Bmycharity blog

Help us name 4 fundraising stars!

They work 24 hours every day, raising millions of pounds for charity - the least they deserve is a name.

We have a tradition of naming our servers - the powerful computers that make everything work at www.bmycharity.com.  Matt, our technical director, has always made the choices in the past, including Kylie, Brittney, Alicia, Zarine and Nelly.  Now, we've got 4 new servers joining our team and we'd like to invite everyone to help choose their names.

Matt favours Beyonce, Natalie, Nicole and Liv:

While Ben is advocating a reappearance for ABBA - Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid:

But we don't want to limit the choice to singers, or actors - or even to people.

So if you can think of any person, organisation or concept that deserves to have a server named after them please let us know by posting a comment below! You can suggest 1, 2, 3 or 4 names and please don't forget to explain why.  Once we've got a shortlist we'll invite everyone to vote for the top 4...

Congratulations to all Moonwalkers

Last night 15,000 intrepid Moonwalkers covered 13 or 26 miles around London, taking in some of the capital's greatest landmarks and raising millions of pounds for Walk the Walk, a leading breast cancer care and research charity.

Bmycharity followed the progress of the walkers via Twitter and made contact with many walkers and volunteers during the night and watched in awe as Amanda Wilkie brought the Moonwalk to life for her friends and followers by phlogging as she walked.  The map below shows, the various messages Amanda recorded as she made her way around the 26 mile course.


If you would like to sponsor Amanda please visit her sponsorship page at www.bmycharity.com/amandawilkie.

We're looking forward to helping many charities and fundraisers bring their events to life as Amanda has - it's great that phlogging and twittering can enable so many more people to take a supporting part in fundraising challenges - and provide a permanent record of achievement afterwards!

Tom, Dick or Harry - guess the most generous name to boost your total by £50

Yesterday we processed donations from people with 708 different first names!  Today we're offering a £50 donation to the first fundraiser to guess the most popular donor first name, which is shared by 35 of the donors.

We'll publish the winner tomorrow and a list of the most popular donor first names too.  You can post your suggestions as comments on this blog, or as Twitter replies @bmycharity.

Best of luck!

Feisty Marathon runners raise £ millions as race approaches

So you're running the marathon this weekend?  Now is the best time to boost your fundraising efforts - and here are some top tips to help.  Try using them when you are in touch with your friends and supporters online, by email and in person.

Get attention!  Pick a headline which will get people interested in what you are doing - remember tens of thousands of others are doing the same - what is special about you, your challenge and your charity?

Tempt people to find out more with "link bait" - leading statements that invite people to follow up.  Be prepared to be contentious - the most important thing is to get noticed!  You can do this offline and online - this article's headline is an example of link bait.

Use cliffhangers!  Once you've attracted attention, keep people interested by telling some of your story but keeping some in reserve.  Encourage people to come back to you to find out more.  Think of the cliffhangers at the end of your favourite film, book or soap.

Get others involved!  Keep people interested by inviting them to play a part in your challenge.  Whether it's choosing - or decorating - the hat  you wear, placing bets on your finish time, coming to support you on the day or keeping track of you through services like Adidas' runner tracking service.

Join in with other runners and supporters through the many Facebook groups and Twitter networks involved with the Marathon - starting with Bmycharity's Facebook Group and Twitter Feed.  Get in touch with us anytime and we'll get back to you ASAP!

Use many different channels!  Some people will want to hear all about what you are doing in person, some will prefer email - others want a phone call, or to see video clips of you on Youtube.  Make sure you cater for all your supporters so that everyone is included - and has the chance to support you.

Repeat yourself!  Researchers suggest that we have to hear most messages 4 times before we take them in.  So don't be afraid to tell your story more than once - in fact tell it several times.  Since you're talking and writing for several different audiences and different channels, this can mean a lot of repetition!  But don't be shy - keep the same key messages but garnish them with new headlines, cliffhangers and reasons to get involved.

And don't forget to keep repeating yourself.

Enjoy!  Most of all, we hope you have a great day on Sunday - please be in touch anytime if we can help, and best of luck!  We'd love to hear your story too - please feel free to post comments below, or join us on on Facebook.

Bmycharity has arrived on LinkedIn

We've had such a great response on Facebook that we've decided to plunge into LinkedIn too - so if you're a fundraiser and a LinkedIn user, please come and join us at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1889008!

We're really keen to use LinkedIn to help fundraisers find resources that can help with fundraising - and other people who can help with particular fundraising challenges - so please post any questions, suggestions or requests you have.

We'll also be posting information about job opportunities at Bmycharity shortly - so if you want to join us keep in touch!

