Zarine, our CEO, decides to leave her posh city job to work full-time on this new-fangled internet charity idea she’s had. Everyone is used to the sound of a dial-up modem.
Anne-Marie is so impressed with the idea that she leaves her top job at Medecins Sans Frontières to launch JustGiving with Zarine and a few other webby types, from a tiny office in Soho.
The tax office gives our Gift Aid reclaim systems the thumbs up and we are ready to go. We process our first ever donation and have a big party.
We make friends with the London Marathon folks and people start to take to the online sponsorship idea. We also win a NMA award for best use of the web. Yay!
We launch in the US, to see if we can grow the online fundraising idea there, and work hard to make an impact. We redesign the UK site so people can raise money for anything, not just events. We discover usability and our userbase doubles.
After investing millions in our systems, we break even for the first time. Woohoo! Cancer Research UK tries JustGiving on a bunch of their Race for Life events. They like it. We grow so much we have to move to a bigger office in Old Street.
We break through the 1,000-charities mark, thanks to JustGivers and their friends wanting a wider choice of charities to support. We become the official online fundraising platform for Race for Life.
We dabble with mobile phone donations for a bit. People don’t really want them so we undabble. Meanwhile the site gets bigger with lots of clever people using it for things like birthdays, weddings and parachute jumps. We get inspired.
We get lots of new techies to start on the next generation of JustGiving and move office to St Cross Street. There is a great place down the road that does burritos. We launch a Facebook app and widget.
We buy shiny new servers and start working in earnest on the next version of JustGiving. There are over 5,000 charities using our site and millions of people have helped raise more than 300 million! Amazing.
Zarine is awarded the RSA’s Albert Medal for democratising fundraising and technology for charities. Previous winners include Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir Tim Berners-Lee. We are very proud.