KulshanClt’s Rolling with Fundly’s Social Fundraising Contest

Watch this excellent entry to Fundly’s Social Fundraising Video Contest  .

Kulshan Community Land Trust strengthens community by holding land in trust for permanently affordable homeownership and other community needs, and by offering financial and educational services to people of limited means.

Kulshan Community Land Trust is a member-based nonprofit organization located in Bellingham, a community situated between the mountains and the sea in northwest Washington State. KulshanCLT works in partnership with residents, community groups, and local government to preserve equitable and sustainable housing in Whatcom County.

If you need to raise money for your cause, sign up with Fundly today and promote your fundraisers   via Social Media.

No Corporate & Union Money for Political Campaigns, Yet…

By Erik Nilsson, President

On political fundraising …

Remember last years ruling in the Citizens United vs. FEC case? This is where the Supreme Court decided to allow corporations and labor unions to make independent expenditures and send out electioneering communications. It is not often I get to use “electioneering” in a sentence (thanks FEC). The FEC is finally working up a plan to figure out how to implement the ruling.

Last Thursday, the FEC sat down to begin hammering down the rules we all have to play by and, guess what? The 6 person board has all kinds of ideas (50 pages of them) but couldn’t come to any agreements. Ideas include:

- increased disclosures,

- disclosures targeting foreign influence, and

- rules that would force corporations to change the makeup of their boards of directors.

Sounds like they are using the Citizens United vs. FEC ruling to bring in all sorts of provisions that the courts have neither upheld or expressly reviewed. This almost sounds like they are trying their own hand at pork barrel politics. It is early days but it will be interesting to see which rules we are stuck with for this next cycle.

For all you corporations and unions, it would probably be wise to increase your political compliance budgets. For all you compliance attorneys, let the good times roll!

Crush Your Fundraising Goals By 700%

All fundraisers know that prospective donors respond differently to each type of ask depending on the delivery vehicle, whether it is email, direct mail, or phone banking. To be crudely general, fundraisers use direct mail and phone banking for older populations, email for everyone, and Facebook for the “kids.”

 

Most organizations try a little of each solicitation delivery vehicle (based on the demographics of their supporters) and then place most of their chips behind the tool that showed the best performance.

Sounds easy, right?

 

First the bad news, YES, picking the best mechanism for the delivery of your fundraising message from a group is easy but not all that affective.

What’s the good news? If you do not limit yourself to a single solicitation delivery mechanism for each donor, you can increase your annual donations per individual by 700%… Did you read that number right? I put it in the headline so you wouldn’t miss it. By applying multiple touch methods to a donor you can multiply their value by seven.

PROOF:

One of our large political organization clients has quantitative analysis built into their DNA. During the 2010 political campaign season, they ran a huge verity of fundraising experiments and implemented A/B tests at every opportunity.

What they found is that if they take a past donor and hit them with a well-written direct mail campaign, they could increase the annual value of that donor by 2X. Note that the average donor’s age for this organization is in the mid 60s range.

If they take that same donor and hit them with a combined direct mail and telemarketing campaign, they could bring the yield up to 7X on average.

Wow, I bet that if you try this and don’t even execute all that well, you’ve got a chance at doubling the yield on your past donors.

There you go. You now have the secret sauce to hit your 2011 budget and build your rock star reputation among your board members.

DISCLAIMER:

I am counting on your already having an excellent story or message for your supporters.

By Erik Nilsson, President & Founder

Social Fundraising 101 – Part 4: The Engagement Funnel

By Jeremy Burton, Chief Technology Officer

This is the last in a four-part blog series.

Fundly is built around an engagement funnel in which the Fundly platform provides tools to encourage a person to become more deeply involved in the cause, perform specific actions (e.g. donate) and recruit additional supporters and volunteers.

• Awareness – the individual becomes aware of the cause
• Interest – the individual demonstrates interest in the cause, typically by reading some material
• Engagement – the individual shows real engagement with the cause, typically signing-up for an event or to receive information
• Support – the individual donates to the cause or performs another action for the cause, e.g. participating in an event
• Spread the message – the individual spreads the message to others – reaching out to his or her Facebook friends, posts content on their personal page, etc
• Volunteer – the individual actively volunteers to perform additional actions on behalf of the cause

Problems for Fundraisers

Individuals responsible for fundraisers face a number of key challenges:

• Limited time – people doing fundraising often have to wear other hats, especially in the non-profit world
• Limited budget
• Lack of technical skills – setting up websites, Facebook applications, etc is not a core skill set
• Traditional fundraising channels are losing their effectiveness – direct mail, events, etc
• Maintaining engagement of supporters over time is hard – including donor fatigue and information overload
• Economic recession has significantly impacted (reduced) fundraising sources – particularly federal, state and city grants

These factors and others mean that fundraisers are clamoring for solutions that let them multiply the effectiveness of their time and effort.

The Fundly Product

Fundly is a volunteer and social fundraising solution offered online on a Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) basis.  Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can use Fundly and many aspects can also be used through smartphones such as the Apple iPhone.


