With funding from the Peter Sowerby Foundation, we’re matching donations to charities and community groups in North Yorkshire pound-for-pound from 10am on March 4, 2014. Once complete, the £20,000 match fund will raise £40,000 + Gift Aid for local charities in North Yorkshire. Both single donations and monthly donations will be doubled up to £500 per charity. Monthly donations will be matched pound-for-pound for up to six months. In addition to this, North Yorkshire charities can also benefit from 50 free annual Localgiving.com memberships (worth £72 each), to be given on a first come first served basis. For more information, get in touch with Nick Dodd, North Yorkshire Coordinator on 07852 122329 or email nick.dodd@localgiving.com. Be sure to follow Nick on Twitter for all of the latest campaign updates.

Ahoy-hoy - I’m Kevin, and I head up the Technology team here at Localgiving. We are constantly working to refine and improve the donation process to make sure your donation goes even further, and we’re happy to announce a few changes today that we hope you’ll love. We’ve made donating quicker and reduced our payment processing fees First up, we are excited to announce an improvement that: makes it a lot faster and easier to make a donation means that more money is received by the charity from each donation made. Both are made possible since we have begun working with Stripe as our new payment solution partner. Stripe processes payments for the likes of Twitter and Facebook, and as a developer their platform is a breeze to use. They provide a great checkout experience for users, and most importantly they are helping us to ensure more money goes to the 2,000 charities on Localgiving. As a supporter, you’ll notice a change when you make a one-time donation. You now enter your payment details at the same time as choosing the amount, rather than having to jump to another page. Everything is a little clearer and easier. We hope you will see less time waiting for pages to load, leaving you more time to share you donation with your friends. As a charity, you’ll now receive more from each donation. When you make a £10 by debit card, at least 10p more will reach the charity than before. We are continuing to offer an option to donate with your PayPal account as that has been popular amongst supporters on our platform and also provides a smooth experience. You will see the ‘Donate with PayPal’ button on the donation page. And.....as an extra touch we’ve branded each charity’s donation page with their own logo. We have seen more donors landing directly on the donation page, so it seemed sensible to be doubly clear about who they were donating to! You can now donate even more (or less) Secondly, we have broadened the donation limits on the platform so that as a supporter you can donate as little as £2 or as much as £5,000 in one go. This was a no brainer. We can see that supporters have tried to donate more than our previous limit of £1,000 - so why stop that! Nudging the lower limit down from £5 to £2 was simply a response to some recent feedback we have collected from supporters. N.B. As a charity you can adjust your suggested donation amounts for your Localgiving pages (incl. appeal page) to reflect higher or lower amounts as you feel appropriate. Brand new buttons enable you to link directly to your donation page from your website  Finally, we’ve given charities and fundraisers a new set of embeddable buttons to get donations flowing to their charity, appeal, and fundraiser pages. Here's one for "Micks Big Jump" - the winner of #LocalHero 2015: You can place these buttons on a webpage, show live dynamic data about your cause, and point people to your donation pages. Fundraiser and Appeal buttons show a progress thermometer, whilst the standard Donate buttons link directly to your Localgiving charity page. Charities and fundraisers can find the new Buttons in their fundraising toolkit. If you have any questions or require help with anything included in our latest release, please feel free to give us a call on 0300 111 2340 or email help@localgiving.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

