The company behind the Bupa Great Run Series and the Great Swim Series has parted ways with BT MyDonate, switching to JustGiving as its preferred online donation platform.

The announcement this morning that Nova International has selected JustGiving and JustTextGiving as its official online fundraising partners comes just over a year after the same company announced it would be partnering with BT MyDonate, the fee-free online sponsorship platform run by the telecommunications company.

JustGiving reports that despite not being the official partner of the Nova events last year, which include mass participation challenges such as the Great North Run and the Great South Run and in total involve nearly 225,000 people, it still processed £6m worth of donations from the events.

Nova International commercial director Nicky Homes said the company believes that by using JustGiving, participants will have “the best possible experience”. “Thanks to JustGiving’s investment in their product and continuous innovation in fundraising, we felt they were the best choice for an ongoing partnership,” she said.

Nova International reviews its fundraising strategy every year.

Mobile-optimised giving a selling point

While BT MyDonate also has a text-to-donate facility, Nova cited the JustTextGiving by Vodafone feature – which had been live when Nova chose MyDonate as its partner in December 2011 – as well as JustGiving’s mobile-optimised website as reasons for selecting the platform.

JustGiving’s head of partnerships Howard Bell said the company was “very proud” of its new partnership with Nova International, a partnership it enjoyed before Nova selected BT MyDonate for 2012. “We’ve been working hard to continually improve our tools to ensure fundraising and giving is as easy as possible, and are delighted to be giving all Great Run participants access to this technology,” he said.

A survey of charities conducted  by civilsociety.co.uk last year found that on average just 11 per cent of charities were recommending their supporters use BT MyDonate, compared with 43 per cent recommending JustGiving and 27 per cent for Virgin Money Giving. Asked to rank the platforms based on performance, MyDonate did not perform as strongly as competitor products in the market, specifically JustGiving, Virgin Money Giving and own-site platforms – topping the rankings only on the question of ‘value for money’, given that the platform is entirely free for charities to use.

BT MyDonate has reported some significant partnerships over the past six months, however, providing the donation platform for Cancer Research UK’s Stand Up To Cancer and a partnership with Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales which involved MyDonate sponsoring four conferences.  

BT released a statement in the evening, in which a spokesman said: “We wish Nova success in the future and look forward to continuing as their online partner. MyDonate will continue to help all charities raise money without any additional overheads.”

 

Directors of Fundraising Survey Who is leading the UK’s most powerful fundraising machines and what is weighing on their minds? We take a snapshot of the directors of fundraising at the top 100 charities by voluntary income. Vibeka Mair and Celina Ribeiro outline the key findings.