Almost a year ago, Allison Fine and I finished a reflection paper on the lessons learned from the first America's Giving Challenge from the Case Foundation. This year, we are experimenting with incorporating social media techniques as part of the evaluation process for the second America’s Giving Challenge.
While we've used traditional research methods, including a
survey of 720 Challenge Participants and interviews, we are
facilitating “Conversational Case Studies” that explore best practices
in integrating social media with fundraising campaigns by the America’s
Giving Challenge (AGC) winners. A conversational case study is a write up our interviews identifying a few questions we still have.
The first case study explores how a small organization, Darius Goes West,
was successful in AGC. We wanted to begin with a small group because
one finding from the survey of participants was that people still think
that being a small organization is a disadvantage to using social media successfully. Our detailed case study with Darius Goes West reveals some fantastic insights and learnings.
We end with questions that we’re love to discuss with you:
Whether your participating in an online contest or
implementing a fundraising campaign using social networks, you’ve got
to engage your fans and make it easy for them to share your
organization’s story with pride and joy. What techniques are you using?
How have you used social media to personalize your interactions with potential supporters? Does it work?
If you are with a small organization, how have you used social media successfully without a big marketing budget?
How can we put to rest the assumption that large organizations have an automatic advantage using social media?
The top 100 "eligible" vote getters were announced in December. Each organization received $25,000 and the announcement caused some controversy because of the contest eligibility rules and lack of a leaderboard.
The second round of the contest opened on January 15th and the
pre-contest promotion on January 14th on the contest fan page was met with
a chorus of "Vote for Haiti." Chase had, in face, already donated to the relief efforts, although the link to the corporate press release was not posted on the Fan Page all until two days later.
The 100 organizations are now participating in the next round,
"The Big Idea" where the 100 charities share their big idea for
changing the world and get votes. The winner gets $1 million and
five finalists will receive $100,000 each. The top 100 included a mix of nonprofits with an operating budget of under $10 million with programs in designated
Chase corporate responsibility areas: education, health care, housing,
the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and
animal welfare.
Over the holidays and into early January, the Chase Community Giving contest quietly implemented a leader board, a scoreboard showing who is winning based on the number of votes. In other contests, the leaderboard has been updated in real time. Unlike standard practice for other contests, this leader board is updated twice a day.
Having real-time information is very important to the organizations. It helps them motivate supporters to vote as well as helps organizations make real-time adjustments to their strategy. Real time leaderboards make the contest very transparent. Nonetheless, you can still click
through to each group's project page to see the real-time vote tally
and I'm sure all 100 organizations are monitoring how others are doing to get out the vote.
The platform initially had some technical problems where the voting pages and leaderboard landing pages did not load quickly or at all. This may be due to heavy voting traffic or whatever, but contest organizations came up with creative workarounds. For example. Friendship Circle, has a web contest landing page that provides instructions on how to vote and a direct link to the Facebook app page.
Some are some quick observations about the strategies the organizations are using as the contest unfolds.
Explaining the "big idea" succinctly in a few sentences
As Farra Trompeter points out in a post about the contest, it is important to explain the big idea in a few sentences. As I looked up and down the leaderboard, I noticed that Idealist was in the top 15. Their proposal for "changing the world" is something they've been working on and getting feedback on for the past two years. The executive director, Ami Dar, has been a thought leader the nonprofit technology sector for many years. Because I know their work first-hand, they got my vote!
It's not just the size of the Fan base, but activating them
In watching the scoreboard, the first and second place contenders have been fluid. Invisible Children had a dramatic lead in the last two days, but was over taken by Twloha which as of this writing had a lead of 10,000 votes or approximately 37,000 votes or roughly 10% of its Facebook fans. But this isn't about size of a charity's fan page as you can see by looking at the third place contender, Bridge to Turkiye, with almost 20,000 votes and a fan page base of 4,000.
Organizing Offline and Online
There is also the importance of offline/online connection that can't be ignored. For example, Friendship Circle, had a rallied at a Piston's Game in Detroit (see above video) and organized 3,000 teens to play freeze tag on Facebook to rally the vote.
The Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF) was around 50th on the leaderboard on Saturday and is now a respective #15 with a small but committed fan base of 600 people on Facebook. The organization made it into the top 100 because passionate and well connected supporter, Teddy Zee, decided to be their champion. He is organized parties
to get hundreds of people to vote and connect through chats to get
their friends to vote during the voting week. According to Deborah Suh, executive director, "Whether we win the next
round (we get $100,000 or $1 million), this has been a great way to
raise our social networking presence."
