how’s this for an exciting feature…
We will soon be adding unique images to your personal charity pages so as well as having your personal fundraising total displaying you’ll be able to have your Everyclick homepage themed to your favourite cause.
We are planning to roll this feature out one charity at a time and above you can see the homepage for the charity, Save the Rhino International.
Not all charities have their personal homepages live yet but we’re working with all our 170,000 charities to get them up and running as quickly as possible. So keep checking back.
Topics: Save the Rhino International, charity search, Everyclick | No Comments »
Charities: Win a national outdoor ad campaign
By Polly | December 5, 2007
Hot on the heels of our exciting new website launch (Everyclick.com – go and have a look there’s loads of new features being added all the time - plug over!) we’ve teamed up with the outdoor advertising people, Clear Channel, to launch a UK-wide competition. The Charity Challenge gives charities the chance to win:
- A national poster campaign on 1,500 sites across the UK
- Advertising space on Everyclick.com
- An Everyclick homepage customised to promote your charity and provide desktop brand awareness for you every time your supporters use Everyclick
The competition challenges charities to raise as much money as they possibly can using Everyclick.com. Charities and their supporters will have three months from January 2008 to March 2008 to do all they can to boost funds.
The charity that raises the most money wins a national outdoor advertising campaign thanks to the good people at Clear Channel.
The challenge works like this:
- Charities register for the challenge on Everyclick.com, where they will be asked to supply details of the size of their donor base
- We use this information to sort entrants into one of three categories: small, medium or large organisations
We then keep a tally of how much is raised for each entrant during the three month period - The average amount raised by each supporter will then be calculated to find the winner in each category.
A panel of independent sector experts will then pick one of these three finalists to win the overall prize.
The panel will judge the entrants not just on money raised, but on the innovative and imaginative ways charities have encouraged supporters to use Everyclick.
As a starter for 10 I have added some links below to give you some ideas for innovative and imaginative fundraising:
- Building a network of fundraisers
- Facebooking for good – a DIY guide
- Third Sector can learn from the Fourth Estate
Happy fundraising and good luck! You can find out the winners here in March 2008.
Topics: Charity Challenge, charity search, charitable giving, Everyclick | No Comments »
All the fun of the fair
By Polly | December 3, 2007
Bryan Miller is hosting a week-long ‘Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants’ over at his Giving in a Digital World blog and if I hadn’t been so snowed under with the launch of the Everyclick site I would have definitely been much more involved with such a fantastic project.
The carnival comprises seven posts giving some top tips and great links to online content about working in the nonprofit world. Bryan’s particular theme is Engaging with supporters through online social networks, a topic close to my own heart.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook is flavour of the month, although annoyingly, it seems the Wild Apricot blog has beaten me to a DIY guide for how nonprofits can use Facebook offers Ten innovative ways nonprofits can use Facebook.
However, having had a quick look at their tips, I think my version complements theirs and offers some specific ways to engage with supoporters and donors.
One thing did strike me as odd though is that Bryan talks about using Facebook as an advertising platform whereas in my opinion, social networking sites offer a lot of exciting opportunities to build organic communities through engagement rather than direct advertising.
Topics: Facebook, charitable giving, social networks, Social entrepreneurs, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Fantastic Feedback – what a relief!
By Polly | November 29, 2007
After what seems like a lifetime the latest release of Everyclick has been launched.
It has been a major update that has involved upgrading servers and all kinds of scary technical intricacies, but we now have gone live. Excitingly we will also be ading to the through a weekly roll out schedule, so you can expect more bells and whistles to be appearing as the weeks go by.
We have a great tech team and all credit to some of them who have worked through the night and weekends to make this happen – THANK YOU!
The feedback has already been amazing. One feature particularly well received has been the live display of the total funds raised for users for their charity.
Other than a cleaner look, improved search results and greater visibility of how you are helping your charity other new features include:
- Your own “Spread the Word” page. This lets you invite friends to join your fundraising efforts for your selected charity - all of which takes less than 30 seconds to set up.
- A new shopping section which is perfect for Christmas Shopping. We’ve signed up hundreds of great brands including Amazon, eBay, Hamleys, Tesco and even Harrods, who will give a percentage of all your purchases to charity.
But of course, what makes all this so worthwhile is the great feedback we get from charities who rely on our help with their fundraising efforts.
And if all that isn’t enough, here’s a sobering thought – if 5% of the population used Everyclick to search the web between now and Christmas, UK charities would be at least £3million better off. What a fantastic Christmas present that would be.
Together we can make a difference - I would love to hear what you think.
Topics: charity search, charitable giving, Wugging, Everyclick | No Comments »
Facebooking for Good - a DIY guide
By Polly | November 23, 2007
I’m busy, busy, busy at the moment working on some exciting new features for the Everyclick website – more about that soon!
In the meantime I’ve been prompted by a number of things return to the issue of using Facebook to reach out and empower online fundraising.
