New website 'tips and tricks'!
We're very excited about our new website for a number of reasons! It's got a fresh new look, offers us lots of creative options and an updated functionality makes it easier for you to select and give to more specific requests based on their urgency and category! Below we have listed 6 'tips and tricks' that we hope will make your use and experience of the new website even better!
1) Requests now show according to how long the recipient has been waiting...
No more expiry dates on our requests allows donors to give to those who have been waiting longest. This is helpful for our team (who no longer have to ensure expiry dates are correct and prolonged if a request surpassed the previous date) and easily allows us to apply general donations to those that are the most urgent! Our Advocates on the front line post requests for their clients to assist them in their moment of crisis, so we're always hoping to give hope sooner, and this is a fantastic way of helping that to become a reality.
2) You can still give a general donation:
You will find the general donations page linked on the right hand side of our our ‘give to a need’ page, or you can find it here: https://www.acts435.org.uk/donations/general-donation/ We will allocate your general donation to the most urgent requests on our website (those expiring soonest). This is a particularly useful way for larger sums of money to be donated without requiring a donation to be made to a number of requests individually.
How to give larger/general gifts:
3) We have a new 'average number of days waiting' function!
This is the average amount of days that a request has been waiting from being posted by our local advocate, to being met by generous donors. We have highlighted this statistic to show you how long people are waiting, and hope that you will support us in giving hope to individuals sooner. This is also beneficial to our advocates, who are often asked by their clients and the recipients of requests how long it might take for the need to be met - advocates now have a quick and reliable way of offering an answer!
4) You can now view all of our key external partners: here
Acts 435 partners with other organisations to provide practical help for their associated churches and local charities. We also work with external partners to spread the word, and to add our voice to conversations about the need for change in the UK around issues such as poverty.
5) Donors are able to see a summary of their donor history:
Our donors can now see a summary of their donations through ‘my account’. On this page donors see three boxes, showing the amount donated, how many people helped and the top categories donated to. This is a visual way to keep track of donations and we also hope donors will find it an encouragement, able to see how many people have been helped thanks to their donations!
Top tip: Please do log in before you start to add donations to your basket. The website does not currently have function to keep donations within basket post-login, requiring donors to log in again once they have selected requests to donate to. This is not a problem if you are checking out as a guest, but if you have an account do log in first!
6) A little surprise for donors...
This one is certainly just a little fun, but we're excited about the little surprise that appears when a request is added to a donor's basket. Either watch the video yourself, or go and have a try for yourself here: https://www.acts435.org.uk/needs/