Tag Archive for 'online fundraising'

Twestival is Back and Local

Published in community, events and fundraising. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

twestivallogoThe Twestival is back this September, this time focusing on local groups instead of a global campaign!  Now is the time to help choose the local organizations that will benefit from the twitter-powered organizing and convening.

Twestival Local puts the spotlight on hundreds of causes around the world.

Twestival Local aims to support not-for-profit organizations through global events on 10-13 September 2009. It is up to each city team to facilitate nominations and the selection process using the Twestival guidelines. If you are interested in finding out how your cause can be considered, please reach out directly to cities via Twitter or look for your city on the map.

The emphasis is on supporting one local cause where volunteers and donors can have a direct and measurable impact. The cause selected is the recipient of the fundraising effort and not the event organizers. Twestival Local encourages volunteers to also think beyond the financial goal and find ways to work with the not-for-profit including social media training, recruitment, or communication strategies.

About Twestival
“Twestival was born out of the idea that if cities are able to collaborate on an international scale, but work from a local level, it would result in a spectacular impact. While Twestival Global put the spotlight around one cause, Twestival Local is encouraging cities around the world to host events in support a local cause.”

Published on August 4, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

My Birthday Cause: Free Geek!

Published in case studies and fundraising. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I have a birthday coming up and over the weekend I received an email from Causes, the social change application in Facebook.  Here’s what it said:

Happy (Almost) Birthday!

Thanks to Facebook, in two weeks all of your friends will see that it’s your birthday. Instead of just writing on your wall, or giving you something you don’t need, what if they had a chance to help a cause you believe in? Whether you want to raise money for clean water in Ethiopia, vaccinations for children in Haiti, or a safe home for a puppy in Mississipi, with a Birthday Cause your friends can give in honor of your special day.

Select your Birthday Cause today: Get Started – Learn More

Have a very happy birthday,
The Causes Team

Since we moved over here just 3 months ago, I knew that my birthday wasn’t going to be spent with all my friends from home (we are going to travel a bit though, so it’ll still be a fun day!).  No birthday party meant no one buying presents.  I wouldn’t have wanted the gifts anyway, but know that people like to give them, just as much as I do for their special days.  So, I figured this would help friends celebrate my birthday with me, but help out a worthy organization, at the same time!

I clicked through and created my birthday cause in support of Free Geek! (I’ve talked about Free Geek before and why I think they are a great organization.)

The process was simple, straightforward, easy, and most importantly, empowering.  Causes has done a great job to put the tools in the user’s hands to personalize their message, pick a cause/organization that they care about, and choose the avenues for publicizing their cause that fit their community (I didn’t want to email every person right away but just those using Causes, for example, and didn’t want to email people as often automatically as I new I would email people personally, etc.).

After I finished personalizing my Birthday Cause and alerting friends about it, I was able to place a widget on my profile so people could see it when they visited my page.  I just want to point out, this was the easiest application process I’ve ever seen: it did everything for me and I just chose what, when and where.  Even putting the widget on my page was done for me, I just clicked where I wanted it to sit!

When friends donate to the Birthday Cause, they are able to write a message that appears on my Facebook Wall.  It’s great because they get recognized as donors immediately, I get to have a birthday greeting from them, and others see the donations coming in and click through themselves to check it out.

I receive notifications by email when friends donate, and can click through from the emails to thank them, send out messages, and more.  The Causes application has really done it right with the Birthday Cause process.

The first person who tried to donate, my friend Rose Vines (a wonderfully kind, and incredibly smart woman), experienced an issue with the site and it wouldn’t let her donate – the worst situation for potential donors!  She let me know what happened and I immediately emailed the Causes team at the email address in their help section.  I received two emails from Dave: 1. just after sending in the message about the issue, he let me know they were aware of the problem and were working on it 2. the next day he emailed again to say the problem was fixed and everything should be up and running.  Though, in just that little time, I’d already had 7 successful donations and one of them was from Rose!

