If fundraising was easy, everyone would do it.  The truth is It’s hard. It takes practice, humility, perseverance, and creativity.  It’s kind of like…Foosball.

Remember when you first attempted Foosball?  Most likely you just frantically spun all of the players, jammed the table and prayed for a couple of balls to roll in when the other player was distracted.  That’s kind of like mass emailing people to give to your fundraiser.  You have no strategy…you’re just praying for a few kind souls to give you a break.

But as you get better at foosball…or table football for our friends on the other side of the Atlantic…you realize that you have to be a lot more mobile yourself.  You need to react to the other player, leave some of your men standing at attention, and pass the ball to yourself.  Basically, you need to diversify your game and recognize where your strengths are on the table. read more…

They usually say in fundraising it takes 5 points of contact to secure a donation.  Because of this, non-profits usually do a combination of direct mailings, phone solicitations, in-person solicitations, emails, and advertisements.

Most of us do not have the time or money to push our fundraisers that hard.  But, there are a few inexpensive ways to create multiple points of contact with your potential donors.  We have discussed them in previous posts, but here’s a brief recap and some new ways to contact your donors:

read more…

Saturday, May 9, saw the debut of Climate Cycle’s first annual Bike-a-Thon, which proved to be a fun, albeit freezing morning.  The ride, which had three different courses, helped raise money towards Climate Cycle’s goal of installing solar energy systems on Chicago Public Schools.

Despite weather in the 40s and strong winds off the lake, the day was a success for all involved.  Climate Cycle was able to raise over $60,000 from its participants plus an additional $30,000 match from the Motorola Foundation.

I first heard about Climate Cycle and its great cause through GiveForward’s Green Trivia night a few weeks ago.  Climate Cycle received the proceeds from our event and one volunteer, myself for its upcoming Bike-a-Thon.

I arrived at the event at 7:00 a.m. (yikes!) and proceeded over to the registration tent that would be my home for the next five hours.  I was immediately greeted by my fellow volunteers: One Brick members, local students from Curie High School, and members of the Center for Spiritual Living.  Helpful staff from Special Events Management helped us all learn our roles. While there were certainly complaints about the freezing weather and continual bracing down due to high winds, we all worked really hard and were rewarded by the wonderfully cheery riders both pre and post race.  One rider even thanked me for volunteering my time.

Another GiveForward member, Co-Founder Ethan Austin took part in the race and had a great time: “The ride was a total win-win situation for everyone involved. We had a ton of fun and all the money is going to help Chicago school kids.  You can’t beat that.  Plus, the free Chipotle burritos were a nice touch.  I doubled up and had two of them.”

Profile in Progress: GiveForward Changes the Face of Philanthropy

The next wave of philanthropy is marked not by mega-foundations and giving houses, but hyper-local fundraising campaigns powered by individuals. Websites like GiveForward are making this dream a reality.

At GiveForward anyone can be a philanthropist for any cause they choose. A quick visit to the group’s website reveals just how personal giving has become – you can help Luke pay his medical bills or sponsor a runner in the Kensington Triathlon in honor of her friend Allison, who has gastric cancer. The site is chock with moving stories where individual people have become the face of fundraising – through GiveForward, you can connect directly with the everyday causes and struggles that we go through.

This line on the website is particularly striking: “At GiveForward, we’re not asking you to change the whole world all by yourself. But we do believe that everyone has the ability to change someone’s world.”

You can start giving now, start your own fundraising page and raise money for the causes closest to you, or allow them to do the work with GiveForward’s Give5 program. One thing is certain, though – with GiveForward, you will help change the face of philanthropy and be a voice for progress.

The Chicago Math and Science Academy, a charter school in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago is one of our favorite organizations! Last August we helped the school raise $2300 to purchase new graphing calculators for their science lab.  We recently had a chance to catch up with them at their annual community breakfast and couldn’t have left more impressed!