Good luck to all the organizations participating in the contest. Here's where you can go vote!
What strategy advice would you offer to the 100 organizations competing in this contest?
My son, Harry, who some of you have watched grow up on this blog celebrated his 10th Birthday! It seems like just yesterday when Harry's tooth was loose and Wanna, a Cambodian blogger, taught us about the Cambodian tooth fairy.
As we were singing happy birthday, I realized that Harry is growing up with having social networks and generosity in his life. This is not limited to external trends, but we're trying to model philanthropic behavior in this house. He has watched his mother celebrate her birthday and use it as an excuse to raise money for the Sharing Foundation, a charity that cares for kids in Cambodia.
He's too young to set up a birthday campaign on Facebook Causes and asked me to donate $10 to the Sharing Foundation. He hopes that you too will consider donating $10 to the Sharing Foundation in honor of his birthday.
The Sharing Foundation's core volunteers are, like me, parents of adopted children from Cambodia. And, like our family, they want to encourage their children to give back to Cambodia. Whether it is cash donations or in-kind contributions, part of the holiday season, as a birthdway wish or just because it is important for us to support work that takes care of children in his birth country. Harry is not the only Cambodian adoptee who supports the Sharing Foundation. Kanaha S, also adopted from Cambodia, asked her guests to donate new underwear for Roteang Orphanage children in lieu of gifts at her 8th birthday!
This year, I'm sitting out the America's Giving Challenge, but this group volunteers, parents of Cambodian adopted children, and board members took the plunge into Facebook. I'm doing a little coaching from the sidelines. They don't expect to win the grand prize, but have doubled the number of people and dollars in the TSF Facebook Cause!
So make a donation of $10 or more between before the Challenge ends on November 7th, help Harry's birthday wish come true.
You can contribute to the Sharing Foundation here.
Yesterday, I had an opportunity to be interviewed as part of a series of online interviews with nonprofit social media gurus about how to use social media. The month long event was hosted by the Case Foundation and called "Gear Up for Giving." The other gurus included respected colleagues and friends Holly Ross, Marnie Webb, Allison Fine, Katya Andresen, and Geoff Livingston. (Sarah Koch from Causes will be the last session on Thursday)
I'd like to dissect the format and share a bit of the content. I think this format could be easily be used by many nonprofits, even those who share policy research. There were some terrific questions asked, and while I took a stab at the answers, hoping sharing the questions might inspire a few guest blog posts.
Format
The sessions used an hour long talk show format with Case Foundation's Kari Dunn Saratovsky as the host. The tool was a live streaming platform called Ustream.tv that lets anyone with an inexpensive web camera and internet connection to broadcast to the world. Ustream provides a live streaming video window, an archive of the video, the ability for the audience to log into the chat room and ask questions and a social stream.
Engaging the audience is a very important to the success of this genre. This requires giving your audience plenty of opportunities to ask questions prior to and during the event. For this series, there was a guest post on the blog and a request for people to ask questions via Twitter, Facebook, or email.
Kari came to my house a half hour before the interview went live. She booted up her laptop, plugged into my Internet connection, and set up her Webcam. She has a list of questions that had already come in via email and started with those questions. During the hour, she asked questions, I answered. A simple conversation, except that we a couple of hundred of other people were following along in the chat room, Twitter, and Facebook. As new questions came in through the Ustream chatroom, Kari would select them as follow up questions.
While Kari was sitting next to me in my home office, her colleagues Kristin Ivie and Sokunthea Sa Chhabra were in the chat room engaging with the audience, watching the "social stream" (comments from Twitter and the chat) and forwarding questions to Kari to ask live via AIM. After the interview an archived copy of the video was uploaded into Youtube and an after the interview blog post.
Ustream also has a feature that lets you put a marker in the video and tweet that section of the interview. (You'll see those below and the Case Foundation Twitter account is tweeting these tidbits today)
I was a little nervous that an hour-long talking head interview might be boring. I brought a couple of props to make it fun and more
interactive, including my finger puppets. I used them to answer some of the
questions and to make a few points.
And the Winners Are
The Case Foundation was also raffling off a Flip Camera and $250 donation to a nonprofit. I decided to give away copies of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith's Trust Agents, Shel Israel's
Twitterville, and Nancy Smith, John Smith, and Etienne Wenger's Digital
Habitats. We asked folks to leave a comment on the blog post sharing why they wanted the book. (I'm going to ask for follow up case studies ....)
