It’s Giving Week 2015! Click here to raise money for MNers’ favourite charities

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,

Well we’re delighted to say that today marks the start of Mumsnet Giving Week 2015 in partnership with Just Giving, when we ask you to donate as much as you can to five charities nominated by MNers - and MNHQ matchfunds the total (up to a maximum of £25k, just in case one of you turns out to be a billionaire).

We asked you to nominate on this thread (a rather tear-inducing read in itself tbh) and we’ve whittled it down to these five causes:

Abortion Support Network
Count the Kicks
SWAN UK
Rape Crisis England and Wales
IPSEA

You can find out more about what they do here.

So - what we need you to do now (please) is:

Donate! Remember - only donations via the dedicated pages on JustGiving listed above will be included in Giving Week totals and match funded by MNHQ.
Tell ALL your family and friends - donations don’t have to be from MNers, it all counts! (So long as it’s via the JustGiving pages).
Shout about Giving Week on Twitter and Facebook - hashtag #MNGiving; if you follow us on Twitter @MumsnetTowers and like us on Facebook, you can RT or share our posts there.

If you need further motivation, there’s this from Knotty and Pistey from Woolly Hugs, which was one of last year’s organisations:

‘We received £2391.18 - an extraordinary amount for us. If someone donates £1 we are thrilled, so it was a real game-changer. It has helped to secure our position, which feels FABULOUS. We have been given time, freedom and space to think about taking Woolly Hugs forward, rather than thinking about where the next fiver will come from. We’ve always been ambitious for Woolly Hugs in our hearts, but the funds are helping us to BE ambitious.’

We raised around £23k last year - let’s smash that total this year, eh? We don’t want to have to spend our £25k on biscuits and gin...

[MrsHathaway]

Hurrah!

[TheBabyFacedAssassin]

Thank you so, so, so much for including the Abortion Support Network. I had tears in my eyes when I saw that they had made the cut. Thank you!

[BIWI]

Fantastic. Have donated.
Wouldn't like to see you having to drink that much gin ...

[cozietoesie]

You mean there's MNHQ funding for biscuits and gin? Why did nobody tell me!

[cozietoesie]

Ah well - JustGiving appear to have crashed. Probably not accustomed to so much traffic from MNers. Give it 10 minutes, people.

[cozietoesie]

All OK now - just a blip it seems.

[GloGirl]

Fabulous choices MNHQ, now to find that fiver down the back of the sofa somewhere!!

[TengoSueno]

Donated. Such great causes.

[cozietoesie]

Any chance of copying this to/pinning on another couple of boards to increase reading?

[cozietoesie]

PS - remembering that Pins don't show on the App (at least mine) - and, interestingly, neither do copied threads, it seems. (So on my App, this thread is only showing on Site Stuff where it must have been originally posted and even there, drifts down from the top unless posted on to bump it.)

[HapShawl]

Great selections, thanks MNHQ (and MNers for the nominations!)

[RowanMumsnet]

Hi Cozie - it is pinned in quite a few places. It's also on the 'sliders' that come across the bottom of the screen and annoy regular MNers , and we've got a couple of other plans for making sure nobody can escape it. Unfortunately, as you say, stickies and sliders don't show on the app. (They will on the New App that's currently in production though.)

[Smooshface]

Donated!

[MrsHathaway]

DS is running at lunchtime and I have informally sponsored him to do so. He wants the money to go to my favourite charity. He doesn't know he's match-sponsored by MNHQ

[SayThisOnlyOnce]

Thank you MNHQ for doing this. MN has saved me ££ over the years (well it has cost me a fair bit too reading book reviews!) - glad to donate in Giving Week and thank you for matching it.

[MrsHathaway]

Crikey - he managed fifty-five laps.

::rummages down back of sofa::

[WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeGoes]

Donated. However I only found out about it from the IPSEA FB page, I rarely seem to notice sticky threads, this one wouldn't have caught my eye if I hadn't already known about it. Haven't seen it on any slidey things either.

[ouryve]

The first I knew about this was from an IPSEA email!

[cozietoesie]

It's a difficult one for MNHQ I suspect. If they flooded the site with Giving Week reminders and links then they'd likely have a load of complaints from people who aren't involved in it. Also, there are probably a whole load of MNers who don't access the site via the Homepage - where there is a lot of Giving Week publicity - but simply go straight to particular boards via bookmarks. Neither, it seems, do many people read MN emails (there has been a specific one about Giving Week) and that's even if they still regularly access the particular email account which is registered - some people don't.

I don't know the answer to it.

[SayThisOnlyOnce]

I had an email from Mumsnet about it :)

[WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeGoes]

I didn't get an email (I do get them from MN) and I never go to the homepage, I have bookmarked TIO and from there go to Most Active. I don't know what the answer is really. I did get an email from IPSEA.

[RowanMumsnet]

We are trying to make it as visible as poss! It is on the sliders - ouryve and WhoKnows, how do you view MN (ie on mobile, desktop or app?) Unfortunately sliders and stickies don't show on the app because we can't update the app code to include new innovations...

If you've got any ideas about how to make it more visible for the average MN user, do please let us know. We could start a thread about it in relevant boards (ie SN for IPSEA and SWAN UK?) but for those who don't 'see' stickies the thread would need to be bumped quite a lot

[cozietoesie]

My own inclination would be to start short threads, Rowan - maybe eg in AIBU (for traffic), SEN and Relationships. (I think you actually have to start them there rather than copying across because for some reason, copied threads don't seem to register at all on the App - at least they don't on mine. I simply haven't got this thread on the App version of Relationships although it's showing fine there on the Desktop site version of the board.)

Then you'd just have to rely on people who were involved to bump them if the reaction on the boards was reasonably positive. That would happen if people were committed.

[SayThisOnlyOnce]

I think we should all start little threads here and there with tenuous links. I have bagsied AIBU and getting ready for a flaming