We listened to you and added new features to Localgiving.com’s charity accounts to improve your experience on our site and to help you increase awareness and funds for your great work. Here is an overview of all the exciting new features that are now available to you: Dashboard This is a new landing page that will give you a quick status update, including information about overall activity and activity that has happened since you last logged in. To make sure that you are getting the right advice and support we also added lots of helpful tips. My Webpage To connect with you on social media platforms and better support you we’re now collecting your social media information. We’ve updated the volunteering section, so that you can tell us what skills you need and how many hours are needed each month from your volunteers. We’ve added the ability for you to provide details for a financial contact at your organisation; this means that we can also send them important financial information, such as donation payment emails. We’ve updated the cause and beneficiary categories to make them more inclusive and to ensure donors can search by causes that are important to them. My Donations You can now filter the donation information by date, type (one-time, regular or via a fundraising page) and whether you’ve sent a thank you. We have added thank you buttons to the list of Direct Debit Agreements so you can thank your ongoing supporters as soon as they set-up their donation. The updated reports now provide better information for you and the people that do your marketing and finances. My Fundraisers You now have a new section about supporters who created fundraising pages for you; this includes an overview of all fundraising pages and the ability to look at more information about each specific page. All changes we made are based on feedback we received from you. And as always we are keen to hear what you think about the new features we introduced, so log into your account today and please send us your feedback by emailing feedback@localgiving.com. Watch out for our video showing you how to get the most out of your new charity account that we will be sending to you soon. In the meantime, happy fundraising, The Localgiving Team

The one-day ‘unconference’ On Tuesday 13th May, the sixth one-day Fundraising Camp took place at Shine in Peterborough. Now for most of us, the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the word camp is tents. But I can assure you that there were none in sight! Instead a room filled with people excited to share their fundraising know-how and learn from others. Some had years of experience and a bank of knowledge and others new to fundraising were also able to share their challenges and ask questions. Howard Lake, of UK Fundraising, came up with the idea of Fundraising Camp. He felt that often at conferences, valuable things are learnt from others attending, but only during the tea or lunch break. He sought to turn regular conferences on their head and instead gets the audience to become the speaker at the event. Order of the day The day started with a blank timetable. We were asked to note a few topics we wish to discuss and before we knew it, the day’s agenda lay there before us. Fundraising Camp allowed us to decide what we wanted to discuss and lead the sessions. Topics of the day ranged from ‘How to use social media to fundraise’, ‘Fundraising for unpopular causes’ and ‘Community Foundations’ to name a few. The day ended with a session on ‘What I wish I’d known when I started fundraising’. As someone new to fundraising, it was comforting to hear that those with a wealth of experience had once faced the same challenges we had addressed during the event. Key themes and questions addressed Unpopular causes What is your cause fulfilling? Think about what would happen if you didn’t provide your service? Community Foundations They are there to help connect people invest and support their local communities. Practical use of social media There are different tools available to help better manage social media such as Hootsuite and Buffer. (Log in to your charity account to check out our Hootsuite guide) Capital projects/ appeals Do they distract from continuous giving? Think them through thoroughly What I wish I’d known when I started fundraising Look at fundraising from the donor’s perspective: you are not your donor! Start-up Fundraising Seek sponsorship from local businesses who may be interested in supporting your cause long-term Funders and grant makers Think of using a talking- head. Get people you’ve worked with to do a 1 minute video. It provides your cause with credibility and can be used time and time again! Last words… The great thing about Fundraising Camp was learning from each other. We all went away feeling that not only had we learnt something new, but helped another with something that came easier to us. I’d definitely recommend it to other charities. Read more about the day here

Marcelle Speller, Chairman and founder of Localgiving, returned to the University of East Anglia last week to receive an honorary PhD in Civil Law. Marcelle was one of the first BSc graduates from the now prestigious School of Environmental Sciences and has continued to take a keen interest in its progress over the years. During her speech she imparted her wisdom to the new graduates, 43 years after her first graduation. She happily shared her top three important things to do in life; to use your talents, to have fun and to “put a brick in the wall” - make a difference. When asked what the honorary PhD meant to her, Marcelle responded, “It was a great joy and honour to be welcomed back by the University of East Anglia to receive this doctorate. It is amazing to see how the University has grown, and how the School of Environmental Sciences has developed into a global leader on climate change. I am so proud to have been involved with the school from the very beginning and look forward to continuing to follow its fantastic work.”  