The first question that Kari was terrific. What 3-5 questions should organization's be asking as they venture into social media? I actually got a chance to respond in the comments of the blog right before the interview:
Is your organization ready to be a learning organization? That is
value "mistakes" as opportunities to learn and improve what you're
doing?
Does your leadership understand the potential value and is willing to invest in low risk experimentation?
Can you articulate a clear set of "starter goals" that might incorporate learning?
Can you shape and identify a beginner starter project (s) that doesn't take too much time?
Are you ready to engage and build relationships with your stakeholders?
Here's a list of the questions that were asked and link to the spot in the video where I answer it. If you have follow up questions or want to share your answers to these questions. Leave me a comment! Better yet, if you'd like to write a guest post answering the question, leave a comment too.
Note from Beth: Michael Hoffman wrote a fantastic guest post over the summer about viral video strategies for nonprofits. So, invited to guest post again. Next week, Michael Hoffman will be participating in the WeAreMedia Webinar - you can take a deep dive with him about storytelling in video and get your questions answered. But, that's not all, we'll have a group of experts and practitioners in the back channel and break out sessions on other topics. You'll have access to the chat transcripts and the content over at the WeAreMedia wiki. Amy Sample Ward has a great post about the WeAreMedia Webinar here.
A few months ago YouTube announced that organizations that are in the YouTube Nonprofit Program
would be able to use the overlay advertising feature to create donation
links. They call the feature “Call To Action” and said that in their
first test of this, Charity:Water raised $10,000 in one day.
At the Nonprofit Technology Conference in March while I was
conducting a session about online video distribution, I mentioned to
Steve Grove and Ramya Ragahvan—who runs the YouTube Nonprofit
Program—that while this feature is nice, it is really limiting. In
addition to only appearing in a very limited way on the video, it only
works on YouTube and not when you embed the video on other sites. While
Charity:Water raised a lot of money, I politely suggested that maybe it
had as much to do with the video being featured by YouTube (and
therefore getting a large amount of traffic) as with the new
functionality.
But I knew they could make it much better.
In front of the NTEN crowd I challenged them: “What would be really
amazing would be to allow for outside links in the annotations
features.” The annotations feature is available to all YouTube video
makers and allows for the user to put an overlay box on any part of any
video. YouTube allows links to go in these boxes, but only links to
other YouTube videos or YouTube channel pages. Ramya said they started
with the overlay because the technology already existed and that they
would be working on extending the annotations function.
I must admit that the cynic in me thought, “It’s really in YouTube’s
interest to keep people on YouTube and not to allow them to leave.” In
other words, I wasn’t holding my breath that they would create more
ways that nonprofits could get people off of YouTube and on to
engagement.
Imagine my surprise when Ramya sent me this email last week:
Hi Michael,
I’ve been meaning to drop you a note, because I remember that you
mentioned that you would love the ability to externally link from
annotations.
Happy to report that for nonprofits that are part of the YT
Nonprofit Program, we have this functionality. All they’ll have to do,
when creating an annotation, is click the “link” symbol and select
“external link”. Then they’ll be able to link to external sites right
from the annotation. Better still, these annotations should show up on
embedded videos.
Please feel free to share with nonprofits you work with.
Best,
Ramya
Make no mistake, this is a game-changer. If you still aren’t sure
what all of this means, it means that nonprofit YouTube videos can have
buttons built into the videos that say DONATE NOW or SIGN THE PETITION
and these buttons will work—they will link to any site you point them
to. You can even go back to all your old videos that are on YouTube and
make your logo into a clickable link, add annotations to donate with a
link, and otherwise make your video into a center of engagement. This
is now, by far, the most important reason to be in the YouTube
Nonprofit Program.
People who watch videos on YouTube are very likely to do one thing
when they are done…watch another video on YouTube. Not any more. With
this new feature, YouTube can become a center for creating effective
calls to action and engagement. Major props to Ramya and the entire
YouTube team—you rock!
So that you can get see with your own eyes how this all works, we made this video (above) along with our partners at the Case Foundation as part of the Gear Up For Giving program. (Also, thank you to Beth for letting us shout about this news from the rooftop that is Beth’s Blog.)
Michael Hoffman is the CEO of See3 Communications and an expert in online video for nonprofits.
