JustGiving: Meet Our Charity of the Year Finalists

The JustGiving Awards are back, and we can’t wait to celebrate the resilience and brilliance of our three Charity of the Year finalists with you. We caught up with them earlier this week to find out exactly what being nominated for Charity of the Year means to them – and ask them a little more about their incredible 2022 campaigns.

Cure Cancer AU

Cure Cancer Australia fund early-career cancer researchers, working across all cancers and all areas of cancer research. In the past 55 years alone, Cure Cancer has raised an incredible $83.1 million and supported 540 lifesaving research grants across all cancer types. Their vision is to make this the last generation to die from cancer.

Here’s what their CEO, Nikki Kinloch, had to say about being nominated for Charity of the Year: “It’s an absolute honour to be nominated for Charity of the Year alongside other noteworthy causes. JustGiving is witness to the incredible efforts of hundreds and thousands of amazing people to make this world a better place through community initiatives and giving. We’re happy that our hard-working team from Australia can be counted among these champions of change. Most of all, we are grateful to be given the opportunity to shine a light on our cause of supporting the most innovative early career research to cure cancer.”

The BarbeCURE campaign

Cure Cancer Australia were shortlisted for Charity of the Year after submitting their incredible BarbeCUREcampaign – it was just the level of uniqueness our JustGiving Awards judges were looking for! The team at Cure Cancer Australia encouraged their supporters to host their own barbeque (whether #TeamMeat or #TeamVeg) to raise funds for the cause.

Here’s what Nikki Kinloch had to say about being nominated for Charity of the Year: “It’s a testament of how wonderfully collaborative and dedicated our supporters are in making BarbeCURE a success. Barbecuing by itself is a much-loved Australian past-time – and people made it even more meaningful by supporting our cause and celebrating it with their loved ones.

The campaign drew close to a hundred sign ups from individuals and corporations – all who were eager to bond over a good cause. The impact of this campaign is long-lasting and contributes to the study of childhood cancer, which affects an average of 800 children in Australia yearly.

We were able to raise a total of 135,400 AUD from this campaign to fund Dr. Laurence Cheung’s research on acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), in hopes of improving outcomes and treatment for children who are suffering from this high-risk cancer type. This amount of money is enough to fund more than a year of research and sampling commodities for about 15 months.”

Rape Crisis England & Wales

Rape Crisis England & Wales work to end sexual violence and abuse. They provide specialist information and support to all those affected by rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and all other forms of sexual violence and abuse in England and Wales. Their vision: a world without sexual violence, where all women and girls live safely, freely and with dignity.

Here’s what their incredible team had to say about being nominated for Charity of the Year: “We’re over the moon to have been nominated for ‘Charity of the Year’. Our vision is for a world without sexual violence, where all women and girls live safely, freely and with dignity. This nomination not only recognises the importance of our work, but also gives us a platform to reach more people. The team are all really excited and honoured to be involved.”

The Step Out In Solidarity campaign

Rape Crisis England & Wales were shortlisted for Charity of the Year for their powerful Step Out In Solidarity campaign – their supporters were encouraged to Step Out in Solidarity with victims and survivors of sexual violence every day for 30 days. They could walk, run, swim, roll or move in any other way and choose different distances to complete from 50km, 100km or 150km.

Here’s what the team had to say about the success of the campaign: “Following a difficult year where violence against women and girls seemed devastatingly pervasive and women’s safety was high on the agenda, it felt really important to show a sense of solidarity and to encourage people to come together and do something positive. Step Out in Solidarity aimed to raise funds for our vital work, but also to show the power of our movement and how we all have the ability to make a difference. By speaking up and stepping out – participants demonstrated their support for survivors of sexual violence and abuse.”

The Brain Tumour Charity

A shocking 3% of the money spent each year on cancer research in the UK is spent on brain tumours – The Brain Tumour Charity want to change this. They’re working hard to find a cure – investing in more forward-thinking research, more specialist support services, and passionately lobbying for more urgent change.

They’re committed to improving life for everyone affected and to defending the most incredible part of the human body.

Here’s what they had to say about being nominated for the Charity of the Year Award: “Being nominated for Charity of the Year is such a great honour. JustGiving have been our partnered platform for many years and we have been able to work with them to create some brilliant campaigns, including The Twilight Walk 2021, which ultimately has enabled us to raise vital funds and awareness into brain tumours. We’re so proud to be nominated for this award and for our community to be recognised in this way as we simply couldn’t do what we do without them.”

The Twilight Walk Campaign

The Brain Tumour Charity were nominated for Charity of the Year for their incredible Twilight Walk campaign. Their supporters were encouraged to take part in a 10K walk – side by side, stride by stride towards a world where brain tumours are defeated – in person, at their London-based event, or remotely, closer to home.

We asked their team to share a little more about the campaign: “The Twilight Walk is our flagship event, uniting our passionate community to raise money by taking on a very special walk. Before COVID-19, we held this event as three in-person mass 10km walks, every October. We held a successful virtual event in 2020, and as in 2021, things were still very much unknown we made the decision to keep the event in the virtual format. We worked with JustGiving to recycle our 2020 microsite, removed the heavy COVID-19 messaging and asked our community to ‘walk it your way.’

The Twilight Walk 2021 was a huge success in such unprecedented times, raising over £288,000 in total. What made this event remarkable was the incredibly high amount raised per person, at £836 per activated page, along with a 70% page activation rate. These figures were a lot higher than the average at the time of the event, making it a stand out success for the charity sector.

The JustGiving microsite was a big contributing factor to the success of this event, and we also worked collaboratively internally across the Events and Community Fundraising teams to deliver a bespoke experience. The money raised from The Twilight Walk 2021 will make a huge difference as it could help fund over three years of research for one of our leading brain tumour researchers, to better understand brain tumours and accelerate towards a cure.”

There you have it! Everything you need to know about our three incredible Charity of the Year finalists. We hope you’ll agree with us when we say they’re ALL worthy winners. The winner will be announced at a magical in person event in London this October – keep your eyes peeled for updates on our socials!

Check out the JustGiving RIA Foundation Member profile here .