Celebrities Rickie Haywood-Williams and Angela Griffin humbled by heroes as they judge this year’s JustGiving Awards’ finalists

This week, Radio DJ, Rickie Haywood-Williams, Actress, Angela Griffin, award winning fundraiser Caroline Jones and President and General Manager of JustGiving, Pascale Harvie came together to agree this year’s GoCardless JustGiving Awards finalists.

This is the eleventh year of the JustGiving Awards and the judges agreed that this year’s event will be an incredibly emotional yet truly inspiring evening.

From more than 13,000 nominations, the judges worked hard to shortlist 24 inspiring finalists, three for each of the eight awards categories.

Rickie Haywood-Williams, Radio, Podcast and TV Presenter said: “I’m thrilled to be on the judging panel for the JustGiving Awards. This is such a special event, celebrating and recognising some of the UK’s most incredible fundraisers and crowdfunders.

“Judging the entries was really tough, but reading those powerful stories and seeing how so many people have gone above and beyond to help others is so inspiring.”

Actress, Angela Griffin, said:  ”I am so happy to have been asked to be a judge at this year’s JustGiving Awards.  At times like these never has there been more need for people to help out where they can.  JustGiving encourages people to do great things to make the lives of others better.  The knock-on effect is that everyone ends up a winner and the world seems a little bit better as a result.”

Members of the public will have the opportunity to vote for the fundraisers they want to see crowned for their efforts later this month via JustGiving’s website.

Eight winners as well as JustGiving’s Charity of the Year will be announced at the ceremony which takes place at London’s Roundhouse on the evening of September 25th. Winners will be presented with their official trophy by well-known faces from the world of celebrities and sport.

Previous JustGiving Award winners include Max Woosey, who was crowned 2022 Young Fundraiser of the Year for camping outside for hundreds of nights in memory of his neighbour and raising funds for North Devon Hospice.

Three dads walking were awarded Fundraising Team of the Year for raising significant awareness for suicide prevention and funds for Papyrus and the late Dame Deborah James’ family received a special recognition award after she created wide-scale awareness of Bowel cancer and its symptoms and raised millions of pounds for the Bowelbabe Fund.

Caroline Jones, Award Winning Fundraiser, Podcaster and Public Speaker said: “I’m delighted to have been a judge on this year’s panel for the 2023 JustGiving Awards. As a previous winner of the Creative Fundraiser of the Year category, I know just how it feels to be nominated by the public and the significant impact it has on raising awareness for ones chosen charity”.  

“Fundraising and elevating your message takes such hard work and I was in awe of the resilience, inner grit and determination shown by each of this year’s nominees – which made whittling it down to this year’s 24 finalists an even harder job.” 

Pascale Harvie, President and General Manager at JustGiving said: “Our fundraisers and crowdfunders are truly incredible and whilst they don’t do what they do for praise and recognition, every single person from our tiny toddler fundraisers all the way up to our centenarians deserve it”.

“We’ve had to make some really hard choices when agreeing our 24 finalists and I’d like to thank my fellow judges Rickie, Angela and Caroline for helping us through these difficult decisions.” 

NOTES TO EDITOR

For further information contact  press@justgiving.com

*All figures quoted include GiftAid and are accurate at the time of releasing this press release.

Figures quoted relate to fundraising activity on JustGiving only. JustGiving is one of many fundraising platforms that people can choose from when fundraising for events such as the London Marathon.

About JustGiving
JustGiving is the world’s most trusted platform for online giving. We help people raise money for the charities and people they care about the most. In 2000, JustGiving.com began with one simple goal – to enable charities to receive donations online from anywhere in the world. Fast forward 22 years and over £5 billion has been raised for good causes in almost every single country in the world.

JustGiving became part of Blackbaud, the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good in 2017.

To note – JustGiving does not charge a fee on donations but instead operates a voluntary contribution model, meaning people donating can choose to leave a ‘tip’ if they wish. The only non-optional fee is a 1.9% + 20p to cover card payment charges.