MNHQ calling: Giving Week (our recent match-funding drive) - your thoughts please!

[KateHMumsnet]

Afternoon folks,

As you may remember, back in June we hosted our first ever Mumsnet Giving Week to shine a light on some brilliant causes nominated by Mumsnetters. Thanks to you, we were able to raise £11,302.43, which when we matched, rose to a whopping £22,604.86!

Woolly Hugs, Women’s Aid, Haven House, the PDA Society and Free Cakes for Kids are all overcome with warm-fuzzy feelings, as are we. This will make such a difference to all the people out there supported by these incredible charities and causes, and we hope will have a really positive impact on what they can achieve this year, so hats off to all of you!

We’ll be back with an update from the charities later in the year, so that you can hear firsthand from them about how your donations have made a difference. But in the meantime, we wanted to to ask you what you thought of our first ever Giving Week.

What do you think worked well, and what didn’t?
What compelled you to give, if you donated?
If you didn’t get involved in nominating or donating, was there anything in particular that stopped you?
What would you like to see as part of future giving weeks?

Giving back to the organisations who support Mumsnetters is important to us, and we’d like to make this a more regular feature so all feedback very welcome.

MNHQ

[cozietoesie]

....I think we would all pay to see HQ dress like that.....

Oh Yes - and in public as well! It could be a critical part of any future Giving Week.

[tribpot]

What's particularly terrifying about the Blue Peter photo is that one can only assume that was not extreme fashion at the time. But yes, I think MNHQ must dress exactly like that if they want to hold another Giving Week.

[MrsTeee]

Following up DulcetMoan#s suggestion, how about having Local MN Woolly Weeks, where we could get together locally and have a knit-in? If it were the same week everywhere, it could be publicised on the main boards, with local details given on the local sites. Guaranteed photo opportunity for local meeja. If there were enough knitters in an area, they could carry on meeting up regularly to do more. You could even have competition between local sites to see who could knit the most. Hopefully this would be friendly competition, no assassination of expert knitters in the neighbouring county.

[Mckayz]

I love the idea of Woolly weeks!

[MrsTeee]

In places where there are Gransnet local groups, Gransknitters could join forces with us. Or we could have Mumsnet vs Gransnet knitting wars.

[GlaikitFizzog]

Knitting wars! Love it, but remember the hookers too!

[petalunicorn]

Were there lots of national fundraising things going on at the same time? The week coincided with me sitting down to do 6 charity donations for friends who were doing things like walking a canal, race for life (?), bike ride, can't even remember the others! Hence I didn't donate to this as well.

I liked the idea of the person who requested a running total on the bottom of popular pages.

[prettybird]

Glaikit - Yarn Wars then

For the record, I too am proud of the fact that my motivation at work (over a c.30 year career in both the public and private sectors) has been to work to be the best at what I do. In fact latterly in my last job (I'm now working on setting up a business/inward investment), it drove my boss crazy 'cos money and status wasn't what motivated me, doing a good job was which was beyond his ken as a Sales Manager .

No doubt linked, I chose places to work where I worked alongside like-minded individuals, all of whom regarded professionalism as being of extreme importance - whether as engineers, medical professionals, managers, accountants or consultants.

I am sure my colleagues would've understood and admired the principles behind Woolly Hugs! In fact, I know they do, as I'm still in touch with many of them and mention that I've contributed (squares - some with wool I'e bought but also sometimes with wool that has been donated). They've been genuinely curious about why and what we do and complimentary about the ethos.

[CateBlanket]

but MN aren't asking for woolly knits for Giving Week They want cold hard cash donations that they can match with cold hard cash.

[MrsTeee]

Well, while we're all knitting and crocheting together locally, we can democratically decide which of our local charities MN could be asked to support financially, either through the local MN site, or through the national site.

Knitting together is my answer to question 4: What would you like to see as part of future giving weeks? Yarn wars

[Pandora452]

Late to this, but another who didn't know it was on. I have bookedmarked links and stick to certain topics and apart from this thread, I've seen nothing about it

[CateBlanket]

Oh right

[HappyAgainOneDay]

Haven't read all the pages but are the charities confined to British ones? I've just had an unexpected experience with a charity that needs monetary help.

[CateBlanket]

Happy - No, MNHQ will consider overseas charities nominated by MNetters. By the way - where are MNHQ, did they abandon the thread?

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

And the knitting/crochet/yarn wars event could be a fundraiser too. We could all give a donation.

[KateHMumsnet]

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much to all of you for coming out to share your thoughts on Giving Week. There are some really great ideas in here about how to give it more of a push on MN, and we'll be making note of all your recommendations and will try to incorporate them for our next push. Although maybe not the one recommending we dress up like Blue Peter presenters at MNHQ...

As mentioned on the thread by RipMacWinkle, when choosing five charities it's difficult to please everyone all of the time, but to try and be as inclusive as possible we did ask for nominations from users and chose from the most frequently nominated. Obviously not everyone will support all the charities but we hoped to get a broad mix that meant something to the Mumsnet community. It was great to see the comments in support of Woolly Hugs on this thread as it is a charity so close to Mumsnet, having been born from community members showing their love and support for each other at times of such devastating loss.

On the couple of specific questions:

To tribpot:

Women's Aid didn't miss out on its match funding, not to worry! None of the charities did. Mumsnetters raised £2,798.93 for Women's Aid, which we then matched for a total of £5,597.86.

To MrsTeee:
We wanted to donate to registered charities without leaving behind local and community projects, which we thought were equally worthy of our support. We worked with JustGiving for the larger charities (where being registered with the Charity Commission is a requirement), and their partner organisation Yimby for the smaller local and community projects.

This was our first ever Giving Week so we have lots to learn, thank you so much to all who offered your feedback!

[higgle]

On the whole hospice have very god financial support from their communities, our local hospice manages to cover all its expenses from donations, so hopefully not being included in this won't have caused any major problems.

[cozietoesie]

......Although maybe not the one recommending we dress up like Blue Peter presenters at MNHQ... .......

Chicken!

[higgle]

"How we are funded

All of our care is provided free of charge. It costs £2.8 million a year to run the hospice. We receive less than 10 per cent from the NHS. For the remaining £2.1 million we rely on the generosity of the public."

From our local hospice web site. They do manage to raise these funds and I'm aware that the hospice in the midlands where my father died does too. Hospices tend to be well supported financially by the communities they serve - I'm a supporter in many ways.