Fundly provides the following major components:

• Campaign Dashboard – The Campaign Dashboard is where campaigns are defined, launched, tracked and managed.  It is designed for a non-technical marketing manager.  From here she can access all the most powerful capabilities of social fundraising, optimized for her user base.  Wizards within the Campaign Dashboard help her plan out her fundraising year by “scheduling” campaigns and events on an annual calendar.  As a specific campaign approaches, she can define it more specifically, including timeframe, objective, vehicle, messaging, and rewards structure.  From the Campaign Dashboard she can monitor ongoing campaigns and make adjustments as needed.  She can also use the more technical “Management Dashboard” to look at social, viral, and fundraising metrics.

• Messaging Tools – allowing messages to be created, customized and targeted.  The Messaging Tools enable the cause to craft messages, select which channels to send them through – email, Facebook, Twitter, etc – and measure their effectiveness.  They also allow the cause to target certain subsets of its supporter-base, e.g. volunteer fundraisers who are not meeting their targets.  They enable causes to provide “pre-canned” messages to volunteers and supporters, which they can use to solicit donations and recruit additional supporters.

• Hosted, customizable pages – allowing supporters and volunteers to personalize pages and post user-generated content within templates created by the cause. Fundly Content Management tools let the cause create a hierarchy of web-pages, hosted on Fundly’s website that drive supporters and volunteers to perform actions, including donating, signing-up for events, recruiting other supporters, posting progress updates and uploading pictures.  The cause has complete control over the hierarchy and structure, allowing it to create, for example, pages for a national organization, local chapters, teams and individual supporters.  Pages are assembled from a collection of individual “widgets”, allowing flexibility in what information is displayed on which pages but at the same time ensuring that best practices are followed.

• Customizable widgets – which can be embedded in any website, allowing a cause to seamlessly integrate Fundly’s social fundraising functionality into its existing web presence. The cause has broad control over the style, color-scheme and layout of all Fundly widgets, including donation widgets.

• Facebook application – allows a cause to leverage its supporter’s existing “social graphs” and fundraise and communicate within the familiar Facebook environment.  The Fundly Facebook application allows volunteers and supporters to perform most of the same functions that can be performed on the Fundly website without leaving the Facebook environment, including collecting donations, soliciting friends, recruiting friends as additional volunteers and monitoring progress in real-time.

• Incentives and Rewards – helping to engender a sense of accomplishment and competition, and rewarding supporters and volunteers for performing certain actions.  Incentives include matching donation management and fundraiser competitions.  Rewards include virtual goods such as buttons, ribbons, cups, etc which can be posted on Facebook “walls” and help to spread the cause’s message virally.

• Fundly Platform – a scalable and secure hosted platform with an open API.  The Fundly Platform has already processed over $200M in donations and provides secure payment services, a donor database, transaction logs and auditing information.

• Customizable integration – including support for data sharing with common CRM and donor systems such as Salesforce.com, Blackbaud and Convio.  This allows causes to continue to use their current “system of record” while still benefiting from the social and volunteer fundraising functions provided by Fundly.

Try out our product at www.fundly.com!

Social Fundraising 101 – Part 3: Fundraising Using Volunteers

By Jeremy Burton, Chief Technology Officer

This is the third in a four-part blog series.

Fundly believes that there are several important elements to building an effective volunteer or social campaign and these best-practices are encapsulated within the Fundly product and organized into a series of directed workflows.

The  main steps are:

• define overall goal – the goal should be as specific as possible – typically an amount of money to be raised for a particular purpose

• create campaign – every campaign should have the following attributes:

• start date
• end date
• target – typically a fundraising goal
• message – what is the message to be spread about the campaign
• outcome – what is the desired outcome if successful
• vehicle – traditional fundraising campaign, phone-a-thon, walk, etc

• define structure – Fundly allows the cause to define an organizing structure that matches the campaign and the cause’s own structure.  For example, a national organization, regions, local chapters, teams and individual participants.

• build messages – volunteers and supporters should be encouraged to personalize the message but they should be provided with some overall messaging, pre-canned emails, tweets, Facebook posts, etc to start from.  Fundly provides guidance on building effective messages within the Fundly product – e.g. ensuring that messages have a specific “ask” and are tied to specific objectives.

• choose channels – the appropriate channels will vary based on the kind of campaign but typically include hosted web pages, Facebook, email and Twitter.

• choose incentives – incentives are rewards given to supporters and volunteers for performing certain actions.  Fundly provides a powerful system of virtual rewards and achievements to encourage supporters and volunteers and engender competition between them.

• recruit initial “captains” – for example, these may be the initial team captains for team events or initial volunteers for a phone-a-thon

• direct captains – captains should be directed to the tools provided to build their supporter base and monitor their efforts – e.g. participant sign-up web-pages, messaging tools, dashboards.

• monitor and message – Fundly provides a dashboard that gives powerful insight into how the social campaign is performing.  For example, the best performing or worst performing volunteers and supporters can be easily identified and messages of encouragement targeted towards them.

The objective is that every supporter and volunteer at every level is clear about what his or her role is in the overall objective, what is expected of them personally and, furthermore, is encouraged to recruit more supporters and volunteers to join the effort, creating a virtuous circle.

Compared to a traditional campaign, in which a cause attempts to directly messages a huge list of supporters, the end result of a successful social campaign is:

• greater participation
• greater dollars raised
• increased conversion of donors to volunteer fundraisers

Tomorrow we will conclude with: The Social Fundraising Engagement Funnel.

