Dragon in the den

Duncan Bannatyne, star of BBC's Dragons' Den, popped into the office last week with his TV crew to have a look at theBigGive.org.uk and talk philanthropy with Alec Reed.

Duncan is presenting a documentary about giving amongst the rich for ITV1, and was very excited by the number and range of projects on the site. This is yet more great exposure - and high wealth feedback - for the website, and we look forward to seeing the full programme soon.

America's top donors

An interesting web discussion featuring Lorry Lokey, who has appeared on The Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of America's top donors every year since 2000.

Two of Mr Lokey's comments stood out for me:

"I am not impressed with fancy huge brochures, publications, CDs, and especially gifts. A one page letter will do along with a one or two page flyer."

"At least 99% of request made to me by mail or phone are not answered because I don't know them."

Magic Wand funding

I read an interesting article in the New York Times this Sunday discussing the balance between funding short-term projects and longer term operating support.

This ties in very neatly with the news that charities can now upload a "Magic Wand" funding proposal on theBigGive.org.uk. We define the Magic Wand as "the one greatest thing that would help support each charity".

While theBigGive.org.uk began by promoting discrete projects, we hope the Magic Wand section will give donors a chance to fund the long term operational support that can be so vital to the continuing success of the charity.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone. 2007 proved to be a huge year for philanthropy (and, coincidentally, the year of our launch!) and we are looking forward to an even more philanthropic 2008.

We have had some great feedback from high-wealth donors over the Christmas period, and a number have agreed to become Advisory Philanthropists to theBigGive.org.uk. I will have more information on this - and our first site improvements of 2008 - in later posts.

Good luck with your New Year resolutions, and all the best with your fundraising and philanthropy over the coming year!

£1 billion of projects!

Today we passed £1 billion of projects on theBigGive.org.uk. To have acheived this milestone in under 3 months (2 months and 19 days, to be precise) is an amazing acheivement, and hope the scale of interest in the site is a sign of many successes to come.

I would like to thank every charity (all 3,500 of you!) that has helped theBigGive.org.uk grow into such a useful tool for high wealth donors in such a short space of time.

As we continue to grow and develop, I look forward to working with our registered charities to improve the opportunities available to high wealth donors. If you have any comments or thoughts on the site, the project format or how your supporters react to your projects, please let us know by posting a comment on this blog.

First donations through theBigGive.org.uk!

This week we were delighted to hear that a multi-million pound grant-making organisation has used theBigGive.org.uk to successfully identify £500,000 of projects to fund.

It is fantastic that grant-making organisations are already using the website to inform their funding decisions, and we would like to thank our charities for making theBigGive.org.uk such an useful destination for high wealth donors.

The organisation, which wishes to remain anonymous, commented, "Rather than going through the traditional project proposal process, it was good to proactively select the shortlist. We managed to find projects in our very specific field, and had drawn up a shortlist of projects in 5 minutes."

With our first mailing to over 15,000 high wealth individuals landing this week, we are confident that these donations will be the first of many. If you have had success with theBigGive.org.uk, either as a charity or a donor, please let us know. With our ever-growing PR contacts, we can make sure that the charity enjoys maximum leverage from the donation, and of course the donor can remain completely anonymous if they wish.

Philanthropy UK Newsletter

Today sees the publication of the quarterly Philanthropy UK newsletter December edition, with features on theBigGive.org.uk and Top 5 giving tips from Alec Reed.

Philanthropy UK is a highly respected philanthropy resource and their newsletter is read by established philanthropists, high wealth individuals looking to give for the first time, and wealth advisors from some of the top private banks.

We are very pleased to be making such an impact in this sector after only 2 months, and I will keep posting our articles on the blog to let you know how we are going!