Firstly my post the other week suggested that while charities need to use social networks to engage with supporters and donors, using it as a glorified direct mail database is not the right way to go about things. Secondly – and reinforcing this point - Facebook was hit with quite a bit of flack about it’s new Social Ads service – which, you could argue, treats itself as a glorified direct mail database (although Bryan Miller has a good post about Facebook pages which seem a happy compromise).
Anyway, here are some Everyclick tips how to reach out to your supporters using Facebook. Some of it is pretty basic but I think that’s important given that charities – especially smaller organisations – don’t always have the resources to pay for big digital marketing programmes.Create
- If you haven’t already joined Facebook, create a profile for yourself
- Personalise your profile – add applications, join groups. Your profile tells people who you are.
- Set-up a group or Facebook page for your charity or cause
Connect
- The most important next step is build your network
- Connect with your friends, work colleagues, organisation members or donors….
- You’ll soon find Facebook blurs the distinction between your separate ‘real-world’ networks
Communicate
- Your wall, funwall and superwall are great ways to send messages to your friends…. HOWEVER, remember they are visible to your entire network, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t want other people to hear
- To send private messages use your Inbox where you can share information with one friend or your entire network
- Posting your message on the wall or discussion boards of a specific group is a good way to share your information with a large number of people who are interested in what you have to say. But make it relevant and not too long.
- If you have an official announcement to make a more effective way of sending your message to a group is to contact the group administrators and ask them to send your message to the group’s members
- Finally, don’t forget your status updates are a good way to spread a short and simple message quickly and easily to your entire network.
Content
- Facebook is a great tool to share your organisation’s photos and even video
- You can easily upload your photos through the ‘Photos Application’ which is built into your profile
- By adding the Facebook video application you can quickly upload and share your videos as well
- As well as photo and video content you can also share websites through your Newsfeed and tell people about fundraising events using the Events application
These are my initial thoughts about how organisations can engage with their supporters and empower them to spread the word on Facebook. I’d love to people to add to them in by leaving a comment below. Who knows, perhaps we could use social media to build a best practice guide for Facebooking for Good.
Topics: Facebook, charity search, social networks | No Comments »
Weekly Wugger: Charity Edition
By Polly | November 16, 2007
Just a quick one as we’re working round the clock putting the finishing touches on Everyclick 2.0. We’re hoping to re-launch the site early next week so please check it out. More encouraging feedback from our charities on the real-world impact of wugging with Everyclick:
“I have been severely affected and housebound with severe ME for 10 years but as the government has not yet funded any biomedical research, all funding for ME Research UK has to be raised privately. ME sufferers are so often too ill to work, and too ill to fundraise themselves so the £2300 raised so far by Everyclick means a lot to us all. Lets hope it will fund a breakthough!” - Veronica Jones, ME Research UK
“We are raising money to put towards our new veterinary unit which is currently being built at the Sanctuary. At the moment all animals brought into the Sanctuary have to be vet checked on arrival. The vet only visits one day a week so many have to wait several days. Having our own veterinary unit will make a vast difference to all the animals in our care in so many ways. Once the building is complete, we then need to equip it and have staff to run it. So Everyclick will support this venture.” - Jenny Warwick, Manager at Ty-Agored
“We also have another source of funding. 46 of our supporters have raised £118 just by using the new search engine, Everyclick.com. Our fundraisers at Dove Cottage are appealing for any businesses, schools and individuals that use computers to search the internet to switch their search engine to www.everyclick.com/uk/dovecottagedayhospice this would take a couple of minutes of their time but would benefit Dove Cottage every month.” - Chris Gatfield, Founder and Manager of Dove Cottage Day Hospice
I’ll be back next week to tell you about the new features we’re launching on the site as well as some of the exciting things we’re doing to get the word out!
Topics: charity search, Wugging, Everyclick | No Comments »
Embedded giving – a great new buzzword
By Polly | November 12, 2007
I came across a great new buzzword at the weekend (well, it’s not that new) – ‘Embedded Giving’.
According to Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy 2173, “Embedded giving is the (apparently) increasingly common practice of building a philanthropic gift into another, unrelated, financial transaction.”
I love that idea – it is exactly what Everyclick is about, but with one major difference, using Everyclick means you can build a philanthropic action into an everyday activity (searching the web) without spending a penny.
The phrase is also a prescient one because it does seem to capture the spirit of online giving which allows fundraising tools such as home-made video content, blog widgets, Facebook applications and search toolbar plug-ins to be ‘embedded’ in websites.
Lucy’s post about embedded giving raises the concern that because the funds raised are part of everyday activities no-one is actually measuring them.
However, every penny raised by Everyclick is accounted for and we know exactly which cause it goes to. We can do this because our software lets us but if we can take the idea of embedded giving in its wider sense – i.e. online tools that let people do things like round-up online transactions – all of this should be measurable. This in turn will help make more people and organizations accountable for their philanthropy.
Topics: charitable giving, social networks, Wugging, Everyclick | No Comments »