Social Fundraising 101 – Part 2: The Social Fundraising Maturity Model

By Jeremy Burton, Chief Technology Officer

This is the second in a four-part blog series.


Different causes are at different places in their online fundraising maturity.  The Fundly product architecture and approach allows causes to begin “where they are” on the maturity curve and progress to their natural state.

Basic:  Online Fundraising

 

• Ability to take donations online, across multiple web properties
• Ability to take donations inside Facebook
• Ability to run targeted email campaigns with specific landing pages for online donations
• Ability to create specific landing pages for events
• Ability to track and measure effectiveness of different campaigns and events
• All donations auto-populate a donor database

Advanced: Social Fundraising

• Individual fundraiser pages with individual goals and personal content
• Team fundraiser pages with team goals and content
• Chapter / Regional / National pages with goals & content
• Targeted messaging capability to each level in the structure
• Facebook recruitment and engagement of supporters
• Tracking of individual, team, etc. impact

Transformational: Volunteer Fundraising

• Ability to manage “give-or-get” fundraising goals for board members or volunteers
• Management of multi-level, volunteer fundraising structures
• Solution for phone-athons, pledge-drives, etc.
• Alumni management, list management, historical giving, etc
• Full engagement with social networks – competitions, virtual goods, rewards, etc

Examples

Example 1

A local Education Foundation raises $400K from parents and supporters of students, and they use direct mail, flyers in backpacks, envelopes, and spreadsheets to keep track.

They would like to be able to steer people to a website where the donation can be made securely, and no one has to worry about remembering to send out thank-yous or enter donors’ names in a database.
Target Maturity Level:  Basic

Example 2

A Cancer Charity wants to organize sponsored walks to raise money.
The Charity is organized as a national umbrella organization with regional operations and local chapters.  The national organization wants some level of control over the organization of the event as a whole and of the messaging but wants volunteers to create and join teams at a local chapter level.  It also wants participants in the walk to be able to personalize the message, communicate with other participants and share updates and experiences with friends-and-family.
Target Maturity Level:  Advanced

Example 3

A K-12 charter school needs to raise additional funds to close the funding gap caused by reduced state and city funding.

The school already has a fan-page on Facebook but to date has only made occasional posts on Facebook.  However, many of the parents are heavy Facebook users and have “liked” the school’s fanpage.  The school’s Development Director wants to use Facebook to multiply the effectiveness of its fundraising efforts by leveraging parents’ social networks of friends-and-family to spread the message and raise money on Facebook.

Target Maturity Level:  Advanced

Example 4

A University Alumni Organization wants to raise $2M for its annual fund.

It is planning a two-day phone-a-thon during which a team of 100 volunteers will call alumni for donations.  It wants to allocate prospects from its prior donor and alumni list in its existing database to these volunteers.  It wants to encourage a sense of competition between the volunteers and award prizes to those that raise the most money.  The University also wants to convert as many of the alumni called as possible into volunteers to help with the fundraising effort the following year.

Target Maturity Level:  Transformational

Example 5

A educational non-profit providing daycare services to low-income families wants to leverage the personal connections of its board members, particularly to high-net-worth individuals.

So far, board members have made many promises but generally have not delivered on personal fundraising goals.  The non-profit wants to engender better accountability and track the donation history of each of the board members’ personal networks.

Target Maturity Level:  Transformational

Tomorrow we will look at: Fundraising Using Volunteers.

Fundraising Outreach—What Works Best?

I recently read an article called “Email:  The Hottest Revenue Generation Technology in Social Media,” and it got me thinking… What works best in fundraising?

Here is my answer:

1. Events
2. Telephone
3. Personal Email
4. Blast Email
5. Facebook
6. Internet Advertising
7. (Direct Mail–not generally profitable)

We have been at this game for a couple of years, and members of our team have been at it for over a decade. All hype and hyperbole aside, we have helped our customers raise over $200M, and we know what works if your objective is raising money.

The more personal, the better the Yield. Yield is the combination of conversion rate (% positive response to an appeal) and gift size. This dynamic is not surprising, as fundraising is a social activity. It always has been, and it always will be.

But this is only a partial answer. Yield is not the only dimension of Efficiency–we also have to consider Effort and Reach. There are different tools for different jobs, and not every organization has all tools available, so the answer is more nuanced than the list above.

Fundraising Efficiency Curve


Consider the four-year college with a rich history of fundraising and giving. For them, one of the most effective ways or raising money is direct approaches centered around reunions (events) and calling campaigns. More and more, colleges are recruiting current students and alumni to help make these calls (volunteer fundraising), which scales the operation considerably. With Fundly tools, they are also adding a scalable approach to personal emails—getting individual alumni to send appeals to their friends to help meet a goal.

For a smaller organization with less affinity, it may be impossible to get a critical mass of volunteers to raise money for you. You may also not have the budget for large events, or the geographical concentration to pull that off. In this case, you want to use more web-based and social media to get your word out. This is highly efficient too, but along a different dimension: Reach.  These media are terrifically efficient at getting the word out, and if you can get the word to enough people, even a small Yield will produce big results.

