On May 4, 2010, GiveForward and 32 other organizations are announcing the First Annual World Give Day (@worldgiveday).  People all over the world will come together in support of the causes that matter to them the most. The goal of World Give Day is to mobilize world-wide philanthropy in a way that has never been done before. Through partnerships with non-profit organizations all over the world, World Give Day is encouraging people to give back through donating, volunteering, or raising awareness about their favorite causes. The purpose of World Give Day is to serve as motivation for people to unite in one day of giving, and inspire people to make giving back a priority in our everyday lives.

People all over the world have shown our ability to unite for a cause on a global level. In 1985, December 5 was designated International Volunteer Day by the United Nations, and is now observed by more than half of countries around the world. International Volunteer Day was established to recognize all that is achieved through the efforts of volunteer work, and serves as a means to increase public awareness of the effect we can have on society. Global Youth Service Day, established in 1988, is now the largest service event in the world, being celebrated by over 100 countries. Global Youth Service Day mobilizes millions of children and youth to address the world’s most critical issues through service and service-learning. Most recently, people all over the world came together to participate in the fourth annual Earth Hour. Earth Hour is a global call to action that encourages millions of people, businesses and communities to join together and turn off their lights for one hour in order to recognize our responsibility towards our planet.

World Give Day is working towards achieving this same global success through what is truly a grassroots effort, inspiring people all over the world to make a difference in the lives of others regardless of how much time or money we have to give. Making an impact on World Give Day could be as simple as posting a link to your favorite charity on Facebook or Twitter, or reminding those around you to get involved in whatever way they can, because World Give Day is based on the underlying belief that every effort, no matter how big or small, can have a significant effect on our society.

Dear GiveForward Community,

In an effort to be completely transparent, we wanted to let you know that, after some serious deliberation, we have decided to raise our fees by 1%.  Previously, we deducted 3% of every donation to cover the costs of mailing letters, issuing checks, and keeping GiveForward.org running.

We knew from the beginning that taking one of the lowest fees of any online fundraising site in the world would show our commitment to helping our users raise the most money possible and would demonstrate that we are not a profit-driven company.

Over the last year, we have experienced tremendous growth.  We have helped raise more than $1.2 million for people battling cancer, organ transplants and other serious illnesses.  We now have our first paid staff member (up until now, all of our interns have been volunteers and Ethan and I have not taken a salary in more than two years).   But with growth comes additional expenses.  For example, our hosting fees for the website are ten times what they were just a few months ago.

We now know that 3% is simply not enough to sustain GiveForward into the future.

In order for GiveForward to offer additional services while keeping the site fast and easy to use, we are going to have to rebuild GiveForward.org.  We are still going to offer the same simple fundraising tool, but we’ll soon have cool features like a widget that will allow you to fundraise from any site, the ability to send updates to all your donors at once, and better integration with Facebook.

We hope that you will be as excited by these improvements as we are.

Thank you for being a valued member of the GiveForward community, and we look forward to serving you better in the future.

All the best,

Desiree, Ethan, and The GiveForward Team

Dear GiveForward Users, Fans, and Friends,

Today GiveForward hit $1million in donations when Ariela A. donated to Team Nicole’s fundraiser.

Words cannot describe how happy we are to have gotten to this point.  In a little over a year and a half, GiveForward has helped people raise $1million for lifesaving things like chemotherapy and organ transplants.  We’ve helped people travel to get the care they need and covered living expenses while undergoing treatment.  But most importantly, we’ve helped build communities around people who are sick, helping them know that they are not alone.

We couldn’t have gotten to this point without you, our friends, users, and supporters.  So, thank you.

This moment is particularly poignant for me because we hit $1million on my late Grandfather’s birthday.  He was my first investor in GiveForward and the one who encouraged me to follow this dream.  He was fortunate enough to be able to afford treatment for his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but during his battle he reflected on how expensive the process was and how lucky he was to be able to focus just on getting well unlike his companions in treatment.

Ethan, too, has lost loved ones to cancer.   He knows first-hand how important it is to create a sense of community around someone who is sick.

We could not be prouder of the direction GiveForward has gone in since we hung our virtual shingle in August of 2008.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who have made this dream a reality.

With deepest appreciation,

Desiree & Ethan

Last week, Christopher Buck from Om Times asked me to tell him the full story of how GiveForward got started.  Read the story here in the section called “Lighthouse Calling.”

In the world of online tools for people battling illness, nothing quite compares to those sites that help build a community around someone who is sick.  The two most popular patient websites are CaringBridge and CarePages, both of which provide free patient blog sites so friends and family can keep up on the progress of a loved one.

