give it

New year, new challenges

So we finish 2009 on a bit of a high - Gifts4Good has performed better than 2008 and we had a really good spread of charities receiving donations in the lead up to Christmas.

The rest of the year was tough, however. We were down on donations versus 2008 - although we continued to get lots of couples sign up with us for their wedding lists we have found that the average donation per guest has dropped dramatically. Given the current financial straits and/or uncertainty that many of us found ourselves in this is hardly surprising.

Looking forward we continue to believe that we'll be able to get more and more couples to register for their wedding list with one of our services and from there grow what we can generate for our participating charities. I'm not one for predictions so I won't forecast how we'll do this year, but I know we'll give it everything to keep growing.

Small milestones

I love it when we hit small milestones in our fundraising efforts for each charity - the first £1,000, the first £5,000, the first £10,000, the first £50,000... we hit a good milestone for Samaritans this month.

Oddly enough however, the first time we actually generate a donation for a charity is what seems to make me smile the most. This month we've managed that five times - given our fairly tight selection of charities (just over 50 charities now) that's quite a return in one month, and one I don't think we've seen before, even from our first full year when, obviously, we added a fairly large tranche in one go (which was actually our second tranche, given we started with just five originally).

This month we've managed to get things moving for AfriKids, Depaul UK, Street Child Africa, TreeAid and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. 

I have to admit that being able to start generating funds for the last of those, WWT, is particularly satisfying. As a youngster I learnt so much about wildlife, and in particular wildfowl, from regular visits (up to monthly at some stages) to the Martin Mere Wetland Centre in Lancashire, a short cycle ride from where I lived and went to school. It was, and still is, an amazing place to visit at any time of the year (and having been to other centres as an adult they're not just for kids!).

We brought WWT onto The Green Wedding List this year (too late for 2009 weddings, this month's funds have come via Gifts4Good) and we hope we'll have a good year for them in 2010. For the time being though it's good to get things moving.

Andy 

Featuring in the Guardian's "Christmas gift guide"

Great to see that 6 of the 10 charity gifts featured in the "Charity gift" section (naturally) in the Guardian's online gift guide this Christmas link through to Gifts4Good.

Good to see that the Guardian buy in to the principle that buying a charity gift doesn't have to come with oodles of extras like gift cards, photos, letters, fridge magnets, spare envelope for re-sending on etc etc - there's certainly a place for that, as many consumers need that type of touchy-feely paraphernalia and for charities it seems a good way to establish a more tangible link with a potential supporter. But many people (in our experience) also like the immediacy and simplicity of Gifts4Good and in an increasingly online world it also could make more sense for the charity - the recipient, via the link in the gift email, can go straight to the charity's website to find out more.

We've managed to get quite a cross-section of charities onto the Guardian website, from large well-known charities like CLIC Sargent, Samaritans and RSPB, through to the less well-known, but still large, AMREF, along with two smaller charities The Food Chain and AfriKids.  

Although our wedding lists remain our biggest focus (in terms of funds and time spent) it's good to be generating a little more through Gifts4Good (especially given that it's the quiet season for weddings). As a certain large supermarket says; "every little helps..."

Andy

New charities

Over recent weeks we've been trying to add a few more charities to the various services ready for 2010;

Onto The African Wedding List we've been able to add the brilliant AMREF and the wonderful Tree Aid and, hopefully, have two more charities lined up for this service; we think these, with those already live, will give us the right balance between choices for couples/guests and manage-ability while we grow (but let us know if you think we've missed some obvious causes).

Elsewhere it's getting a little painful. We have a few gaps on each of the other services and a few charities we'd love to bring on but we so often find a mis-match between the charities that WE'D like to bring on there (a combination of suggestions from couples, recognisable charities, and particular 'gaps' for a type of charity) and those that are able to find a little time to decide that they'd like to. 

