Bmycharity blog

Former street child Musbah Dilsebo is accepted at NYU on a full scholarship

With 5 years of support from the Ethiopian Education Foundation (EEF) - and now a chance to continue his education with NYU, Musbah Dilsebo is has taken a giant step from the streets of Addis Ababa to the world of international diplomacy.

Musbah Dilsebo (19) has been accepted for a four-year scholarship at NYU Abu Dhabi to study Political Science. Musbah’s ambition is to become a diplomat for Ethiopia and he is on track to achieve his dream.

Musbah comes from the most economically deprived background imaginable. His family is from Southern Ethiopia in a region bereft of any development or any educational opportunities. His father (long since disappeared) and his mother are completely illiterate. His mother survives on subsistence farming, living in a single roomed hut with her 6 other children. There is no electricity or running water.

At the age of 12 Musbah was desperate to continue his education, but at this time there were no secondary schools in his region. Aged 13 he left his home and travelled alone to the capital Addis Ababa where he enrolled himself in a government school. During this time he survived by working on a building site and doing shoeshine work, in addition to attending school part-time.

Glen Forbes, Chairman of eef says: “When we met Musbah nearly 5 years ago he was living on the streets in a tiny “hut” made of plastic bags and cardboard boxes. Despite this he was still a top performing student. We were particularly impressed by how concise and knowledgeable he was in explaining difficult scientific structures. We immediately decided to accept him onto our scholarship programme. Now, after four years and graduating from High School I have absolutely no doubt he will be a perfect fit into the NYUAD community, and bring a totally different facet to life that the other students may not have experienced. He has the profile to be a real future change maker. With a quality education as can be provided by NYUAD this young person really will be able to make a difference to his country.”

“Your presence will add importantly to the excellence of NYU Abu Dhabi,” wrote Al Bloom, NYU Abu Dhabi’s vice chancellor to Musbah in his acceptance letter. “Surrounded by extraordinary students like yourself and working closely with a world-class faculty, you will flourish as a scholar and develop the full range of your exceptional talent.”

Musbah Dilsebo says: “For me this journey is way beyond anything I could have ever imagined. My dream was to be an educated person, unlike most of my family. It was this dream that kept me going when times were rough and when I didn’t know whether I would have enough money to buy food. Being selected for the scholarship by eef changed my life. They showed me that hard work is rewarded and they showed me a way out of despair. Now I am entering another phase in my life. Being chosen for this scholarship at NYUAD is incredible. My mother, my eef mentors and my sponsor Ramon de Abadal are immensely proud of me - and I am delighted beyond compare.”

Musbah joined the eef programme in Grade 9, where upon he moved into our students’ residence. Since joining the programme Musbah’s academic record has been excellent. In the Grade 10 Ethiopian National Examinations he gained a “Very Great Distinction” by the Ministry of Education.

In 2009 Musbah again achieved an excellent result in the Grade 12 Ethiopian National Examinations by scoring 375. A ranking classified as “Excellent” by the Ministry of Education. This is the highest possible ranking. In addition Musbah’s intellectual capability, curiosity, capacity and enormous potential are beyond any doubt.

Musbah Dilsebo has come from the streets of Addis Ababa. He has battled to survive physically and he has battled to become educated. He has overcome the most horrendous hardships to become a highly educated and international young person. Musbah is already an adventurer, an explorer, a pioneer. His passion for education and his dedication to the development of society has been proven again and again. He is not just intellectually a top performer but just as importantly he is a charming, delightful and caring young man.

Thanks from Ben and Matt

It has been a momentous time for Bmycharity.  Last week we announced the withdrawal of our service, and three days ago we announced that we are merging with Help for Heroes.  Behind the scenes we've been inundated with messages of support and encouragement following each announcement, and we'd like to thank everyone who has been in touch by email, phone, in person, via our blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

There have been some very moving messages indeed - and from some unexpected sources.  We're grateful to everyone who got in touch - and here are some special mentions...