Two possibly lesser known sites take this sense of community to a new level, offering patients and their caregivers a way to connect and collaborate.

Lotsa Helping Hands, offers free online collaboration tools to help people to come together in caregiving.  A calendar, message board, blog, and event invitations make it easy for friends and family to volunteer to cook dinner, drive to doctor’s appointments, or schedule visits.

MyLifeline.org provides cancer patients with free blog sites to update friends and family.  They provide cancer resources and help build an online community for patients and their caregivers.

Much like these sites, GiveForward aims to bring people together to help a loved one battling an illness.  That’s why we make it easy for people to leave words of encouragement, email organizers, update stories, and list upcoming events.  But the real purpose of GiveForward is to help bring together friends, family, and strangers to contribute directly to the recovery of someone they care about.

Because of this, GiveForward is a natural complement to patient web sites like CaringBridge, CarePages, MyLifeline.org, and Lotsa Helping Hands.

To raise money on any of these sites using GiveForward.org, all you have to do is create a GiveForward page and paste the customized url for your project into the descriptions or links on any of these sites.  Then, friends and family who read about a patient’s updates can visit the GiveForward page to make a donation.

Soon GiveForward will make it that much easier to fundraise on sites like these.  Our widget (to be released in early April) will allow you to fundraise using the GiveForward platform all the while staying on your current website or blog.

Stay tuned for updates, but in the meantime if you have any questions about how to fundraise on a CaringBridge, CarePage, MyLifeline.org, or Lotsa Hands Page, shoot us an email at info@giveforward.org.

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While GiveForward may be one of the few sites focused on helping people raise money for medical expenses, the reality is that people have been raising money like this for years.

We’ve all seen change boxes at convenience stores collecting money for a child’s surgery or driven by a church hosting a spaghetti dinner for a congregation member with cancer.  Over the last 10 years, people have taken these fundraising efforts online, first sending emails and creating websites asking for checks via snailmail and later creating sites with PayPal buttons going into personal accounts.

The PayPal Donate button has become fairly ubiquitous across blogs and smaller non-profit websites.  So, it is no wonder that we are frequently being asked why GiveForward is better than a PayPal button.

Here is our answer…

1. Expertise – We understand the strategies that make peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns successful. We are constantly adding new tips and best practices to our blog and have fundraising experts on staff available to answer questions and provide fundraising tips to our users. PayPal is a merchant processor not a fundraising expert.
2. Ease of use – We have had users start fundraising pages and raise $15,000 within 24 hours of signing up for an account.  We made our platform very simple and straightforward.  If an individual can send an email, they can use GiveForward.
3. Superb customer service - Although we provide a turnkey platform that anybody can use, when a user does ask for help, we pride ourselves on our ability to assist. Whether this means providing fundraising tips and advice over the phone, recommending a useful cancer support organization, or even helping users draft press releases for their local newspaper, we do everything within our means to make sure our users achieve their desired results.
4. Trustworthiness – The GiveForward platform is more trustworthy than a PayPal system. Donors feel more secure knowing that they are donating through an intermediary like GiveForward that holds the donations in escrow rather than going directly to an individual’s PayPal account.
5. Ability to leave comments – Upon making a donation, the donor has the ability to leave words of encouragement for the beneficiary. We’ve heard on a consistent basis from our users that this moral support from friends, family and strangers throughout the world is equally as important as the actually monetary contributions.
6. Easily measured progress— Unlike a PayPal button, GiveForward pages track the success of a fundraiser, making it easy for donors to see and build off of the momentum of a well executed fundraiser.
7. Ability to donate anonymously or semi-anonymously—PayPal requires donors to give their name and email address, making it impossible for people to leave anonymous gifts.   GiveForward protects donors by allowing them to donate completely anonymously.  Or, for those donors who may not want to display the amount, they can leave their first name and comment but hide the amount given.
8. Integration with Social media—GiveForward provides seamless integration with Facebook upon checkout, allowing donors to help spread the word quickly about a fundraiser.
9. Visually pleasing layout – Users have the ability to add pictures, calendars and even video to their fundraising pages to help bring their messages to life.
10. Personalized URL – Each GiveForward user selects a personalized URL for his or her fundraiser (e.g. www.GiveForward.org/Johan) making it easy to share with friends and family around the world.
11. Emailing system – Each user has the ability to import contacts from Gmail Yahoo! and MSN accounts to easily spread the word to friends and family.
12. Added visibility – Because each fundraiser is in a searchable database, anyone who is browsing the GiveForward site may choose to donate to fundraiser.
13. Automatic thank you notes - Every time a person donates, the donor receives an automatic thank you note from the organizer of the fundraiser as well as from GiveForward.
14. Ability to thank donors individually – In addition to the automatic thank you, GiveForward users can send personalized thank you emails directly to their donors even if the donor is anonymous.
15. Automatic Donation Alerts – GiveForward sends an automatic donation alert to the fundraiser’s organizer every time a donation is made.
16. Technical support – GiveForward staff members are available to answer technical questions five days a week.
17. Automatic email receipts to the donors- If  a 501(c)(3) has been set up for the individual beneficiary, this email serves as a tax-deductible receipt to the donor.
18. Lastly, we have a strong reputation and proven results – The GiveForward name and feel of the website engenders a sense of community that encourages donations and generosity. The Chicago Tribune has labeled GiveForward “the future of medical fundraising in the Internet Age”.  And with numerous projects on the site raising $10,000, $50,000 and even $80,000+ we have the track record to back it up.