We also have a fair idea of the ongoing criteria (and a list of charities we'd like) for charities that get in touch, so we can often say yes straight away to a charity that asks, plus we are also trying to get a few more involved via Gifts4Good if we don't have space on one of the wedding list services - however all too often the conversation goes like this;

Charity - "Just come across you" (including many we've written to previously). "Can we join?"

Give It - "Yes, that would be great. Here's how it works."

Charity - "Thanks, we'll get back to you". Then silence for a few months.

Give It - "Would you still like to join? Can we help answer any queries?"

Charity - "A 'read receipt' of the email" Then silence for a few months more.

Give It - gives up...

12 months later.

Charity - "Just come across you. Can we join?"...

Rejection would be fine, it's the silence that I struggle with! Occasionally the queries bounce back for a while, but mostly it's just about someone making a decision - the longest backward and forward we had with a charity (we wanted them to join, they assured us they also did) lasted three years before we gave up - some charities that joined at the same time as we started to try and bring them onboard had received tens of thousands of pounds by then...

Sorry to moan!

Andy 

Show season and The African Wedding List

Nearly time for the Autumn shows, first one is this weekend at Earls Court followed by the Designer Wedding Show the weekend after.

Leaflets have been printed (on FSC paper of course) and volunteers have volunteered (and their train tickets are en-route, although I had to pay extra to get them there because of a postal strike). It could be Lauren's last show for a while as she's expecting a baby boy come January (and so may be taking a few more breaks than normal this weekend!). We've also lost another one of our volunteers temporarily already (hope she'll be able to fit us in once things settle down) as Charli has just started at Salford Uni and is already rehearsing for an event at the Lowry that starts next Monday. Having said that one of our other volunteers comes back having missed the Spring, and I'm back to full fitness, so we should be okay (but anyone fancy a few hours at Earls Court?)!

Meanwhile this week we've launched our latest gift list - The African Wedding List. Like our Scottish, London and Green versions it allows us to bring on some more charities (that would otherwise get lost on our main gift list service of The Alternative Wedding List) and, if it works like our other options, allows couples to choose a wedding list service that more reflects them. As always it's really exciting to launch a new gift list and this is one we've been hoping to get off the ground for a while.

Appearing so far are several of our existing charities that work in Africa alongside some new charities including AfriKids and Street Child Africa, both of whom we've been trying to find a gap for on our services for a while now. We've got more new ones in the pipeline but, as usual, it can be a slow process bringing charities on (both parties often having so little spare time).

If you're going to any of the shows we're at do come and say hello.

Andy

Snow, wind and rain... plus a great start to our wedding shows

Just got back from our first wedding show of the Spring, The Scottish Wedding Show in Edinburgh. Scotland is one of our 'hotspots' for couples using our wedding lists and we love the show we go to each year in Edinburgh - we have some great conversations and get great feedback and this year was no exception.

More couples had thought about having a charity wedding list and we got a much better reaction this year to The Scottish Wedding List - we'd only just gone live last time we were there but this year have an even stronger line-up of charities on the service - charities like Alzheimer Scotland, Cornerstone Community Care and Quarriers have been joined by others including Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland, Turning Point Scotland and Scottish International Relief (and we still have a couple more expected to be joining soon).

While in Scotland I couldn't help heading to the hills for a walk and headed to Perthshire for a spot of hill-walking in the snow - on occasions the views were great but (see the inset picture) at times I was reliant on my compass as I could barely see more than a few yards!

We've got two major three-days shows to come in two of the next three weekends (both in London) - The Designer Wedding Show and The National Wedding Show - I'm rounding up the volunteers!

Andy 

Christmas is coming...

We're already having a much busier December than last year. Although fewer people this year have signed up for The Alternative Christmas List (works like our wedding lists, your friends and family 'buy' one of the donations to charity rather than buy you a pair of socks) more people are actually using theirs when they do sign up - we've previously had lots of people who signed up for a Christmas list but then realised they were the ones who were going to be without presents so didn't actually use it. This year it seems that more people are realising that this is really the best sort of 'charity Christmas' to have, i.e. where you forsake presents YOU would have received rather than simply buying your family a charity gift they may not want (although obviously doing both, if your family approve, is even better!).