• Those who offered to give to keep us going - most of all the lady who offered to sell her home!
• Those who proposed mergers with their own enterprises
• Those who we've competed with and who were gracious

At a challenging time we've enjoyed an amazing quantity of kindness and generousity and discovered hundreds of friends we never knew we had.  Thank you.

We're really pleased that the future of commission-free fundraising is assured.  But just in case we get complacent, we've kept a copy of an anonymous 4 second shouted voicemail we received that taught us some colourful new language and will keep our feet firmly on the ground :)

Bmycharity commission free service continues in partnership with Help for Heroes

We are delighted to announce that Help for Heroes (H4H) has agreed to join forces with Bmycharity.  All fundraising pages and accounts remain live at www.bmycharity.com.  We will ensure that our commission free service continues for every charity.

Help for Heroes, the strictly non political charity that supports wounded Servicemen and women, prides itself on a no nonsense approach to giving with minimal administrative costs. Together, Bmycharity and Help for Heroes can offer a service that allows fundraisers to donate their sponsorship directly to their charity of choice with no extra costs so everything you raise goes to your charity and that's it.

What do I need to do? Nothing, please just stay with us and we will do the rest. Our service will continue as before and the new partnership will offer the service to all its existing customers.  We will not be withdrawing the service as previously announced and all pages and accounts remain live at www.bmycharity.com.

What do I do if I have already signed up with another charity giving organisation? Its up to you, it's your choice but we would love it if you came back to Bmycharity to ensure that every penny you raise goes to the cause you support!  Your page and account are where you left them and ready for use right now!

What about the data, are my details safe and will H4H be hitting me with special offers and begging letters? No, H4H will not. The data that the new partnership has will be respected as before.

What about other charities, will the service continue or is this just for H4H? The service will continue with all charities who are existing  Bmycharity clients in exactly the same way as before.  Bmycharity and H4H will honour the terms of existing Bmycharity contracts.

I am a charity and would like to be registered with Bmycharity. That's fine, we would like to sign you up but ask that you give us a few days to let the dust settle so we can handle all the enquires from existing customers first. If you register your interest through the Bmycharity website we can get back to you.

Are you committed to 0% commission? Yes, we share the belief that charity fundraising should be commission-free but we are not criticising others who charge - in fact we hope they'll follow our example.

How can you finance and invest in the service when Bmycharity recently failed to raise investment? By coupling Bmycharity's lean, low cost business with H4H's technical resources and relationships with banks and corporate partners, we're able to cover the costs of providing the service to the charity sector commission-free.  H4H's trading company and technology partners will invest in developing the service to remain at the cutting edge of online fundraising innovation.

Is a charity allowed to run a service like this? Bmycharity will be owned by Help for Heroes Trading Co Ltd, a wholly owned trading subsidiary of Help for Heroes. The profits from Help for Heroes Trading are used to cover all the administrative costs of both the charity and the trading company.

Chief Executive of Bmycharity, Ben Brabyn says "Over the last 10 years Bmycharity has helped more than 60,000 people raise over £28 million for UK charities.  To widespread acclaim, we announced that we were dropping all commission charges last October and donation totals and average values have soared since.  However, with a team of only two staff and no external financial backers we were unable to meet demand and reluctantly announced the withdrawal of our service last week.  As former Royal Marines, Matt Cooper and I were delighted when Help for Heroes invited us to join forces with them to keep online fundraising commission-free for charities."

Help for Heroes Chief Executive Bryn Parry says "At H4H, we do everything we can to ensure that every penny we receive goes to the cause and so we want to be sure that Bmycharity can continue to offer their free service to the charity sector. We felt that our supporters should continue to have a choice and are delighted to be able to partner Bmycharity in their fund raising efforts. We admire the ethos of Bmycharity and feel that we are natural partners. We are delighted and hope that our supporters will be as well."

Thank you all for you continued support and we very much hope that you will come back to our commission free service.

For more information or updates, please keep in touch via our blog, twitter and Facebook.  You can also see the latest news from Help for Heroes here.

