When you are fundraising, the great majority of your donations come from family, friends and friends of friends so it’s up to you to promote the heck out of your project.  Mostly you’re going to promote your fundraising page through emails, a Facebook group if you’ve created one and perhaps even the good old fashion way of face to face interaction.

But what do you do in those rare moments when you are not emailing/calling/facebooking the world to let them know about your awesome fundraising efforts?  Well, you should keep the fact that you are fundraising for a good cause at the forefront of your friends’ minds by adding your fundraising page’s link to your Facebook, Gchat, or AIM status message.

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We knew Twestival, the world’s largest Twitter fundraising drive, was going to be huge with great partners such as Mashable lending their support.  There has never been another event like the Twestival held February 12, 2009 benefiting charity: water and this goes down in the record books as a smashing success.  With just over a month to organize the event, Amanda Rose, global organizer of Twestival, gathered support of volunteers in 202 cities around the world. 

Under the direction of Amanda Rose, the nearly 1000 volunteers hosted events in over 200 cities with over 10,000 people in attendance. While the totals are still rolling in, the most recent estimate of total raised is over a quarter of a million dollars ($250K) for charity:water.  While this falls shy of the original million-dollar goal, these impressive numbers are a true representation of what grass roots fundraising looks like when supporters join together for a cause they believe in.  

Charity:water is an organization dedicated to bringing awareness to the fact that one in six of us doesn’t have clean water to drink.  Through partnering with local communities, charity:water is involved in drilling wells, rehabilitating existing wells, rainwater catchment projects, water towers and pond sand filters.  To date they have helped 650,000 people have a source of clean drinking water.  With the donation of $250,000 they will be able to fund 55 water projects in 3 countries, providing over 17,000 people with clean drinking water.

Impressive numbers indeed. 

Many cities got creative with the fundraising.  Austin, TX, known so much for being a funky city that they have a campaign of bumper stickers that read “Keep Austin Weird!” held a sumo suit wrestling contest.  San Francisco, another city of creatives, featured poi fire dancing.  To create buzz in London, a 3500 piece Lego Death Star was raffled.   Clearly some great talent was behind organizing this event. 

While it can feel like a disappointment to have not reached the original goal of one million dollars, it increases determination.  The drive to reach $1 million continues through a variety of ways including: 

• Music at Twestival.fm 
• Buying an official Twestival T-shirt 
• Take part in the Ebay auction 
• Donations to charity:water 

With 100% of all proceeds going to charity:water. 

Who would have ever thought Twitter would be so powerful? 

I met Heather two years ago. About 5 months after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, at 29 years of age. We became fast friends in an instant, and though she was sick, and fighting for her life, our friendship was never about the cancer. 5 months ago Heather woke up paralyzed on her left side. What the doctors thought was a stroke turned out to be a brain tumor. Another day, another battle. Heather simply stepped up to the plate to do what she needed. Brain surgery, intense physical therapy to get the left side if her body working again, radiation, more chemo. And not one complaint. And like many friends and family members of loved ones who are very ill, I felt helpless.

I live 2000 miles away and have an extremely crazy and unpredictable job where I am constantly traveling. I wanted to do something, and the only thing I could think of doing was to call upon my circle of friends to donate money to help ease the burden of the fact that Heather would be out of work for quite some time.

So I sent out an email to a bunch of friends back home in KC. Problem was that I was in Houston- so I had to ask people to either mail checks to my home, or to my hotel, or to drop it off on the desk of a friend back home. Lil’ complicated. That is when one of my friends sent me information on setting up a giving site on GiveForward.org. Genius! read more…

Fundraising Tip of the Week #7

You can add a lot of dimension to your personal fundraising page and raise more money by adding a YouTube video.   If you are a little hesitant about writing producing and starring in your own video, trust me, you don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to do this.  It’s pretty simple. Here’s how to do it in three easy steps.

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The world is changing fast and that holds true for fundraising as well. Gone are the days of waiting to be mailed the invitation to a once a year charity ball with silent auction. Now we see fundraising in connection with powerful social networking tools such as Facebook, blogs and Twitter. This past week Twitter users made their power known with record turnout around the globe for the Twestival.

For those that don’t know, Twitter is a powerful communication tool with the ability to unite, inform and mobilize users instantly. It’s a microblogging application with over two million active users. Create a user name and you are set to tell your life story in 140 character increments known as “tweets.” Users can “tweet” to each other using the @ symbol directly before a username and thus multiple conversations are started. These tweets cover a wide variety of topics including web use, making weekend plans and questions about kids. It’s an up to the minute stream about everyday life.

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Each year thousands of people either shave their heads or donate their hair to support cancer research and provide wigs for children battling cancer or alopecia.  The most well-known, of course, is Locks of Love. A new group called Buzzing4Change is taking up this mission, as well, encouraging college students (who rarely cut their hair anyway to join the effort in one-day buzz-athons on campuses around the country.

Drastically changing your appearance for a good cause is without a doubt a great gift.  It can take months of growing your hair to the required 10 inches, and often means foregoing harsh chemical treatments (although Locks of Love does accept permed and color-treated hair). Then, with one trip to the salon, it’s all over.

Usually, hair donors get praise and support from their friends and family who admire their generosity and devotion to a wonderful cause.  Who doesn’t care about children with cancer?! But rarely do donors attempt to fundraise for the organization whose work is just beginning when they receive a hair donation.

Did you know that is costs Locks of Love over $1,000 to create the wig and hair prosthetic for a child?  read more…

February 4th was National Girls and Women in Sports Day. In recognition of all the girl and women athletes around the world who are using sports to create change, GiveForward.org interviewed Julie Lewis, a woman athlete, whose selfless actions have inspired us.

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I recently got a good fundraising tip from Steve Mackel who runs MarathonTraining.TV and SoCalRunning.com and has been fundraising for charity for the past thirteen years.

Steve told me how important it is that people put up a good picture of themselves on their personal fundraising pages.  I couldn’t agree more.

The reason you want to do this is because it helps you make a personal connection with your donors so they’ll feel more engaged in your efforts and want to help you out by donating some big bucks to your fundraising efforts.

Any close-up of you showing off your pearly whites is good, but when possible, you should make your photo related to your fundraiser.  For instance, if you’re raising money for charity by growing a mustache, add a picture of yourself with mustache to make your donors chuckle.  Or, if you’re training for a marathon and you have a photo of yourself in all your high tech, dry-fit Super NIKE awesome jogging gear use that as your photo.  It will show your supporters that you are working your butt off to reach your goal (and if nothing else that you look good in a track suit).

Photo of yours truly growing a mustache for cancer research. Going for the 1970s Olympian Mark Spitz look.

Photo of Ben Kobren at GiveForward’s Run for a Reason 2008 (NYC)

This is a good example of a photo that would work.  If you are good at photoshop, just substitute your face in for Ben’s and tell people that it is you.

If you’re not good at photoshop….

Here’s how to add a Super-Awesome Photo of Yourself to Your Fundraising Page:

Step one: When you are logged in hit the button that says “Edit Fundraiser” (or “Start Fundraising” (if you don’t already have a fundraiser page).

Step two: Upload super-awesome photo of yourself from your computer.

Step three: Get lots of money from your donors.

Step four: Bask in the awesomeness of your photo.