Having said that, we've also had quite an uplift of donations through our 'one-off' charity gift service Gifts 4 Good (where you make your donation instead of buying a physical gift and, instead of all the expense of gift cards, envelopes, postage etc, you just get a nice simple emailed PDF to send to the 'recipient'). The uplift started in November, and December's already our best month for the service so far. It's always been a bit of a 'sideline' as most people still seem to want something physical to show for their charity gift but maybe the whole 'green' angle is helping as well (having done the right thing why not go the whole hog and avoid wasting even more money).

My favourite piece of festive fare this Christmas has been from the charity Buglife, one of the recent additions to The Green Gift List. They've teamed up with children from St Augustine’s Junior School, Peterborough, to record a new version of a traditional Christmas song – ‘The Twelve Bugs of Christmas’. You can hear the song and see the accompanying film by clicking on this link: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_4-Bomnkd1w. Well worth a listen!

Andy

Our last wedding show this year

We exhibited at our final show of the year yesterday, the last of the season's gay wedding shows. Great fun and quite relaxed - one of our favourite acts of these (or indeed any) shows are The Three Waiters. Pretending to be waiters at your event/wedding they suddenly burst into song, and at the shows they also provide a little entertainment to keep us wide awake.

It was also great that one of our registered couples came along and said hi - Lyn and Deb get hitched in March and had a few things left to find - great news that they'd already decided on their gift list!

On the charity front - lots happening! Suddenly a few we've been asking to come onboard are saying yes so lots of work in letting them know how things work, how we can get them setup on the gift lists, and then finally working on the details ('gifts' etc) that will actually become part of the lists. We're trying to get as many of the new charities sorted by the new year as that's when we tend to get a big increase in next year's marrying couples signing up. Last week however we also had a charity, that we've been talking to for a year that we wanted to try and raise money for through our Scottish gift lists, come back to us and let us know that they weren't going to join up - always a dissapointment after so much work but it just means the door is open for another.

Andy

Social Enterprise Day

Today is Social Enterprise Day - for many social enterprises it's an opportunity to celebrate their achievements within the communities they operate. Away from all the wedding fairs it can often feel like we're a little remote from our 'community' (the couples who use our wedding lists? the charities we generate money for? the end recipients in various countries of that money?) as for reasons of cost/efficiency we try to keep engagement to a minimum (i.e. mainly using the internet/email etc).

For us Social Enterprise Day is more about feeling part of a wider movement of different types of organisations trying to operate in the right way and make a difference at the same time. Although we're based just outside the capital we're members of Social Enterprise London and this gives us access to a variety of practical help, advice and other opportunities (including featuring on Shop Social Enterprise) - although we're not heavily involved it's really good to know they're there.

Meanwhile we're working on bringing a tranche of charities onto the various services in time for the new year;

The Green Gift List is one of our new services for 2008 and we're adding more charities there ready for the new year. One of these is elephant family who I went to see on Monday to start agreeing gifts for the website - there'll be some great ideas ("nibbles" - I'll say no more).

Bringing charities onto The Scottish Wedding List has been more of a challenge - as, generally, we have an idea of the ideal range of charities that we'd like on there (based on the sorts of charities that couples already select and also ask us for) we have a list of charities that we've already identified and been trying to bring on for the best part of a year. With many charities having such small fundraising teams it can take a while to get things moving, even when everybody wants to! Things seem to be picking up and so we're hopeful of getting the right mix of charities live for January.

Getting charities live for The London Wedding List was a little easier, although we're still adding a few more for next year - this service only went live in mid-2007, effectively missing the wedding season, so we're excited for what 2008 will bring.

Andy