Giving Week is here: donate funds to MNer-nominated organisations and MNHQ will match them!

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello all

As you may remember, a wee while back we asked you to nominate your favourite charities and related organisations for the inaugural Mumsnet Giving Week. Well - the nominations are in, the shortlist has been drawn up and Mumsnet Giving week starts here!

First, a thank you: you suggested an amazing selection of worthy organisations, and choosing just five was, as you can imagine, an astonishingly difficult task. In the end, though, we settled on the following:

Women's Aid
Free Cakes for Kids
Woolly Hugs
Haven House
PDA Society

As of now, the Yimby and Just Giving fundraising pages are ready to take your donations. And remember, we’ll be matching whatever money you raise, up to the combined total of £25k (we thought we’d better set some sort of limit in case one of you turns out to be fabulously wealthy and decides to drop a million quid - which would, of course, be amazing, but might leave us scrabbling around a bit come payday )

We’re mindful that most of you won’t be able to donate large amounts, of course - but small amounts are extremely welcome! And if you’d like to help out in other ways (we really don’t want anyone to feel bad about not being able to donate), we’d be very grateful for any noise you can make via Facebook, Twitter etc etc: the best place to link to to explain the whole project is here and the hashtag is #MumsnetGiving.

Thanks very much - here’s to raising lots of money for some brilliant causes.

Thanks MNHQ for doing this, it's ace.
I have only managed to donate little amounts and so great to know you will match it.

PDA has made its target. Well done folks.

Really pleased the PDA Society has been blessed with this opportunity!
Thank you so much. I found out about PDA through mumsnet ... It was a classic lightbulb moment ... And that kind insight about unusual and challenging behaviour and PDA which was shared by another poster lead me to the PDA society... The videos and the advice which had been extremely helpful. It's changed all our lives, for the better. Without knowing what your child has - you are in the dark, feeing guilty and useless... (We now have an official diagnosis confirmed by a few doctors).

So hopefully wider knowledge of the PDA society will help other parents and adults with the condition.

And now mumsnet is contributing to the cause... Mumsnet to the rescue! Seriously I think the parents conference will be fantastic, brilliant that there will be some funding for help which is desperately needed. I am selfishly hoping we manage to get on the course at some point....! :D

Ok enough rambling - thank you from a grateful mumsnet family. I'm encouraging my family and friends to donate. Thank you x

Mumsnet - can you put a 'Donate' button on the website to make it easier to donate, please? It's quite tricky to find the right link when you're on a dinky phone! Thanks

I am also thrilled about PDA but am also off to look at the other organisations. I am loving that you have chosen not well known groups who do so much good :)

I've received the MNHQ email now.

I'm delighted that the PDA society have met their target. DS1 doesn't have an official diagnosis of it (he has ASD and ADHD), but learning about it has made a huge difference to our quality of life. Dealing with children with PDA really does involve going against a lot of ingrained (by society) instincts and it's fabulous that so many families will be now able to be supported with this.

Yaayyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!

The most ENORMOUS thank you for donations and shares, we are so bloody chuffed to have met and exceeded the target already! And to know that MNHQ will double it well, unusually for us, we are almost lost for words! Woooooooohooooooooooooo!

To say we are thrilled is an understatement, we are also incredibly humbled and touched that folk would do this for all of us. Can't quite take it in! This will have such an impact upon what the Woolly Hug crew together can achieve for children and families both here in the UK, and much further afield and for that we are SO grateful.

Thank you doesn't seem enough, but THANK YOU!!!!!

I think that people are saying Thank You to you all, Knotty - as with the other charities/projects. Richly deserved.

Every time I see Women's Aid recommended to a woman in trouble on MN I want to make a donation.

Very pleased they are being supported - it feels as if they are out there doing what we sit and advocate for. I would like to volunteer for WA once my work / family workload diminishes.

Yes - and I think many people are not aware of how difficult the funding position is for them.

\link{http://www.womensaid.org.uk/page.asp?section=00010001001000020002\Women's Aid Funding}

One day to go, so an early bump for Saturday night

If you're not going out tonight - remember those days ?! - then how about donate what you might have spent if you had done to one of these great causes ...

And MNHQ will double it!

Excellent idea, Juggling.

Thanks cozie
Don't know if the thread needs bumping as it's top of DOTD anyway - but here's another bump for the Saturday night party just in case!

A bump is always useful - I'm hoping that people who are able to can see their way to dropping a few more ££ to Women's Aid in light of their importance to all of us.

Mumsnet towers, are you aware that the Yimby site has been down for several hours?

It seems to be OK for me Madonna. Maybe it's just come back online?

Great, hopefully it's just me

Hi MadonnaKebab

Are you still having trouble accessing Yimby?

It seems to be working fine for us. Hopefully it was just a temporary glitch.

None of the Yimby sites are working for me this morning. They all say "Runtime error"

Hi All

The Yimby site seems to be up and running now. Last full day of fundraising so please do give anything you can - remember we'll double it and do share with others too.

Thanks so much for all the support (and cash) so far.

See you for the grand adding-up tomorrow.

Nope. Still not working for me. The Just Giving sites are fine, but all the yimby ones still say "runtime error"

Am under a name change but finally got round to donating and sharing on Facebook. Just in time.

Yimby still OK for me - but looking on the net, there are some big variations in its server response times recently so maybe they have a small problem.

All I was able to donate was £2 - poor student alert!! - but I've donated to Cakes For Kids :)