Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Charity Fundraising, charity fundraisers, online fundraising, fundraising.

Non-profits are setup to fail.  1.5 million exist in the United States today and the number continues to grow.  For funding, many non-profits rely on a grant pool that over time has remained constant, not nearly matching the increase in demand.  To exacerbate the growing need for more funding the world’s economy collapsed in 2008 and is showing only meager signs of recovery.

A reliance on grants and the reality of a shrinking pool of money have created a ‘can’t fail’ mentality for non-profits.  If a program is funded through a grant and the non-profit reports the funded program as a failure, the funder will most often choose to go somewhere else: find a successful program to fund.  A cycle of waste develops as non-profits choose to report only successes, for fear of losing the money.  In the end, broken programs receive money while potentially successful programs sit on the shelf and gather dust.
Innovations in non-profit fundraising techniques have helped non-profits succeed when others have failed even as traditional revenue streams have dried up.  Social media spaces like Facebook can make the specter of raising money a whole lot easier by spreading your fundraising goals over a larger pool.

With over 677 million registered users worldwide and Facebook fundraisingsearches up 85%+ the Facebook community is an incredibly fruitful space for getting your message out and attracting donors. You can share links to your fundraiser on your friend feed, message or email your friends directly, participate in groups and much more to gain exposure and raise money and supporters for your cause.

Facebook fundraising is a very simple process that can oftentimes be covered with minimal staff, allowing your resources to go towards creating truly successful programs.

And once your friends are informed of the good you are doing they can act as a bullhorn, letting even more people know about what you’re doing.  Your message can quickly jump on the exponential bandwagon in short order go viral.  In no time you can have people from across the globe reaching out and helping fund your cause.

Boiled down to its essence non-profit fundraising is about recognizing a cause, developing a message around that cause and getting that message out to the people who can best support you in affecting positive change around that cause.

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