We have found that a combination of the above efforts is the best. The trick is managing this all from the same place, with the same management tools, reporting, database, etc. That is why we built the Fundly platform—you can execute up and down the efficiency curve seamlessly, depending on timing, resources and circumstance.

Ace your state and federal disclosures in political fundraising

When you are raising money for political fundraising campaigns you have to deal with state and federal regulation with respect to campaign donation disclosures. This is easier said than done.

There was a good article in the Boston Globe recently on how Massachusetts political candidates are improving their campaign donation disclosures. Having all your donation information in one central database sure makes it easier to comply with these regulations.

A great example is Fundly user, Mary Z. Connaughton for State Auditor. Mary Z. has set the standard by providing full compliance information for more than 97 percent of donors.

As a contrast, Mary Z.’s competitor, Suzanne M. Bump for State Auditor, is the worst filer. Ms. Bump (great name) only provided information for 61 percent of her major donors as of the end of September.

Data is power. Campaigns can make better decisions when they have good data. Fundly gives campaign fundraisers the power to make good decisions, which is especially important in these last 24 days of the election cycle.

There are many other benefits of a centralized donor database; not in the least your ability to leverage past donor to raise more money. This will be the topic of a future Fundly blog post!

What Non Profits can Learn from the 2010 Election Season

We are at the pinnacle of the 2010 political season and the fundraising records are piling up. Why do Americans have this great love for the sport of politics, and are willing to part with their hard earned dollars to get someone elected, but they won’t donate $100 to help the poor/save the environment/improve education/put your favorite cause here?

Besides the fact that democracy and supporting the candidates who best represent our views is how our system works, why has political fundraising become such a huge part of our fundraising landscape?

Keep your old poli-sci books on your shelf. I won’t dive into the pros & cons of the McCain Feingold Campaign Reform Act and the rise of the political fundraising machine. What political campaigns have over the rest of the world is a built in SENSE OF URGENCY.


You MUST create a sense of urgency

The great thing about political campaigns is that they have a federally mandated finish line, a final moment on that first Tuesday in November. If I want my candidate to win, I have to step up and give him/her my wooden nickel so they can buy yet another TV ad or drive one more elderly voter to the polling station. If I don’t help the candidate early enough, they can’t spend my money so it makes a difference. Even in politics, donors don’t get off the giving stick until election day is within sight.

How does this relate to my non-profit?

If I am a supporter of your non-profit, what difference does it make if I give you a donation today or next week, or maybe in December… if I get my bonus… if I remember after all that glögg? You MUST give the donor a reason to “act now!” (think late-night infomercial). You are competing with thousands of good causes, and millions of distractions. Without a deadline, your donor probably has something else they should be doing right now that is more fun than parting with money.

Get creative and fabricate a finish line. Let me get you started.

Offer “exclusive” stuff:

- First 50 donors get a copy of my signed book (once I pick a topic and get it written).

- Anyone who gives over $500 gets a team jacket (I walked into this one when my college pulled it on me).

Offer Access (popular among the political types):

- If we get your gift today, you get a photo-op with me.

- The first two $10K donors get lunch and an afternoon skiing with me.

- Go collect a couple million dollars from your friends in $2,400 increments and I will let you be ambassador to France.

Schedule Events:

- Tickets to Reunion/Winter Formal/Dancing in the Park.

- ___-a-thons, Road Races, Tournaments

I think you get the idea. Go create a sense of urgency that best fits your organization and the dollars will come.

Fundraising Online Grows in Importance for Organizations of All Sizes

No matter what the cause organization is, it will need to do fundraising. Fundraising ideas come in all shapes and sizes, but the best way to raise money for any cause is through online fundraising.  It is easy, fun, effective, and profitable to raise money online!

Fundraising can seem like a daunting task.  Coming up with fundraising ideas can be intimidating, and then finding the manpower and time to carry out the ideas can be stressful.  But now, with online fundraising all the problems that conventional fundraising is known to have, are alleviated!

It is much easier to raise money online.  Overall difficulty is a problem that charitable organizations and causes have faced for a long time, but online fundraising makes it much easier.  It does not take as much time or effort to do fundraisers online because much of the work can be done from home or an office.  The members of the organization don’t need to spend time driving places, making posters, or volunteering hours of their precious time just to raise money.

An online fundraiser can be set up using a number of different websites, which utilize simple methods for marketing a cause to a wide audience, all with minimal effort on the part of the organization.  Some of these fundraising sites use social media sites such as Facebook to spread the word about the cause.  It is easy to reach a great number of people since almost everyone uses social media sites these days, and everyone is connected to everyone else.  Some fundraising sites use emails.

This method is much easier and faster than making phone calls.  Reaching hundreds of people is only a few clicks away and takes only seconds though email, while making phone calls is very time consuming.  Not only is it easier to raise money online though email, it is also less intrusive to the potential donors who may not have time to talk on the phone, but will take the time to click on an email or go to a website at their convenience.

Fundraising is more effective online as well!  Not only are more potential donors reached more quickly and easily, but they are also more likely to donate when approached online.  Many people are naturally defensive when asked to give money, but a website or online fundraising site are low pressure.  Fundraisers online have all the important facts and information that potential donors can read when it is convenient for them, and then are more likely to carefully consider and ultimately decide to donate money to the cause.

Online fundraising is more effective and more profitable for any cause no matter how big or small!  Even if the organization only has a few volunteers or members, doing fundraising online is easy and very effective.  And for any size organization utilizing online fundraising leaves more time for members and volunteers to spend doing other important activities and make the overall organization more effective.

Fundraising can actually be fun, easy and profitable!

Online Fundraising is the Future of Fundraising for Causes

In the modern times, many things can be done via the internet. Doing things online is fast, easy and convenient. Online fundraising is something that is growing in popularity. Yes, it is very possible to raise money online.

After filing with the proper organizations, anyone can set up a website to solicit donations for whatever cause it may be for. Online fundraising provides a much broader demographic for promotions, and increases the likelihood of donations. In addition, there is no need to spend money to set up events for the purpose of fundraising, nor will there be a need for seeking donations on foot.

Before starting the actual fundraising, several preparations must be done. First off, the means of fundraising must be legalized. This can be done by contacting the state of the location of the fundraising organization to find about any requirements for fundraising. After legalizing everything, it is time to promote your cause. Since the fundraising will be done on the Internet, using the Internet to promote is the best idea. You can utilize social networking sites to get out the word for your organization.

Since social networking sites are so widespread, generating interest in your cause can be as simple as setting up a Facebook page. Creating a website is also a good idea. The website should have an attractive design, but also be easy to read and navigate. In addition, there should be a “donate now” button on the website. It need not be large and distracting, but it should be conspicuous to the visitor of the website.

While promoting for online fundraising, it is important to not be too rigorous. You do not want to become a spammer and send unsolicited emails. In order to raise money online, it is also a good idea to do promotions elsewhere as well. Handing out business cards and flyers, or even placing an ad in a publication are great additions. Also, you should decide how you will receive donations on your website. There are several options. You can use another company to collect the donations, or you can set up your website to be able to do credit card transactions. Another website can do this for you as well.

In addition to taking donations online, you can use your website to get donations in other forms. Supporters should have the option to donate online or through other means, such as by mail. The website should also promote the cause for the fundraising. Visitors should know exactly why they are donating. However, it is not always necessary to do everything independently. Several websites allow users to set up accounts solely for fundraising. People seeking to donate, as well as people seeking donations themselves visit such websites. This is a great method for those who have a small project to raise money for.

By using a third party fundraising websites, you will not be responsible for collecting donations or creating an entire fundraising campaign. Using the internet for online fundraising is much more convenient than traditional fundraisers in that it greatly simplifies the act of getting donations. Soon, it may even replace traditional fundraisers altogether.

Online Fundraising is the Future of Fundraising for Causes

In the modern times, many things can be done via the internet. Doing things online is fast, easy and convenient. Online fundraising is something that is growing in popularity. Yes, it is very possible to raise money online.

After filing with the proper organizations, anyone can set up a website to solicit donations for whatever cause it may be for. Online fundraising provides a much broader demographic for promotions, and increases the likelihood of donations. In addition, there is no need to spend money to set up events for the purpose of fundraising, nor will there be a need for seeking donations on foot.

Before starting the actual fundraising, several preparations must be done. First off, the means of fundraising must be legalized. This can be done by contacting the state of the location of the fundraising organization to find about any requirements for fundraising. After legalizing everything, it is time to promote your cause.

Since the fundraising will be done on the Internet, using the Internet to promote is the best idea. You can utilize social networking sites to get out the word for your organization.

Since social networking sites are so widespread, generating interest in your cause can be as simple as setting up a Facebook page. Creating a website is also a good idea. The website should have an attractive design, but also be easy to read and navigate. In addition, there should be a “donate now” button on the website. It need not be large and distracting, but it should be conspicuous to the visitor of the website.

While promoting for online fundraising, it is important to not be too rigorous. You do not want to become a spammer and send unsolicited emails. In order to raise money online, it is also a good idea to do promotions elsewhere as well. Handing out business cards and flyers, or even placing an ad in a publication are great additions. Also, you should decide how you will receive donations on your website. There are several options. You can use another company to collect the donations, or you can set up your website to be able to do credit card transactions. Another website can do this for you as well.

In addition to taking donations online, you can use your website to get donations in other forms. Supporters should have the option to donate online or through other means, such as by mail. The website should also promote the cause for the fundraising. Visitors should know exactly why they are donating. However, it is not always necessary to do everything independently. Several websites allow users to set up accounts solely for fundraising. People seeking to donate, as well as people seeking donations themselves visit such websites. This is a great method for those who have a small project to raise money for.

By using a third party fundraising websites, you will not be responsible for collecting donations or creating an entire fundraising campaign. Using the internet for online fundraising is much more convenient than traditional fundraisers in that it greatly simplifies the act of getting donations. Soon, it may even replace traditional fundraisers altogether.

Online Fundraising Makes Fundraisers Easy for Everyone

Today we are talking about something rather relevant in development of modern society, one that lives in the hardest possible conditions. And that would be fundraising, but in this article we are going to discuss online fundraising, that should significantly change traditional fundraising.

Before we discuss our main topic, online fundraising I will first explain a little about fundraising in general.
Fundraising or fund raising (also development) is the process of soliciting and gathering voluntary contributions as money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies (see also crowd funding). Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gather money for non-profit organizations, it is sometimes used to refer to the identification and solicitation of investors or other sources of capital for for-profit enterprises.