With best wishes

Bryn Parry and Ben Brabyn
CEO H4H and CEO Bmycharity

Withdrawal of the Bmycharity online fundraising service

Over the next three weeks we will be withdrawing the Bmycharity online fundraising service.

We've had a fantastic response to our commission-free service and have successfully recruited corporate sponsorship.  A queue of charities is waiting to register and donation volumes and average values have surged.  For some time we have been seeking additional resources to help us to develop our system, grow our team and engage with charities and corporate sponsors to support this growth.  We are a two man team with no external investors in a market increasingly characterised by companies with scores of employees and multi-million pound backing.  Our search for investment has been unsuccessful, culminating in the failure of a proposed deal in the last few days, so the time has come for us to withdraw our service.  We regret the inconvenience this will cause to our users and clients.

Since 2001 we've helped 300 charities raise over £28 million.  We'd like to thank the thousands of fundraisers and donors who have encouraged their friends to use Bmycharity, the hundreds of charities that have registered with us, and the many suppliers and advisors who have contributed.  Without additional resources, we've done all we can to contribute to the development of the market for online fundraising in the UK, and now the time has come to seek other challenges.

With Best Wishes

Ben Brabyn and Matt Cooper

Notes

1. All donations processed by Bmycharity are safe.  Donations will be passed to charities in the normal way, with the final transfers taking place in April 2010.
2. Donation and fundraising pages will remain live (able to take donations) until the end of 19 March 2010
3. Fundraising pages will be visible until 31 March 2010
4. Charity reporting services will be available until 31 March 2010 - please ensure all donation data is downloaded by this date since it will not be available thereafter
   
5. No further charity sites will be launched and any fees from unlaunched sites will be refunded

Welcome to our first site sponsor - Interactive Investor

We're delighted to welcome Interactive Investor - www.iii.co.uk - as the first major corporate sponsor of Bmycharity.

In addition to sponsoring the Bmycharity online fundraising service, Interactive Investor will encourage its 1.6 million registered users to use Bmycharity for their fundraising activity.

Tomas Carruthers, Chairman and CEO of Interactive Investor said:

“Interactive Investor offers independent and transparent tools to help people solve their financial needs.  We’re delighted to be the first sponsors of Bmycharity and are proud to be associating with an organisation that’s delivering a service to ensure the full value of charitable donations gets to the charity, avoiding unnecessary administration charges.”

We’re delighted that Interactive Investor is coming aboard as our first major corporate sponsor - and we know Interactive Investor will benefit in several ways.  The response to our commission-free service has been fantastic and we’re looking forward to helping Interactive Investor’s 1.6 million users to fundraise more cost-effectively.

Bmycharity’s commission-free fundraising model enables charities to benefit from free online fundraising while at the same time providing corporate supporters with an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility.  It also provides a way to add value to charity of the year partnerships, and Bmycharity is in discussions with both charities and corporates wishing to get involved.

Bmycharity switched to a commission free service in October to help charities save money and maximise the donations they receive.  Since then hundreds of charities have requested to register with Bmycharity.

Living by Giving: Donation and the benefits of altruism

Should Bmycharity encourage more people to become blood and organ donors?

Last night I attended an event at the RSA where Professors AC Grayling, James Neuberger and Dr Chris Rudge spoke about altruism and the triggers and barriers to organ donation (audio files of the event will be available shortly through the RSA website).  The event was chaired by Matthew Taylor, CEO of the RSA, and supported by NHS Blood and Transplant.

Some of the key points from the panel discussion were:

• 3 people die every day for want of a donated organ
• 50% of potential donors (1000 people each year) don't donate
• The most common reason for non-donation is family objection
• Smokers make up only 25% of the population, but 70% of organ donors
• NHSBT is aiming to build the organ donor register to 25 million
• Ensuring that the family of registered donors support transplant is very important

The panel explored the social, medical and philosophical implications of assumed consent and trading in organs, and two beneficiaries of organ donation shared their experiences of awaiting and then receiving organs.

