Getting started

Follow the steps below to start using Virgin Money Giving APIs:

1. Sign in to your existing developer account.

2. Apply for a key to use our APIs.

3. Browse our documentation and try out our APIs with IO Docs.

4. Build your app and test it in our sandbox environment.

5. Put it live! We'll feature the best in our application gallery.

Virgin Money Giving API

The Virgin Money Giving API is a RESTful web service designed to be easy to explore and use. The base URIs to access our resources are:

https://api.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraisers/v1/

https://api.virginmoneygiving.com/charities/v1/

https://api.virginmoneygiving.com/events/v1/

Environments

For APIs calling our production environment use:

https://api.virginmoneygiving.com

Calls are paired with our live site http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com

For APIs calling our sandbox environment use:

https://sandbox.api.virginmoneygiving.com

Calls are paired with our test site http://uk.sandbox.virginmoneygiving.com

Resource IDs

Access to information on VMG is via unique identifiers known as resource IDs. Each resource - fundraiser, charity or event has its own unique identifier which can be found in the VMG website by logging in as a fundraiser or charity administrator.

Since these IDs uniquely identify a resource, please take all reasonable care to keep them confidential and avoid exposing them publicly in your applications or code.

Software Development Kit

To help you get up and running quicker, we've done some of the work for you. You can download a Java SDK now from our software development kit page. We'll be adding C# and PHP kits soon.

Our APIs

As our APIs extract data from the Virgin Money Giving database it's important to understand how that data is structured.

• To start fundraising, a fundraiser needs a fundraising account.
• Once they have this they can create one or more fundraising pages.
• A fundraising page can be created to raise money for one or more charities.
• Fundraising pages can be created for an event that has been set up within Virgin Money Giving or for a fundraising activity of the fundraiser's choice.

Common API journeys

You'll often need to follow a sequence of API calls to reach the goal of your application.

We've plotted some of the most common journeys as flow diagrams below, so you can see which APIs to use to gather the data items you need.

Click on an image to view it full size.

Creating a new fundraiser account

Creating a new fundraising page

Retrieving details from a fundraising page