Traditionally, fundraising consisted mostly of asking for donations on the street or at people’s doors, and this is experiencing very strong growth in the form of face-to-face fundraising. But new forms of fundraising such as online fundraising have emerged in recent years, that are far much better than mentioned traditional fundraising techniques, in many different ways.

Now you understand the concept of fundraising, we shall turn to our main topic, which is online fundraising.
Online fundraising is a way to gather funds or other necessary tools for various occasions. Nowadays famine in Africa is recognized as a huge problem and many online fundraisers are for that certain purpose. Except for that people raise money online for causes such as research in some health disorders, gathering money to build a health facility, fundraising to keep some projects or websites alive (like wikimedia foundation whose main goal was to raise 16 million dollars to keep wikipedia.org online, or wikileaks.com that need around five hundred thousand dollars to keep their project alive), or simple asking for donations as a sign of gratitude for someone’s work.

The last one is the most common cause actually. Everyone who has a relatively successful website adds a Donate button to their site to get some more profit of their site. Researches have also shown that those kinds of donations bring more money than the actual advertisements. Imagine that a site has 100 000 (satisfied) visitors a day, and every tenth of them donates a single dollar to that website, we are talking about 10 000 pure easy profit! But enough about that, let’s discuss whether or not online fundraising is better than regular face-to-face fundraisers.

This is how regular fundraiser works. Event starter calls number of people (depending on the financial needs and reputation) that are somewhat wealthy to parties, concerts, dinners, balls and similar. Those invited people have to pay for entrance, pay for stuff they are going to consume and later on if they really have a lot of money, donate some to the cause. In the end when all is over event starters have to use gathered money to pay for expenses and they give the rest (or at least they should if they are not thieves) to a cause.

This is where online fundraising beats regular fundraising. Nowadays you literally have no expenses to start a cause and ask for money (donations). And the number of people that could donate is not limited by space or time. Online fundraisers give donators freedom to donate how much they want/can, whenever they want. Only possible expense is site upkeep (paying few dollars a month to have a space online).

But now when there are sites like facebook with almost a billion users, and twitter around 200 million, that allow you to create accounts or groups for free, there are literally no expenses. Every single cent fundraisers get is possible to give to the cause. That’s a win-win situation, donators can be sure all of their money is going to those who need it and those who need it get the most money.

Thanks for taking time to read this and I hope you now understand why I think online fundraising is far more effective than traditional one.

5 Steps to Creating a Successful Fundraiser

I love event fundraising and the excitement it brings: generous people getting together to further a worthy cause, deliciously-bad-for-you food being served and the account totals that are calculated at the end of the event. A fun evening AND the chance to help others; what could be better!? Here are some guidelines to help your event run smoothly from recruiting volunteers to social media fundraising.

Right now I am on a committee for a Crab Feed to take place in early March so my mind is in event mode. I am in charge of the decorations and live and silent auctions, but somehow committee members seem to have an opinion and hand in all the other areas of the event, too. While this is far from being my first non-profit event that I am involved with, I am still learning a ton about the process of creating a successful fundraiser. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1)      What is your specific goal? What project are you working towards and what is your financial target? When people know how much you want to raise, it’s much easier to reach a specific amount. If you aim low, that’s where you’ll end up.

2)      Is this a one time or annual event? – When you keep this idea in mind, it will determine how you plan. Keep meticulous records, take pictures and video for the following year’s advertising and announce it at the event so your donors can plan to save the date. It is also important that everything runs smoothly so that your guests will want to come back and bring friends.

3)      Carefully choose your volunteers – The leader of the non-profit that I am volunteering for in the Crab Feed is awesome; she is gracious, appreciative, listens and has a great passion for the cause. The volunteer leader under her is quite the opposite. Determine what your volunteers’ strengths and weaknesses are so you can apply their skills to the best job suited for them. Choose your volunteers and their roles carefully because they reflect you and your charity.

4)      Relationship building – The best way to get donations for an auction is through relationships. Do you go to a particular restaurant every week? Ask for a gift certificate. Do you have a faithful donor who owns a spa? Ask for a product gift basket. Sending out a mass of donation letters to companies is basically a waste of time and postage.

5)      Get the word out – Facebook, Twitter and e-mails are a great way to promote your event through online fundraising tools. Instead of sending save the date cards, write a few posts or tweets. Online communication is also a good way to ask for donations (but be specific on what you are looking for.)This method is perfect for informal information and requests, but stick to the tried and true invitations for formal events. A donation link on your website is also perfect if someone is unable to attend; they can still contribute through without being present. Finally, you can use this medium for a general thank you and update on your goal, but send traditional thank you letters for those who donated or participated.

Presidential Candidates are Big Donors

As a nonprofit organization it’s hard not to think about how the new president will affect the philanthropic world. Will the impending Commander in Chief cut back government spending impacting the poor, the arts and education? Will increased income tax reduce donor giving levels? Will privacy and copyright law proposals concerning the internet return therefore limiting online fundraisers? What priority do these candidates place on the nonprofit world?