It's been 30 days of preparing, training and campaigning for this month's fundraisers on Localgiving, all in the name of being crowned a #LocalHero and securing an extra cash prize for their chosen cause! The campaign saw 268 people fundraise on behalf of a local charity, raising a total of £80,499.05 in donations, prizes and Gift Aid from over 2,576 donors throughout the month. A huge thank you! With 161 groups on the platform seeing a fundraiser set up a page to raise money on their behalf, we want to give a massive thank you to everyone who took part and helped to make such a big difference to the people in their communities. Over the course of the month, we've heard some truly inspirational stories from some really incredible people, all of whom have gone that extra mile to help support a local cause. Everyone who fundraises for a local charity is a hero in our books, but it's now time to reveal who has made it into the final Top 20 and secured a share of the £5,000 prize fund for their chosen cause... And the winner is... Mick Pembleton with 157 points! Leading the race right from the start, Mick's pledge to jump out of a plane to raise money for Ability Dogs 4 Young People captured the imagination of his local community, seeing 157 people sponsor his page. Mick's prize of £1,000 brings his total raised to £3,313.25, including GiftAid, for the charity – an amazing achievement! About the charity Based in the Isle of Wight, Ability Dogs 4 Young People train assistance dogs to increase the independence and wellbeing of disabled young people and children in the local area. The ability dogs are provided free of charge and the charity fully funds the training of new puppies, as well as covering the costs of all the dog's food, equipment and vets bills throughout their working life. As well as helping with practical tasks, like picking up items, opening doors, helping dress and undress – the ability dogs also help to increase disabled young people's confidence and self-esteem. We caught up with Mick earlier this month to discuss his fundraising journey and how much he aimed to raise for the charity with his big jump. He told us: "Originally I just wanted to try and raise some money to help them out generally but now its gathered momentum I'm hoping to raise enough to buy a puppy and fund its training for the first year. It costs £5000 to buy a puppy and fund its training for two years right up to it being placed as a working Ability Dog - If I can raise a bit more money and somehow hold on to the top spot on the leader board I might reach £2500 which is exactly half of what's needed so that would fund it's first year with the charity." Huge congratulations to Mick for smashing his target and being crowned our #LocalHero 2015! The runners up Rounding out the Top 5 and each securing an additional £500 for their chosen cause, are: 2. The 2015 Footprint Walk for Bath Abbey – a team of intrepid fundraisers, taking on a 140 mile sponsored walk from Bath to London to raise money for renovation works for the Abbey.  3. Jim Strathdee for Glasgow Girls Football Club – who is raising money for a team of 22 players to go on tour and gain coaching experience in Gambia. 4. John Blackie for Bike Safe - for the Eynsham to Botley B4044 Community Path – who is raising money to go towards building a multi-purpose path for bicycles and pedestrians along a road that currently has no provision for cyclists.   5. Katie Skilton for First Days Childrens Charity – who is taking part in the Henley Mile open water swim to raise money to help the charity to support local families in need with items that cannot be donated, such as cot mattresses.  The full leaderboard See the full results of the Top 20 below. A big well done to all our winning fundraisers and charities – your prizes have now been awarded and can be seen on your fundraising page totals!  Scroll down to see more More match fund campaigns coming up! Big thanks again to everyone who took part in the campaign! #LocalHero might now be over, but we've got a whole host of match fund campaigns coming up. We'll be releasing details of the rest of our planned fundraising initiatives for 2015 – including Grow Your Tenner – in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for more information!  