Bmycharity offers free Twitter name protection service for charities

As Twitter becomes more and more popular among fundraisers, we've noticed that many major charity  names are not yet registered, so we're offering to secure Twitter names for UK registered charities for free.

We've already secured accounts for 3 of the UK's leading charities and handed these over when the charity is ready to start Twittering, and we'd be pleased to do the same for any other organisations.  If you know of any Twitter names that you think should be held for a UK charity, please let us know and we'll secure them.  Then we'll hand them over (without charge!) to an authorised representative of the charity.

We first noticed this when we checked RNLI's Twitter feed and found that http://twitter.com/RNLI had not been registered.  Since Matt Cooper (one of Bmycharity's founders) was saved by the RNLI while studying Marine Biology at university, we knew we owed them a favour or two!  And we'll do the same for any other charity.

If you know of a Twitter name you think should be saved for a UK charity please comment below or email twitter@bmycharity.com.

Bmycharity boosts @MandyPandy32 fundraising with matched giving

We're adding 5p to every £1 donated through Amanda's page at www.bmycharity.com/amandawilkie between today and the end of March.

Amanda's created an awesome Twitter following and we're really pleased to be able to help her persuade her followers and visitors to become donors by topping up every donation to help hit a fundraising target of £20,000!

This is a once-only offer - we want to help Amanda explore Twitter fundraising, and find out whether this kind of matched giving increases the probability that a visitor will donate - and the average amount they will donate.  Sadly we cannot extend the offer to every fundraiser.  But if anyone else would like to match the giving of Amanda or any other fundraiser using Bmycharity please let us know - it's a great way to make your own gifts go further!

@MandyPandy32 shows how to get your tweets out in front of 220,000 people

Amanda Wilkie is taking part in the 2009 Moonwalk and in the last 3 days has used her Twitter account to invite more than 220,000 people to visit her sponsorship page.

 

She's persuaded these 6 celebrities to forward her link to all their Twitter followers, and following Jonathan Ross's mention yesterday over 4,000 people visited her Bmycharity page at www.bmycharity.com/amandawilkie to find out more.

Amanda has so far raised £160 - but she's also recruited an army of Twitter followers and over the coming weeks she'll be able to build those relationships and increase support for Walk the Walk.

If you want to hear the latest about how Amanda is doing, and more about fundraising and Moonwalking, come join us at http://twitter.com/bmycharity.

Meanwhile Walk the Walk has also started tweeting - to follow the latest news from this excellent charity, visit http://twitter.com/walkthewalk.

Twitter fundraising - a case study - fill the tent first, then pass the hat

Amanda Wilkie is taking part in the 2009 Playtex Moonwalk.  Here is her fundraising page. 

Yesterday, Amanda set out to use Twitter to build support from her Twitter account at http://twitter.com/MandyPandy32.  Here's what happened:

50 tweets sent by Amanda prompted
1,131 visitors to Amanda's Bmycharity page, staying
13 seconds on average.  Amanda now has
264 followers on Twitter and
£30 donated by 2 donors.
4 celebrities - Maggie Philbin, Phil Jupitus, Robert Llewelyn, Alan Davies retweeted Amanda's Bmycharity link to all their followers, and so did many non-celebrity friends

What can you achieve in 13 seconds?

Within 24 hours Amanda reached a huge audience and persuaded 264 people to follow her on Twitter and over a thousand people to visit her Bmycharity page.  However, these visitors spent less than a twentieth of the average time a visitor usually spends on Bmycharity, and only 2 of them donated.

A toe in the door...

But Amanda now has a large network of supporters who she can keep updated with her progress as she prepares for the Moonwalk on 16th May.  Using Twitter to spread the word and her Bmycharity page to highlight what she is doing and why, she has plenty of time to develop her fundraising story and encourage her Twitter followers to become more involved - and maybe donate.

Sharing the story

Amanda's example shows that Twitter is a great way to gather a crowd to listen to your story - but you've got to keep the story interesting!  Here are some suggestions:

1. Fill that 13 seconds with a high-impact video, personal message and photo on your Bmycharity page
2. Make it interactive - "I will ... for every donation from a Twitter follower"
3. Keep in touch - constantly update your Bmycharity page with your latest news and Tweet regularly
4. Ask your charity to keep the charity message dynamic and interesting

If you have any suggestions please share them below!

Wanna link your blog or site to Bmycharity with some cool graphics?

Here are a couple of buttons - just right click on them to save and then link them to your Bmycharity page...

If you've any suggestions for new buttons or badges, let us know by leaving a comment below!