Justgiving

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Type	Ltd
Founded	London (2000)
Headquarters	Farringdon, London, England
Industry	New Media
Website	www.justgiving.com

Justgiving is a private for-profit company formed for the administration of charitable donations in 2000. The company's website provides online fundraising tools to enable the electronic collection of donations. Justgiving provides its service for more than 3,000+ UK registered charities and 300,000 fundraising pages for users, collecting over £150 million. The administrative function includes the automatic reclaiming of Gift Aid on all donations from UK taxpayers.

More than £100 million has been raised through Justgiving since its launch.[1] Charity Times claimed the company had “transformed the face of donating in the UK”.[2]

Justgiving’s headquarters are at St Cross Street, London. Justgiving is led by Founder and CEO Zarine Kharas and MD Anne Marie Huby.

[edit] Criticisms

Justgiving has received public criticism for using the business model of a private for-profit company [3] including in their own internet forums.[4] Justgiving deducts 5% from every charitable donation as a fee to cover the cost of running the business.[5] As a for-profit organisation this fee may be used just as any income may be used within a company, and this may include distribution by way of dividends to shareholders in the company. Hence it may be argued that individuals are personally profiting from the charity donations.

Justgiving state that "Fundraising costs in the UK [...] between 15% and 25% (source: www.charityfacts.org). So Justgiving’s 5% represents excellent value, especially for smaller charities with limited resources."[6] Rod Schwartz, previously the Chairman of Justgiving, provides arguments to support the business model in an article in Alliance Magazine [7].