Here are a few of the highlights:

Nothing is Impossible –  This is the slogan at CMSA.  During the breakfast, we learned that thirty-one out of thirty-one (100%) of the graduating seniors at CMSA have been accepted to attend college!  And one student, Edwar Luengas even received a full ride scholarship to Notre Dame.   When we had a chance to speak to the students, we could definitely see how much the younger ones looked up to Edwar as a role model. read more…

Check em out!!  Pics from our Green Trivia event are now up on our Facebook fan page.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, here was the wrap-up from our blog.

Thanks again to Climate Cycle, Zip Car, Mad River, all our wonderful sponsors and our event planning interns Corrie, Maggie and Christa for making this happen.

As a small company with a limited (i.e. zero dollar) marketing budget, we know how hard it can be to get the word out about a site. Since we’re sure many of you are in the same boat when it comes to promoting your fundraising page, here are a few low-cost suggestions for ways to bring traffic to your fundraiser. read more…

April 8, 2009

Can Social Butterflies Raise Money?

By Michele Donohue

Leah Jones created a personal fundraising page last year when she decided to participate in the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day. She invited her friends to support her — including between 800 and 1,200 Twitter followers and the few hundred visitors to her blog, Leah in Chicago — Accidentally Jewish.

Jones wanted to see how she could leverage her online community for a good cause. She surpassed Komen’s $2,300 fundraising minimum and her personal goal of $3,200 to reach more than $5,000. She raised about $2,500 just from her Twitter community and an additional $2,500 through her blog, email solicitations and selling the right to wear jeans at work.

“If I’m connected to all these people online, what is the value of that community? Can I actually do anything through that community?,” Jones said she asked herself. “And, I did. It was phenomenal.” read more…

Our first annual green trivia night took place last Thursday and proved to be a fun night full of fundraising, teamwork, wracking of brains, loud cheers, and crazy team names! (Yes, we’re talking to you, Team Mustache Rides for a Good Cause).

In total over 80 people who proved to know a lot about the environment and popular culture showed up for the event and helped raise close to $400 for Climate Cycle, a non-profit that is helping make Chicago public schools greener through the installation of solar panel energy systems  (check out their first annual bike-a-thon this Saturday, May 9 and their awesome post celebration at Grant Park). 

While some of us were stumped by questions such as:

Name one male celebrity that Madonna has NOT slept with

One team (Mustache Rides for a Good Cause) seemed to know all the answers (yes, we heard your loud victory cheers) and walked home with the $500 cash prize.   The highly favored Team Nitro Crisis came in second and walked away with a wine tasting night for 6 people at Lush Wine Shop
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A 24-hour Facebook awareness campaign is when you ask all your friends to “donate” their Facebook status message for 24 hours to help spread awareness about your fundraiser. One of our users did this a little while back and raised over $1000 in a 24-hour period.

Here’s how you do it.

• Step one: Set up a Facebook group or event  (either one will work). You’ll want to set this group or event up 7-10 days before you plan on having the 24-hour campaign so as to give your friends enough time to know about it and invite others to join.

• Step two: Invite all your friends to the group or event, asking them to donate their Facebook status message for 24 hours.  For example, let’s say you are raising money for your friend Jim who is battling cancer.  You might want to write something like:

“As many of you know, our good friend Jim Smith was recently diagnosed with cancer, and we need YOUR help!  We have set up a fundraiser page on GiveForward.org to raise money to cover his medical bills.  On May 17 we are holding “HELP JIM DAY” on Facebook to raise money and awareness for Jim.  Starting at 1:00 PM on May 17 and lasting until 1:00 PM on May 18 we’re asking everyone to update their status message to ‘HELP JIM @ www.giveforward.org/JimSmith’.  IMPORTANT!! We need as many people updating their status message  as possible to make this work, so PLEASE invite your friends to join this group.  Even if your friends might not know Jim personally, please encourage them to ‘donate’ their status message for 24 hours.  Thanks in advance.  This will make a HUGE difference for Jim.” read more…