The presidential hopefuls have released their recent tax returns and their charitable giving is quite impressive. According to CNN reporter Charles Riley, in 2010 President Obama donated $245,075, or 14.2% of his $1.7 million income, Romney donated almost $3 million, or 13.8% of his income, while Gingrich gave $81,133, or 2.6% of his income to charity. (On a side note, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have yet to release their tax returns.)

“Romney and Obama are very generous charity-wise,” said CharityWatch president Daniel Borochoff. Gingrich is still doing pretty well, but Borochoff said his giving level is “more like an average donor for the income.”

So what charities are benefitting from these generous donors? In 2011, the Romney’s gave $2.6 million in cash contributions to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and in 2010 they gave $1.5 million. The Romneys also have a foundation that they started called the Tyler Foundation in which they filtered money to other charitable organizations such as Harvard Business School, City Year, the George W. Bush Library and the Boys and Girls Club of Boston to name a few. The Obama’s spread their generosity to groups ranging from the American Red Cross, the University of Hawaii foundation, the National AIDS Fund and the Greater New Orleans Foundation. On Gingrich’s tax returns , it was unclear as to what organizations he delegated his funds to other than $9,540 to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.

Honestly, the amount of giving is quite impressive but the fact that these presidential nominees are so generous does not surprise me. After all, isn’t being president like being the ultimate public servant? He has the interests of the country at heart, he needs public approval to achieve his goals and he has to love people to interact with so many with varying and diverse backgrounds.

Teeing up for Fundraising via Social Media

Right now I am helping a golf tournament committee with fundraising ideas. This event is for an amazing cause to help foster children go to camp for one week this summer in which they are treated like royalty. I’ve been involved with this tournament for several years and I love to help such a worthy cause.

This year I’ve taken a bit of a different approach to suggesting ideas to help this nonprofit raise money. Like most organizations they have little time and cash to spare and all of the people that I am working with are also volunteering their time and skills. Fundly has made me really try to think outside of the box to use social media fundraising in new and different ways. Here are a few ideas that we are using to promote the tournament.

First of all, we need golfers to have a golf tournament. The good thing is that most golfers know other golfers. We are contacting our faithful participants and asking them to contact their friends to create foursomes. What better way to do this than on Facebook? It’s easy to drop a line and ask a friend if they want to participate in a day on the green. This works much better than a bunch of letters sent through the mail because their contacting their own buddies.

Secondly, we are sending out reminders every two weeks to our Facebook friends about new donations, games on the course and new features that we will have that day. We want to tempt golfers who are on the fence to join us for a great day with wonderful prizes.

The next thing we are using social media for is to ask friends who own businesses or have contacts for corporate sponsors to partner with us to make this day a success. Business owners can donate products or gift certificates to our raffle which will be held at the evening banquet. Corporate sponsors have a foursome, their name and/or logo in event advertising and their logo on different gift products. Once again, relationships are the best way to get support; mass mailers are not.

Another benefit to online communication is that we can easily direct people to the e-mail of the organization we are aiding. They can see pictures of the camp, read letters from the kids and choose to donate to the charity if they are not golfers or can’t participate the day of our event. The bottom line is that the more money we raise, the more kids are able to attend this memorable camp.

Social media has been a great way to keep in communication with our golfers, sponsors and committee members cheaply and effectively. If you want to stay ahead, online fundraising is a must for every charitable organization. It saves time, money and energy. Why not give it a try and brainstorm some new ideas for your own nonprofit!?

Fundraising Online Is Easy For Fundraisers To Raise Money Fast

There is a fundamental change occurring in the way non-profit organizations, entrepreneurs and individuals are approaching the aspect of fundraising. Traditionally, when fundraisers are held in the physical world, their presence and visibility are limited to the location from which the fundraisers are being held and the number of individuals who help fundraise. Thanks to technology, the art offundraising has been exponentially enhanced through social media and platforms that allow individuals to collaborate, donate and collect for a common cause. People from all over the world are now able to publicize their causes and raise money online in order to better the situations of themselves and those around them.

The most popular method for online fundraisers is a technique called crowdfunding. Crowdsourced fundrasing allows individuals, business and causes to put forth an idea, determine a goal for the amount of funds to raise and set a deadline for raising the funds. Typically, crowdfunding social fundraising sites will display your project along with projects from a variety of categories. Individuals who are interested in funding or donating to projects can visit the site and select thefundraising project that is closest to their interests. By default, these sites can add a great boost to your effort to raise money online but when coupled with other approaches, can be even more effective.

One of these approaches is the concept of integrating your crowdfunding opportunity with direct social networking platforms. Most likely you already use a service such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or LinkedIn. These services can be used to vastly boost your earning potentials through crowdfunding sites such as Fundly, the largest online social fundraising platform in the world will allow you to share your fundraisers directly with all of your friends and also allowing donors to share your project to all of their friends. Such methods have been shown to increase fundraising potential by up to 50%.

Once these mechanisms are in place for your project, one will be able to fundraise quickly, cheaply and with little effort. Since your project is viewable online by millions of people, the amount one can fundraise in a given amount of time is much larger than compared to a traditional fundraiser. When you raise money online, you also avoid the conventional costs of a fundraiser; some sites may charge a fee for their services, but in the end it is worth it when compared to the extra money said cause generates. Once you have advertised your event and others are donating to the cause, you can typically sit back and watch the dollars roll in as individuals contribute and announce to their friends that they have contributed, which leads to more donations.

