How "Genealogy in Hertordshire" is raising money for the mentally ill of Hertfordshire

Lucy (1964-1985)

The Genealogy in Hertfordshire web site is a very popular one which provides a free online service and raises money for the mentally ill in Hertfordshire in memory of my daughters Lucy and Belinda. The software and computer that support the site is showing its age. In planning the site's future it is appropriate to ask how effective it has been in raising money for charity and so I have been looking at the relevant statistics.

Belinda (1966-2001)

In the first nine month of 2016 the site had just over 1 million visits but 90% are the typical quick in/out visits, suggested by search engines like google, where many visitors sees the page and decides to move on in less than a minute.

I have decided that only serious visitors matter - and to be serious a visit needs to trigger at least 6 page requests and/or stay connected for more than 5 minutes. Over nine months nearly 27,000 visitors have made more than 6 page requests (about 100 a day) and about 4 visitors a day are sufficiently interested in exploring the site to make more than 100 page requests. In total over 100,000 visitors spent more than 5 minutes on the site and nearly 10,000 have spent more than a hour exploring the site. In addition (using a different statistical package) over 50,000 accesses to this Newletter blog average out at about 200 a day.

The Hertfordshire Mind Network

So with all this activity how successful has the site been at raising money for charity. In fact donations this year are far lower than previously and the total to date is only £111. Spread over the 100,000 serious visitors this works out at the very ungenerous 0.1 penny per visit. If one widens the calculation every £1 donation "costs" about 10 hours of my time (including support activities where the answer does not appear directly online) and at least £10 expenditure (from my pension) goes on computer resources, subscriptions, and ebay purchases to support the library of pictures and books that support the web site. With this level of collective dis-interest I wonder if it is worth continuing the effort.

Donate Here

If you have found this site and my help and advice useful please say thank you, and cheer me up,  by making an online donation to the Herts Mind Network to help the mentally ill of Hertfordshire in time for Christmas.