Big Lunch Extras is a free programme to help people run projects that will bring about positive change in their communities –  anything from befriending schemes and festivals to community kitchens and making better use of local derelict land. Following on from the success of The Big Lunch - the UK’s annual get-together for neighbours which invites communities to come together for lunch - Big Lunch Extras is about taking your community spirit that little bit further. So if you need some help with an existing project, or have a great idea for a new one then Big Lunch Extras could be exactly what you’re looking for. It starts with a free three-day residential training event at the Eden Project, which is packed full of inspiration, workshops, practical support, and opportunities to share and develop ideas with like-minded people from across the UK. There are just a handful of camps left, so now is the time to sign up and apply for your place. So how does it work? First off, you’ll come to Eden, in Cornwall, for an immersive weekend to get inspiration, practical skills and the confidence to make real, positive changes within your community. You’ll also get the opportunity to attend regional events near you, where you’ll be introduced to others in your area. The Big Lunch Extras team will stay in touch to offer support and to hear how you’re getting on throughout the programme. What’s more, you’ll be part of a fantastic network of some 900 people on the programme who are all in the same boat as you – sharing ideas, contacts and support.   When are the Camps in 2015? February 27th February – 2nd March  April 17th – 20th May 15th – 18th  July 17th – 20th More dates to be confirmed soon – keep checking www.biglunchextras.com for updates. Camp places are funded and include accommodation and travel, so there really is no reason not to take up this fantastic opportunity. Sound good? Apply for your free place on Big Lunch Extras now! www.biglunchextras.com

The smartphone revolution arguably started with the launch of the iPhone, although to be fair, they’d been around for years. IBM’s Simon phone might claim to be the world’s first, hailing from as far back as 1992. It’s estimated that by 2016 there will be two billion smartphones in the world, making them one of the most widely adopted pieces of technology ever. Enter Near Field Communications The plethora of functions and applications available in today’s smartphones is mind-boggling, and I’m pretty sure that the majority of us only use a tiny fraction of their capacity. One feature that has crept into phones over the years almost unnoticed is Near Field Communications (NFC) – the ability for a phone to pass information between an NFC “tag” or terminal. This is the same technology used in modern credit cards that allows you to “tap to pay”. Although most new phones have some form of NFC functionality, including the iPhone6, the chances are you probably haven’t used it much. After all, what is it good for? At Localgiving we’re keen to anticipate trends (technological and otherwise) so that we can understand how they can be harnessed to help local charities and community groups. And while NFC is currently comparatively unknown, we think there may be some interesting opportunities in the future. Smart Buckets! For example, if you’re a local charity, one of your funding strategies may be to collect cash from people in the street. We’re all used to seeing collectors in t-shirts with brightly coloured buckets, and it’s a straightforward way of raising money. But while it’s easy to do, cash collection comes with some big disadvantages – you’re unlikely to collect donor contact details and so will be unable to remain in touch with them, and Gift Aid claiming has historically been problematic, although the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) has helped a little. But fewer and fewer people carry cash with them, so while they may be willing, they can’t donate cash if they don’t have any. Can technology be deployed to overcome these issues? This could be a job for NFC! Imagine if, alongside your collection bucket, you have an NFC tag, which, when tapped by a donor’s smartphone, opens up the donation page on the Localgiving website on their phone’s browser. It’s very quick (see the video), and within a few seconds a potential donor can be deciding on the amount to donate, making a Gift Aid claim, and even setting up a direct debit if they’re so inclined. As an adjunct to traditional cash collections, NFC could be very useful by increasing donations and widening the circle of supporters.  The NFC tag that is used to trigger the donation is unpowered, costs under £1 and can be easily programmed by any NFC-enabled smartphone. Not everyone will donate this way of course, and not everyone has NFC in their phone, but in time things will change and, if the industry trends are to be believed, most phones will eventually support NFC.       Want to try it? Localgiving will be running a series of trials to establish whether the technology can be made to work in a practical way and we’re seeking volunteers. So if this sparks an interest, please get in touch with me via the Localgiving help line, or by email and I’ll be happy to explain more.

 Small Charity Week 2015  “Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” - Margaret Mead From inception to delivery small charities should never cease to amaze us all.  At the Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI) we are privileged to meet with, talk to, be inspired by and support thousands of small charities each year.  I hear phenomenal stories of passionate, determined, creative and yes sometimes crazy founders.  That particular breed of person who instead of wondering who will do this or that to help others, instead wonder what can I do, how can I help and how can I get others to help. This is often how small charities come into being, someone somewhere sees something that needs doing or a wrong that needs righting and they set about changing the world - and you know they usually do! In the UK we are extremely privileged to have a vibrant, tenacious and effective Small Charity Sector, all 140,000 of them scattered across the country all working hard to support those in our society who are least able to support themselves.  Supporting those who for whatever reason have found themselves in a position that they cannot get out of, cannot control or cope with, not without help and support. Imagine: A young child being bullied at school with no one to turn to for support. An older person, isolated in their own home never speaking to another soul for weeks on end. A young person sofa surfing or homeless, afraid and in need of safe place to stay. An animal forgotten and left starving and neglected in a hut at the end of someone’s garden. A wooded glade cut down, whose special ecosystem is gone forever and its beauty lost to future generations. Or a villager in Tanzania walking 10 miles each day to bring fresh drinking water to their children. For the young and the old, for animals for our environment for those in our own country and for those across the globe, small charities provide hope and a lifeline to the future. Small charities have been coping in, and to a great extent are still coping in exceptional times, as the demand for their services increases, as the workload of both staff and volunteers rises and as funding to deliver their services is increasingly difficult to find.  In the face of all of these challenges, often despite the challenges they face, small charities continue to be optimistic, continue to stretch their resources to meet the needs of their beneficiaries.  They simply put their communities needs before all else. Many small charities exist to provide services the state chooses not to, or that the private sector sees as unprofitable. If there is a need not being met in a local community then you can take bets that it will be a small charity that ‘fills the gap’. Small charities in the UK achieve amazing results but now more than ever before small charities need to remain determined, committed, and passionate about what they do because more people than ever need their help. Want to support a local small charity? You’re spoilt for choice on how to show your love for your favourite small charities: Fundraise through Localgiving - set up your page now and fundraise throughout June for the chance to win your chosen cause an extra £1,000 through the #LocalHero campaign. Volunteer with a small charity near you and help to make a huge difference. Post a message on Twitter or Facebook about why you love your favourite small charity from the 15th-21st June using #ILoveSmallCharities and you could help them win cash prizes. For more information about Small Charity Week and how you can get behind your local small charities go to www.smallcharityweek.com ---- Pauline Broomhead is CEO of the FSI, a charity providing free support services to small charities across the country.  

The village of Haddon in Cambridgeshire has the dubious distinction of being the place that produced the country’s most expensive car repair ever. In 2011 Rowan Atkinson drove his Mclaren F1 supercar into a tree and a lamppost, which fortunately was not fatal, but certainly produced a headache (and probably an embarrassment) of monstrous proportions for the TV star. Reminiscent of an episode of Mr Bean, it was a good example of life imitating fiction. A year later the repair bill stood at £1m. Earlier this year Mr Atkinson concluded that it was time for someone else to enjoy the car, and he put it up for sale, with the expectation that the successful buyer would be paying around £10m.  Other ways to spend £10m In the world of supercars then, £10m doesn’t go very far. But in the world of local charities, £10m is an astronomical sum that can produce amazing results.  Flicking through the charity pages on our website, I’m constantly surprised at the many ways our members are deploying their funds.  Toys for children in respite at Konnections @ the Kerith in Bracknell Forest,  holiday caravan rental for HMH cancer patients in Scotland and the North East, vital mental health teaching by Aware Defeat Depression for frontline workers in Belfast, weeks of food and shelter for service leavers in Wales; the list goes on and on. Local charities can put relatively small amounts of money to incredibly good use, and that’s why we’re so happy to have broken the £10m barrier, because we know it’s made a difference to thousands of people across the length and breadth of the country. If you’ve got £10m to spend, surely this is a better kind of impact than the one the tree and lamppost endured in Haddon, Cambridgeshire!