By following these tips, you too can begin to raise money online for your favorite cause, charity or start-up. There are individuals with deep pockets out there waiting to hear from you; all you have to do is make your case and promote your cause. By turning your fundraiser into an online fundraising event and integrating it with social fundraising platforms, your project will receive the time, attention and funds it truly deserves.

The Most Common Fundraising Challenge Plaguing Non Profits

Non profits have a lot to worry about! For starters, many of them are on a shoestring budget with mammoth goals to achieve. With a long to-do list, one of the first and most difficult challenges all non profits face is getting people to volunteer and help out with fundraising. Today, convincing someone to do something without any reward, in kind or cash, is a huge issue. I guess that’s what they mean when they say “there are no free lunches anymore?”

When people think of volunteering or philanthropy in general, I suppose their first instinct is to hold on to their wallets. I suppose the common notion is that charitable giving is for those who have spare cash or for the incredibly rich and famous who can donate hundreds and millions of dollars at fundraisers. Obviously, such a mind-set is tough to overcome. Very little, do people stop and think that the world has billions people, while hundreds of millions of people that can afford to give maybe $10, $30 or $50 more frequently and that there are less people out there who can afford to contribute huge amounts of money to fundraisers.

Today, hopefully that challenge of getting people to work with your charity is a lot easier with fundraising online. Using the internet is definitely the most efficient way of getting your message across to a wide network of people, informing them of your cause and encouraging them to participate in your fundraiser. It can be tempting for non profits to work with just about any one who rolls through the door but it is important to make a distinction between those who are interested in the cause and passionate about making a difference in society versus those who just want something to put on their resume. This might seem like a ‘for profit’ approach, but really, if you think about it, for a non profit to be successful in their fundraising and overall goals, you need to hire people just like a for profit firm would. You want people with easily transferable skills, bring new fundraising ideas to the table and manage fundraisers with little or no supervision!

Usually, if a charity or a cause is able to tie up with a corporation, their volunteer problems are solved. Corporates like to encourage their employees to do some “time” and employees get to use it as work hours. Occasionally, you’re able to gather a group of people who are regular volunteers and from a for profit background who can then contribute some great fundraising ideas that can be very useful to the cause. To top it off, both the company and the employee get a tax break when a donation is made by the employee and matched the company!

There are great online fundraising tools available today that can be managed with ease and need very little prior experience or training. Today’s lifestyle has made it such that everyone shops online, so nobody is uncomfortable with using their credit cards on the web. Time is scarce and it’s an online world out there, so non profits should definitely keep this in mind and explore the gamut of online fundraising tools available to them!

Taking the time and effort to get savvy with fundraising online is definitely a good investment; it will solve your problem of looking for volunteers to approach people for donations, you can send out hundreds and thousands of outreach emails at a time and build your donor base, and you can host multiple fundraisers at the same time. So be sure to check out all options available online quickly so you don’t miss out on achieving your goals and doing good in the community due to lack of volunteers and participation!

Fundraising Ideas for Online Fundraisers

People from all over the world spend most of the time on the Internet therefore fundraising activities can be successful using this medium. Donors can give to charity or donate to organizations online without leaving their house. There are many fundraising ideas that can be done through the Internet that people in need can benefit from. The proceeds immediately go to organizations in a short period of time as payments are done via electronic transactions. These organizations do not need to make time-consuming and stressful inventories just like in regular fundraising activities that are done personally.

Fundraising online is possible through Internet auctions. Members of the organization can bid some of their stuff in websites that do auctioneering. They collect a portion of the proceeds to be given to charity. Non-profit organizations can also register their group in a certain website that has a charity program of their own. These groups will be able to get all of the proceeds from the items that they auction provided they open a seller’s account in the said website.

Another way for fundraisers to raise money for charity is to tie-up with local businesses. A specific amount of some of the items sold online by these businesses can be given to the fundraisers. For example, a company that sells baby clothes can donate 10% of the sales they make online to an organization supporting an orphanage. A cosmetic company’s website that sells make-up for women can also donate a percentage of their monthly sales to a women’s crisis center. A publishing company can also donate children’s books to a public school.

There are also fundraising websites that allow organizations to create a page of their own with them. The website manages the page while the organization is the one who asks for donors and does the fundraising activities by advertising the page to family, friends and supporters. All the proceeds that the organization will receive will directly go to them. This is a way for the fundraisers to help such organizations in their missions and goals for a specified time.

There are also fundraising malls in the Internet that help organizations raise funds for charity. To do this, an organization has to have a website where they will put a link to the online shopping mall. When a person buys something from the seller’s website through the link provided by the organization, the latter gets a portion of the sale made. The customer gets to buy something he really needs and at the same time would be able to give to charity. There are also online shopping malls that encourage organizations to create a web page in their websites for easier and instant access.

Online fundraising is easier to do than the traditional fundraising activity, which requires time, preparation, location, transportation expenses, advertisement, and inventories. Fundraising online just requires a web page and that alone can reach millions of people around the globe. There are just so many fundraiser ideas that can be implemented via the net that would benefit those who are truly in need.