After the panel discussion, I spoke to Sally Johnson, Director of Organ Donation and Transplantation at NHSBT, and her colleague Emma Harbour about the profile of blood and organ donors, and whether we may be able to help them in their objectives of increasing the size of the donor register and raising awareness so more potential donors become actual donors.  Raising general awareness is vital since it is in the immediate aftermath of death that families need to be able to confirm the wishes of the donor.

So, should we add a panel or banner to Bmycharity pages inviting people to register?  People who give time and money to charities are very likely to be disproportionately responsive to non-financial requests for altruistic action.  But we don't want to put people off donating funds, and we don't want to pressure people.

Perhaps a discreet panel pointing out that 3 lives could be saved every day if more donors were available and encouraging people to discuss their wishes with their family - what do you think?

Snowball gifts - gifts that grow in giving

Some gifts make a really big difference, but cost little or even nothing to give.  Just as a snowball starts as a handful of snow but can grow and grow, a gift can become much much more important as it rolls downhill...

Inspired by the cold weather that's sweeping the UK at the moment, we're inviting people to share their ideas of snowball gifts.  Here are a couple from us to get the snowball rolling - please post a comment below to add the snowball gifts you would like to give or receive - or examples you've come across:

• A smile :) - perhaps the ultimate snowball gift - the only cost is a little muscular effort, but the rewards for those around can be enormous - especially if there is tension in the air
• A blood donation - a pin-prick and a few minutes lying down lying down can save lives

Boost your fundraising by £50 each week by spreading the good news

Here's a simple way to boost your fundraising total by £50 each week - and help save charities £11 million in commission charges in 2010 - by recruiting other fundraisers to set up Bmycharity pages.

We're campaigning to eliminate commission charges from fundraising so fundraisers don't have to run 1.3 miles of their Marathon just to pay for their fundraising page (as they do on Just Giving) - and we're asking for your help to spread the word.

Each week we'll add £50 to your fundraising page if you persuade enough of your friends to set up fundraising pages of their own with Bmycharity.  All you need to do is invite them to click your personal competition link, and we'll keep track of how many of them sign up and how much they raise.  If your recruits raise the more than anyone else's in a week, we'll give you £50 towards your own fundraising.

Here's how you create your link: just take the last bit of the address of your own page (the bit after the "/") and add it to the end of this address (after the "=") -

    www.bmycharity.com/home.aspx?a=

So if your page is at www.bmycharity.com/peterexample, your personal recruiting link is www.bmycharity.com/home.aspx?a=peterexample.

If you don't win in a particular week, don't worry because your friends may get much more active later
on...

All you need to do to get started is create your personal recruiting link and then ask your fundraising friends to click on it.  Don't forget to remind them that fundraising with Bmycharity is commission-free.  If you're in a running club, sports team or company fundraising team you can get off to a flying start by asking your team-mates to register through your link.

Each Tuesday we'll post a list of the top recruiters and the leader will get a £50 boost!

Quiet heroes inspire Commando Cops to raise £134,000

Though many of them had swapped their green berets for police helmets more than 20 years ago, 100 former Royal Marines now serving in police forces around the country "speed marched" 13.1 miles around London on Saturday morning to raise money for injured Royal Marines.

Afterwards I sat with one of the men who inspired the Commando Cops.  Matt was shot twice while rescuing his section commander earlier this year in Afghanistan.  His main ambition is to return to his section in 42 Commando, but first he must complete the lengthy and grueling process of physical rehabilitation.

We talked about the campaign in Afghanistan - the difficulty faced by the local people in choosing who to rely on, the value of infrastructure improvement and the challenges for political and military leaders.  Matt showed no bitterness, only a quiet generosity of spirit and the determination to return to duty as soon as possible.

As I listened I was struck how exactly Matt showed the traditional qualities of the Commando soldier: "courage, determination, unselfishness and cheerfulness in the face of adversity".

And as they rallied round Matt and the scores of other Royal Marines who have been injured in recent operations, the Commando Cops confirmed that other dictum "Once a Marine, always a Marine"!

Many congratulations to all involved in an exceptional fundraising effort.

Queen endorses Bmycharity's campaign to end commission charges on donations