Just Giving dot com

[Debbie]

I had a nightmare with Just Giving. The charity I ran the London Marthon for, Burn Aid, are a very small UK charity and were not already listed on the Just Giving charity listings. I spoke to the charity and requested that they get set up on Just Giving so I could maximise my fundraising effort for them.

Apparently it's not at all straightforward for a charity to register. The cost is £15 per month for a start, just to keep registered - no great shakes for a large concern like Cancer Research, but for a tiny charity whose main source of income is people like me doing silly things like running marathons, it's a lot of money.

When they finally did get approval to go ahead from the charity's director, it turns out that they have to produce sets of accounts etc. which have to be sent to Just Giving, along with some kind of reference number from the Inland Revenue. Just getting this number alone can take up to 4 weeks.

Although all the enquiries about getting set up on Just Giving were started in January, in the end we abandoned the effort as by the time anything happened the marathon would have been long since over.

I still managed to raise over £1,500 using more conventional methods - but this is just to advise anyone planning to raise money this way for a small charity who are not registered with Just Giving. Allow plenty of time!