Earlier in the month, GiveForward joined forces with our friends at let’s dabble to shoot two videos.  The first captured people on streets of Chicago sending words of encouragement to the people of the Haiti. view here

The second video (below) captures the experience of a nurse practitioner friend of GiveForward’s who was in Haiti volunteering at a clinic when the earthquake hit.  We hope that her story will remind people that there is still so much that is needed there right now.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voByy_g13Qs[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLFFoCxdr6U[/youtube]

This week, our friends at let’s dabble came to us with the idea of creating a video to help promote the efforts in Haiti.  We thought a lot about what we wanted this video to accomplish, and we came up with two goals.

First, we want to document what people are doing to help and encourage others to contribute what they can.  Second, we wanted to show the people of Haiti that they are not alone…that people all over the world are praying for them and sending them positive vibes for a quick recovery.

So we created this video “Words for Haiti.”  We hope that the video will encourage you to make your own words of encouragement video response.  Maybe we can get short clips from people all over the world on YouTube, sending positive energy to the people who need our support in Haiti.

To leave your own words of encouragement, visit one of the many fundraisers on our Help Haiti page.

Some of you might have noticed that we recently changed the GiveForward slogan to “Fundraising Made Simple.” from “Changing the Face of Philanthropy.” I thought I would take a minute and tell you why we made the switch.

When we first started GiveForward, we weren’t exactly sure what it would turn into. On one hand, we thought that our site would give young people, who are not typically seen as society’s philanthropists, an easy way to give to the projects they cared about most.

On the other hand, we saw GiveForward being a tool for smaller non-profits to jump into the peer-to-peer fundraising arena where big non-profits like Susan G. Komen, American Cancer Society, and Leukemia and Lymphoma Society were raising billions. We thought that equipping small and medium sized organizations with the same resources as the big guys would also change the face of philanthropy.

But what we found out is that people wanted to use our site to raise money for people they care about. Nearly 75% of our fundraisers now are raising money for a loved one’s medical expenses. Whether they’re raising money for chemotherapy, an organ transplant, or even living expenses while undergoing treatment, the majority of our community is on GiveForward to raise money.

Because of this, we’ve changed up our strategy a bit. Now, we focus all of our efforts on helping our users become the best fundraisers they can be. We have always offered our Fundraising Bootcamp and Fundraising Tip of the Week. Now, we have our Top Ten Fundraising Tips we’ve gleaned from our master fundraisers on the site. We also have 2 fundraising coaches, Erica and Sarah, who are here to help you with any fundraising questions you might have. And, as always, Ethan and I are here to help.

So, in a way, we’re doing what we’ve always done…make fundraising a fun and easy process that brings people together. Now we just have a slogan that reflects that…Fundraising Made Simple.

I just realized that Thanksgiving weekend marked the 2 year anniversary of when a little voice in my head woke me up at 1am and told me to “Get started!”  On reflecting how far we’ve come since then, it occurred to me that while I often get asked “How did the idea for GiveForward come about?,” I haven’t actually written the story down.  So here it is.

Before starting GiveForward, I worked at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City giving grants to colleges and universities for their entrepreneurship centers.  It was an incredible learning experience in strategic giving, as I got to see first-hand how much access to information people and foundations with money have before they give.

I remember being distraught when Hurricane Katrina hit because I, and so many of my colleagues, wanted to employ the same practices we used every day with the few dollars that we personally had to give.  But, there was no easy way to give directly to a family wanting to rebuild.  We talked openly about how much more we would give if we knew money wasn’t being lost in the bureaucracy of the whole situation.

I thought to myself that there should be a site where people can give directly to people and causes they care about.

But, I didn’t do anything with that idea until my 25^th birthday.  I was planning on leaving Kansas City to move to Chicago, and I was trying to think of my ideal job (a strategy my former boss Judith Cone encouraged me to do).  I was imagining everything I loved about my current work and what my personal passions were (corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and strategic giving).  Ideas flowed through my head, and I landed on this idea for an adult internship program, where 20-somethings could leave their boring, entry-level jobs to temporarily pursue another field with the hopes of transitioning into that industry.

I sat in a restaurant waiting for my friends, imagining how I would fund such a project, when the idea of raising the money from friends and family came to me.  Having been involved in web design with Kauffman, I instantly thought about trying to do something online.  Then I remembered the conversations we had about fundraising for Katrina, and it was like a light went on in my entire body.

I knew right then that this was THE idea.  Create a site that lets people raise money for anything…charities, new companies, research projects, volunteer travel, even medical expenses.

For the next few months, I investigated competitors, looking to see who was doing what.  I was both excited and surprised to find out that during the moments my idea was being born, Change.org was debuting online.  A few months later, I met Andrew Mason, who was founding ThePoint.com, and I began to wonder if I wasn’t too late to get started.

Having no money and no networks in Chicago, I tabled the idea for a while.  But every so often, ideas would pop into my head about new ways people could use the site.

In November of 2007, on a long, soul-searching trip to Costa Rica (where I was born), I started thinking more and more about this site.  Change.org had proven to be a site for non-profits; ThePoint was more about social action than philanthropy; and I knew the need for this service still existed.

Then one night, this little voice in my head woke me up, and it literally whispered “get started.”  I got up, made a pot of coffee and worked at my laptop from 1am until 7am writing what would be the foundation of my business plan.

I had been throwing around names for weeks, and the next day it came to me.  GiveForward.org.   I wanted the name to convey what we were asking people to do…give small amounts of money for people and causes they care about now.  I never was comfortable with the idea of waiting until later in life to give back, so this name was perfect.

What was even more perfect, though, was the fact that someone had let the domain “GiveForward.org” expire two months before.

A few days later, I emailed the Small Business Opportunity Clinic at Northwestern University’s Law School.  I knew I needed help getting started, and I had funded similar programs at other schools.  When Tom Morsch responded positively to helping me…and to the idea, it gave me the confidence to tell my family about my plans.

On December 19^th, I sat down and told my grandparents all about the idea.  They called me a little bit later and told me they were sending me a small check to help me get started.  It was one of the last times I spent with my grandpa before he lost his battle with lymphoma, and it is a gift I will never be able to quantify.

I then found Prosper.com, and miraculously hundreds of people came together and loaned me another $10,000.  My mom, my sister, and a few friends chipped in, and I also did three face to face fundraisers in Kansas City, Chicago, and New York.

With enough money in hand to get started, I began looking for the ideal web developers to make GiveForward a reality.  In January, I found the Ocean Agency, a local, young, and eager development company who understood my vision and was excited to be involved.  In late January I signed my first contract.

After that, I literally told everyone I met about the idea.  One thing most entrepreneurship students learn is that nothing is created in a vacuum.  You have to tell people about your ideas so they can help you.  This is how I met Ethan Austin.

A couple months later at a Super Bowl party, I was telling a friend about the company I was starting.  She mentioned that a friend of hers from college had an idea for a fundraising site for marathon runners to raise money for their favorite charities.  I got his number, and about three weeks later we had a three hour conversation about my plans for GiveForward and his idea for his site.  We decided to have him come to Chicago to meet in person in mid-March.

In March, we met, and within a few hours, we knew that this was a partnership that could really take off.  We understood each other, fed off of each other’s ideas, and had a similar way of looking at the world.

While Ethan was getting things ready to move to Chicago in May of 2008, I finished the business plan and did the early design planning with the development team.  By early June, we had hired our first team of interns.  And on August 14^th, the site went live.

Since then, we have helped hundreds of people raise nearly $600,000 to have life-saving procedures, go on amazing volunteer travel opportunities, and support the charities that mean the most to them.

It is our sincerest hope that we will be able to continue this amazing work for many, many years to come.

Hopefully, you found this story interesting.  At the very least, thank you for reading and for supporting GiveForward.org.

Desiree Vargas

President & Co-Founder

GiveForward.org