The next time you have a birthday, if you use Facebook, I’d encourage you to try out the Facebook Causes’ Birthday Cause application and have fun raising funds in celebration of your birthday and the great work of one of your favorite organizations!

Thanks to all those who have helped me raise much-needed support (whether it is funds or not) for Free Geek – I really appreciate it all!  And thanks again to Causes for the great application!

If you’d like to support Free Geek and wish me a happy birthday – check out my Birthday Cause!

Published on December 16, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Online Engagement: London Fundraising Summit

Published in events and fundraising. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Today was the second day of the London Fundraising Summit from the Center for Nonprofit Success.  I presented with Jonathan Waddingham, the Charity Champion at JustGiving.org, about online engagement and fundraising.  It was a three-hour session and we could have gone all day!  Great attendees, conversations, and learning taking place.

Jonathan’s presentation focused on some great examples of nonprofits using a range of social media tools.  My presentation concentrated on the why and how side of things, including some examples from the e-Nonprofit Benchmarks report.  You can see Jonathan’s slides here.  After our presentations, we had a few rounds of small group activities with short scenarios and prompts calling on the new online engagement and fundraising ideas Jonathan and I talked about.  The groups did an excellent job creating strategies for engaging their fake organizations’ communities.  Thanks so much to everyone who was there!

Here is my presentation:

Lfs Online Fundraising Preso Asw

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: engagement fundraising)

Here is the PDF version with all my speaker notes:

LFS Online Fundraising PDF Asw
View SlideShare document or Upload your own. (tags: engagement fundraising)

My main points included:

Conversations = Conversions

  • shouting rarely works!
  • two way conversation empowers your constituents and the larger community to:
    - give you feedback when things are bad
    - give you praise when they are happy
    - ask questions
    - get involved
  • two way conversations also turn your staff into real people.
  • if a conversation is taking place online and you aren’t there to hear it, does it still happen?  YES!
  • by putting yourself and your organization online, you can be part of the conversation that is already taking place.

Management = Messages

  • people are all different, even if they are all interested in your organization.  what they want to do for you, how they want to hear from you, what they plan to say about you and even how they want to support you.
  • comprehensive donor/volunteer/constituent management software will let you track, trace, separate
    and sort your members.
  • better messages means more messages, but not drastically different.  just enough so that your online
    activists have something they can do when they get an email from you, your donors can donate, your
    supporters can spread the word, and your lurkers can keep hanging on.

Testing

  • testing can be small scale to large scale – really just depends on your budget, your time, and your staff capacity.
  • start small and in-house and see how much you can learn right away
  • try changing simple things with small groups: subject lines, images, calls to action, etc.

If you were at the session today, what questions did you leave with?  What conversations helped you the most?

Published on September 25, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Online fundraising making the news

Published in fundraising. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Two great stories have surfaced involving online fundraising. What do you think?

PayPal has just released its PayPal Kit for Nonprofits which claims to take only 45 minutes to set up (even for people knew to the world of online fundraising and widgets)! Also, they are giving away $50 to the first 1,000 nonprofits that use the kit to generate $500 in donations by March 31st. Check it out and share your experience!

Kiva, an organization that lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world, has come up with a big problem! Potential donors are being turned away because there are no groups left who need loans! This is certainly not the case in the world, but for their website it is. These would-be donors are stunned at the idea of an organization saying, “No thanks; we have all the money we need!”

What is the real problem? Just like with many organizations, there is a lag in the process of connecting potential organizations needing funding with those to fund them. It is definitely a refreshing thought, though, that the number of donors and dollars is more than the need. If only!

Another thought about the Kiva crisis, is on timing. It is January, the month following a string of “giving-oriented” holidays. Could the higher-than-usual giving time of year been enough to fulfill Kiva’s needs? Once a new set of needy groups are up on Kiva’s site, it will be interesting to see if once again they are all taken care of!

Did you give to a charity online? Was it because of the holidays? Do you give more in the holiday season or all through the year – why?

Published on January 31, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments