Tag Archives: social fundraising

6 Steps to Choosing the Right Individual Fundraising Platform

This is the first post in my seven-day quest to raise $1100 to provide seven roofs for seven Guatemalan families. In these seven days, I will also be answering your questions and sharing insights gained. This post worked to answer: How did you choose which fundraising platform to use?  So far, we’ve raised $165–enough for one of the roofs. Please donate and spread the word.

In the #loveroofs project, the first big hurdle was finding the right fundraising platform as there are many out there. In the end, I chose CrowdRise for a number of reasons.

Let me walk you through the thought process and hopefully that helps you if you are planning an individual fundraising effort. If you’re with an org, I encourage you to keep reading too–but more on that tomorrow.

6 Steps for Identifying a Fundraising Platform

1.  Research other people’s experiences. Fellow changebloggers continue to inspire me in the work they do and how they give to others. For me, I turned to the experiences of Beth Kanter, Geoff Livingston, Stacey Monk, and others. Let’s be clear, good research should involve reading about other people’s experiences, asking them about their experiences and by participating in them. In other words–it’s harder to fundraise if you’ve never been on the other side as a donor. 😉

2. Identify a cause. This is important. Identifying your cause will quickly help you determine your requirements. For example, large non-profits already have their own donation system like Livestrong for example. Other non-profits or causes may be on certain social networks that will also act as its own fundraising platform. An example of this is Causes and it’s birthday fundraising campaigns. Still yet, some organizations have it where you can sign-up for an event of theirs and fundraise around the event like the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer or Special Olympics Missouri.

3. Determine the requirements. The reason step two is important is because not all organizations have their own fundraising platform or on Facebook. This was partially my dilemna. The Amistad Foundation just got on Facebook, but is still working on setting up its cause page. Currently, it’s online donation system uses PayPal, which is fine–but it didn’t offer some key functionality such as: a) the ability to easily track the funds donated in an open and transparent manner, b) The ability to customize information, add my own text or share images. Granted, I could have set-up my own PayPal account, but another big thing for me was openness and transparency.

4. Narrow down the field. Once you determined your requirement, you need to narrow down the list of fundraising platform options. And believe me, there are a ton out there! For me, I narrowed it down to ChipIn and CrowdRise.

Each of these platforms had pros and cons. ChipIn is familiar–people know about it. It also provides a widget that you can embed on a website or blog, the ability to create your own landing page and the ability to set a goal and track progress–for all to see. However, ChipIn was also connected to PayPal. So, for this to work to me, I’d have to have people to donate to my PayPal account and then give that to the Amistad Foundation. This was an issue–but my third requirement was openness and transparency. Plus, I wanted the process to be easier.

Thus, I chose CrowdRise. Not only does CrowdRise offer the functionality of ChipIn (minus the embeddable widget unfortunately), it also has stronger design, is more inviting and easier to use. Plus, the big one for me, was that it isn’t connect to my PayPal account. Instead, CrowdRise already has a huge database of nonprofits that you can start fundraisers for–and wouldn’t you know, the Amistad Foundatin was one of them! Granted, Crowdwise takes a 5% processing fee as well as a small transaction fee, while PayPal via ChipIn takes about 3%–the pros of Crowdrise (in my opinion) trumped that of ChipIn as Crowdwise also has viral integration as well.

5. Ask around. As I was teetering between Crowdrise and ChipIn, I asked some fellow changebloggers their opinions. There weren’t strong feelings one way or the other, so I went with my gut on Crowdrise. Part of its appeal is that it is a new platform, so I wanted to use it and provide feedback for our community at large. However, looking back, I wish I would have asked YOU guys via a blog post which one you think I should have done. What can you say? Here’s to learning by doing!

6. CHOOSE. For me, this was the hardest part. I sat on this fundraising effort for a good 2-3 weeks wanting to get it all just right. I was nervous (still am!), was running all the ifs in my head, refining and refining, and finally, with faith, I chose.

Do you think I made the right choice? What’s your experience? And, what other questions do you have?

Can We Do It? 7 Roofs, 7 Families, 7 Days… and 7 Questions

Questions Answered Here--Even Silly OnesMarketing and communications professionals can learn by studying, learning, training and from doing. In the next seven days, I am going to learn by doing and invite you to join me. What exactly do I mean?

In my last post, I shared news about an upcoming trip to Guatemala my mom, my grandma and I are making alongside fellow changemakers. Part of this trip is working to raise funds to provide seven roofs for seven families in seven days, a total of $1100 ($157 per roof).

7 Questions

Over the next seven days, I also plan to answer seven questions based on things I learn during this process, insights you help me to discover, why I chose CrowdRise over other fudraising platforms, how fundraising relates to social marketing, the role of the free agent and any other items you may be curious about. I hope this seven-day adventure not only raises funds for those who need it–but also helps us grow as professionals.

So Sound Off:  What questions do you have when it comes to fundraising change?

flickr credit: Travelin’ Librarian

Do You…Razoo?

Social networking gains momentum everyday. My latest find includes the beta Razoo. Razoo is a New Zealand word for a small coin. Founder J. Sebastian Traeger likes to think that a lot of something small can turn into something great. According to the website:

Razoo is a community united around making a positive difference in the world. Where passion leads to action, and a whole lot of collective good comes from individual contributions.

Razoo is a for-profit online community where members can create profiles, join groups, create groups, post comments, share blogs, support causes and keep updated on new events in the non-profit world. Causes include a full range from saving the ocean to aiding the homeless to international development. In turn, Razoo then donates grant money to the causes who host the most members. I encourage you to check the site out. The best past about the site is that you do not have to be a member to browse.

Razoo has recently been featured in the Washington Post. Both articles come from December 2007:

  1. Social Networking for Social Causes. This article talks about Razoo and other social networking applications that work for the social good.
  2. Social Networking for the Socially Minded. This article provides more background on how the internet start-up began and its history.