| Giving Limited | |
| Trade Name: | JustGiving |
| Type: | Limited company |
| Founder: | Dame Zarine Kharas (CEO)[1] Anne-Marie Huby (managing director) |
| Location City: | Bankside, London, England |
| Location Country: | UK |
| Revenue: | £14m (2011)[2] |
| Net Income: | £1.5m (2011) |
| Num Employees: | 160 |
JustGiving is a global online social platform for giving.[3] The firm's headquarters are located in Bankside, London, England.
In 2000, Zarine Kharas and Anne-Marie Huby founded JustGiving (initially clickforaction.com), a company to provide online tools and processing services to enable the collection of charitable donations.
2006 was the firm's first profitable year.[4] In June 2011, the firm claimed that it had provided its service for more than 9,000 UK registered charities and 1.9 million fundraising pages for users, collecting more than £770 million since launch.[5] The cumulative total passed £1 billion in March 2012.[6] The cumulative total passed £4 billion in June 2016.[7]
JustGiving charged a 5% fee on all donations to cover the cost of running the business until March 2019, when the fee was made voluntary.[8] [9] In 2008, The Guardian reported Kharas as acknowledging that "the commission charged by justgiving.com is controversial".
In January 2010, Charlie Simpson, aged seven, raised more than £210,000 (£145,000 in the first 48 hours) via his JustGiving page for the 2010 Haiti earthquake relief programme by UNICEF.[10]
In March 2014, Christian Smith was killed in a crash with a car during a 24-hour charity bike ride for Mind. Donations via his JustGiving page rose to more than £68,000 after his death was covered in the media.[11]
In April 2014, Stephen Sutton raised more than £4.5 million for the Teenage Cancer Trust, after help from celebrity backers including Jason Manford.
In April 2020, Captain Sir Tom Moore, by the end of a fundraising walk, had raised £32,796,155 (the most ever raised on the JustGiving platform) by completing one-hundred, 25metre laps of his garden in Bedfordshire to raise funds for the UK National Health Service (NHS), to aid the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, and to mark his 100th birthday on 30 April 2020. The initial £1,000 goal was realised on 10 April and the target was increased to £100,000 and then to £500,000 as more people around the world donated. On completion, Moore said he would not stop and aimed to do a second hundred laps.[12] [13]
In 2002, JustGiving won the New Media Awards Grand Prix award and also Best Use of the Web award.[14] [15]
In 2004, JustGiving was recognised in the 2004 Charity Times annual Awards in their Fundraising & IT Services category. Charity Times said the company had "transformed the face of donating in the UK".[16]
JustGiving was acquired by U.S.-based Blackbaud, Inc. for £95 million in October 2017.[17]
Blackbaud were criticised in the wake of the Robb Elementary School shooting for its links with the National Rifle Association of America.[18]
In 2003, JustGiving launched a subsidiary in the United States, changing its name to FirstGiving in 2005. FirstGiving is located in Somerville, Massachusetts.[19] In 2010, The New York Times reported that FirstGiving.com was "among the best known" online fund-raising sites.[20] In August 2012, FirstGiving was acquired by FrontStream Holdings, LLC.[21]
In February 2017, JustGiving was reported to be taking more than £20 million from fundraisers while paying staff up to £200,000. It takes a cut from most donations and while some of the money is used for maintenance, product development and charity training, accounts show that more than £10 million was spent on staff costs in 2016. This includes an average salary of more than £60,000 for some directors, sales and administration workers, with the head of the firm having earned approximately £198,000. A charity chief executive had accused JustGiving of being greedy, saying the fees were "hard to stomach" and fundraisers had expressed their anger, labelling the site "JustTaking".[22]