Charities' online donations scuppered by broken Charity Choice links

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Charities' online donations scuppered by broken Charity Choice links 10

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 17 Jan 2012

Hundreds of charities may have lost the ability to accept online donations after web-based donation service Charity Choice upgraded its website and changed the links from charities' own sites.

Charity Choice, which is owned by publishing giant Wilmington, provides services including an online basic donation facility to more than 4,200 charities across the UK.

But an upgrade to its services earlier this month caused the links from some charities’ websites to the Charity Choice site to break. It appears that only charities that have linked directly to the donation facility page have lost the ability to take donations.

A tweet from literary charity the Arthur Ransome Trust on 9 January suggests that the service has been down for at least a week.

When prospective donors click on the ‘Donate Now’ button on a charity’s website, they are met with a page that states: “Sorry, we can’t find what you’re looking for. Oops! This link appears to be broken. Please use your browser to go back to your previous page or click the Charity Choice logo to go back to the homepage.”

None of the eight charities contacted by civilsociety.co.uk was aware that the link from their site was broken.

Charity Choice upgrade

Gemma Dudley, a spokeswoman for Charity Choice, said the problem had arisen as a result of its recent relaunch to introduce new products and services including new donations functionality.

She said the company had sent a series of emails to all customers over the past year to notify them of the forthcoming changes and invite them to opt in to the new service. About 800 have so far done so.

Those that haven’t yet opted in won’t have been given the link addresses to the pages on the new Charity Choice website and that will have caused the broken links.

Dudley said it was conceivable that a number of the customer email addresses on the Charity Choice database were now out-of-date and so some of the charities hadn’t yet received any information about the upgrade.

Others that had opted in probably haven't yet changed the link URL to the new Charity Choice page, and should ensure they do so, she said.

Charity Choice added: “We’d like to apologise to anyone who has experienced any difficulties connected with the changeover. For more help email: claudia@charitychoice.co.uk”.

Other charities affected by the broken links include the Foundation for Liver Research; Spinnaker Trust; Brent Homeless and Mind in Taunton and West Somerset.

Place a comment

Tanya Noronha
Publisher
Charity Choice
3 Feb 2012

Charity Choice make weekly donation payments to our charities. Gift Aid is claimed back monthly from HMRC and paid separately each month. We have set up a non-interest bearing trust account to receive all charity donations. Charities can monitor their donations and payments via their admin pages.

Occasionally there may be problems with specific charity accounts or donations and in these instances payments could take longer. Our administration team monitor donations and payments daily and in these cases they contact the relevant charity to keep them informed.

If you would like any further information or assistance regarding donations through charitychoice.co.uk, please do not hesitate to get in touch on 020 7549 8618 or e-mail claudia@charitychoice.co.uk.

[Reply]

Kathryn Sullivan
chairperson
The Shetland Pony Welfare Trust
27 Jan 2012

Re- Charity Choice online donations
I would appreciate feedback from other charities as regards to the new online processing facility that Charity Choice are now offering
I understand that they are now useing the services of worldpay and not the c0-operative bank to collect and forward donations
Have other charites found that donations made since the 4th January 2012 are taking longer to reach bank accounts.How many days is the process now taking.
Kathryn Sullivan
Chairperson
Registered Charity 1093364

[Reply]

Sarah Gale
Executive Secretary
St Gregory's Foundation
20 Jan 2012

We also found out about this late so were without online donation facility for about a week. Charity Choice did register us very quickly once we sent in our terms and conditions. On the other hand it was not clear that the "enhanced" service is actually a basic online donation facility. We are looking into switching to My Donate, offered free by BT. Our donors still generally give by cheque and we just don't have enough online donations to make a fee justifiable.

[Reply]

Geraint Lewis
Trustee
Arthur Ransome Trust
18 Jan 2012

I'd just like to take this opportunity to clarify any misconceptions from our being quoted in the above report.

1) The Arthur Ransome Trust (@AR_Trust) never issued a tweet on this subject. I am aware that somebody else sent one linking to a short notice on our website, dated 9 January, and that they gave the impression they represented the Trust. They didn't. Our own website notice, at www.arthur-ransome-trust.org.uk simply informed potential donors that our online donation facility was currently unavailable.

2) We put up a second notice, dated 12 January, to inform potential donors that the Charity Choice online facility had been restored.

3) It should be apparent from the above that it took only a little over 48 hours to clarify the problem with Charity Choice and to restore the service. During this time we found their staff to be courteous, helpful and efficient.

4) Our initial problem stemmed from our falling into the "out-of-date" email address category mentioned in the report above. As S Holmes has commented, this is hardly Charity Choice's fault.

5) I'm now aware that the links from our website have been down since the weekend. This was, however, due to a separate and unrelated issue with our website, not with Charity Choice's service. They have now been restored agan.

6) It should be apparent by now that we have no complaint about Charity Choice's service. Obviously any loss of service is unfortunate, but these things do happen from time to time.

[Reply]

Tanya Noronha
Publisher
Charity Choice
18 Jan 2012

We’d like to apologise if some charities have experienced problems as a result of the introduction of our new fundraising services. We have worked hard to ensure that all charities were notified and transitioned to the new service pre-launch.

Hundreds of charities have already registered for the new service and are happy with our new donations facility as well as the other new features that enable them to engage with supporters in a variety of ways. All charities can now register and post their charity events for free, as well as find free goods and volunteering offers from the public.

We welcome all feedback so to comment or for specific help, please do not hesitate to get in touch on 020 7549 8618 or e-mail claudia@charitychoice.co.uk.

[Reply]

David Bridges
Director
Countryside EducationTrust
17 Jan 2012

The reason we signed up with 'charity choice' initially was that the service was free - no annual fee. The communication from Claudia Rios does not mention the introduction of an annual fee plus 2% of every donation, it merely says to download the new terms and conditions sign and return. Only a reading of that eight page document tells you they require £89 a year for a enhanced microsite or £199 for an premium microsite. What a small charity such as mine wants is to maximise the relatively small income that comes from online donations. Does anyone offer a service that benefits charities without taking an reasonable fee?

[Reply]

S Holmes
17 Jan 2012

Despite the article's somewhat grandiose opening assertion, it is clear on the point that the 'problem' is one of users not updating either their links or their contact details. This is hardly something Charity Choice have any control over. As a user of this service I too failed to update my link. This was my fault, nobody else's since I was informed of the impending upgrade.

Despite your vested interest in the damage to this company's reputation you might want to have a care, unless a little of the mud you're slinging ends up on your own.

[Reply]

Lynda Scott-Williams
Chief Executive
The Arthritic Association
17 Jan 2012

I think that's a bit unfair on Charity Choice. I received several emails telling me what was going to happen - and what wouldn't if I didn't sign up. It's not as though the website was changed overnight.

[Reply]

Caroline Sindall
Admin/Marketing Officer
The Voices Foundation
17 Jan 2012

The spokesman for Charity Choice is a tad wide of the mark in claiming charities using their existing online donation service had been contacted over the last year or so about these changes.

True, we were asked in late 2010 if we wanted to sign up to an agreement for Charity Choice to collect Gift Aid on our behalf as part of (unspecified) "exciting developments in the pipeline"... we declined.

But the first communication we received, from Claudia Rios, about the massive changes afoot was on 1 December 2011! As a small charity with only part-time staff in the office, it wasn't something we could address in the run-up to Christmas (and in fact our office was closed on 23 December, the date the new agreement was circulated, until 3 January) nor can we do so ourselves at present. And now we're totally confused, as we didn't want an "enhanced microsite", just a simple online facility for people to donate using a card if they wished, with the stated fees deducted with the new service launching! Not even been given that choice, Charity Choice...

[Reply]

Chester Mojay-Sinclare
Director
CharityCheckout.co.uk
17 Jan 2012

These things happen, but fact that Charity Choice seemed to be aware of the problem and still preceded without resolving it is astonishing. As a result, potentially hundreds of charities have lost at least an entire week’s worth of donations and Charity Choice have severely damaged their own reputation, in an industry premised on reliability.

[Reply]

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