There's a lot happening this week in the nonprofit and social media space, particularly related to encouraging generosity, giving, and volunteering using social media tools. So much so, that I'm taking a brief break from packing up boxes for our move across the country next week. Of note, I wanted to let you know that the reflection paper about America's Giving Challenge from the Case Foundation has been published (Allison Fine and I were the co-authors.)
I attended Craigslist Nonprofit Bootcamp on Saturday. The plenary sessions were a gift and were focused on answering the question how we can inspire with these tools. The speakers included an amazing morning key note by Arianna Huffington, luncheon talk by Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg, and an all-star closing discussion panel. (I live tweeted and blogged the event)
One of the best quotes of the day came from Arianna Huffington who said, "To be generous, practice generosity." She shared some powerful stories from the heart, and also mentioned that we shouldn't think we're too small to make a difference. "If you've ever been in bed with mosquito, you know that isn't true." She also announced that the Huffington Post has a new living section which feature the stories of people volunteering, raising money for causes they care about, and other inspirational stories.
I attended a session on Future Tech with Peter Deitz, David Greenberg, Ramya Raghavan, and Marnie Webb. My notes are here. My take away was from something that Marnie Webb said, "The new tools allow people to self-organize, something that nonprofits have been great at doing. Nonprofits can no longer ignore these tools or they risk becoming irrelevant."
There was also a session announcing the "All for Good," an application that makes it easy for people to give back to their communities through volunteering. The site streams volunteer opportunity content from sources like the Idealist, VolunteerMatch, and others. It also has widgets. It's more than that - it as an API. (It looks very similar conceptually to the pioneering work from Social Actions.)
At the ending "All Star" panel, there was a moderated conversation with 7 luminaries, including Ami Dar and Steve Wright. Some key themes were focus on relationships and how to encourage other people to volunteer or give way to their communities. I was surprised that they didn't involve the audience in the conversation, by not doing this Oprah style or simply reading and responding to some of the tweets. Nonelethess, it was an inspiring session to hear what the experts had to say.
Craig Newmark answered the question "How do we encourage more to give something back to their communities or volunteer using the new web tools?" He jokingly said something like (and I'm paraphrasing) that asking a nerd like him to talk about how these tools can help do more good is like a crime against humanity. I think he was saying that he sees so many possibilities and so much potential and is so passionate about just that that he could talk about it for hours. What he did say that was very important - to encourage generosity we must all become nudges" - that we tell the stories of generous acts by people doing something everyday.
Stories come out experimenting, helping people find their voices or the confidence or the desire to take an action, volunteer their time, or raise money for a cause they care about. When the Case Foundation team launched their Giving Challenge
to test out some ways to encourage more people to use social media tools and online fundraising to give online, they did not know what would emerge. The experiment called the Giving Challenge was:
A 50 day event from December 2007 through January 2008.
The Case Foundation provided awards to participants who raised the
largest number of friends, not money, every day and in total by the end
of the Challenge.
The Challenge raised $1.8 million from more than 71,000 donors, benefiting thousands of causes.
Individuals were encouraged to participate as champions for their
causes as well as organizations (and they did so in large numbers)
What Allison and I discovered is that the winners all came from nonprofits that all-volunteer run or had budgets of less of $1 million. As one of the winners, the Sharing Foundation, I have shared my lessons learned and techniques very widely and inspired others to not only raise money for my charity - but also try it for their particular Causes. As part of the reflection paper, Allison and I interviewed scores of participants to learn what worked and why.
Here's some of what we learned which I'm quoting from the report via Allison's blog:
The structure of the Challenge lent itself to leveling the playing
field and enabling smaller groups to be successful. Those key elements
included the use of Causes on Facebook that enables smaller groups to
connect friend-to-friend at no cost, the short time frame that enabled
smaller groups to hang in there and give it all they had for a limited
albeit exhausting, period of time, the urgency of the Challenge created
by the significant matching dollars offered by The Case Foundation,
and the leader board that enabled everyone to see how they were doing
and spur their volunteers to do more to keep up with the competition.
The winners were able to make their efforts go viral, meaning
friends of friends were working on their behalf to support their
Challenge efforts, because they had talented individuals who spent an
enormous amount of time as network weavers and cheerleaders-in-chief.
The winners had an inner circle of volunteers who outworked less
successful groups not by a few but by hundreds of hours.
Winners pushed power to the edges through their social networks and
were agile, real-time learners. Winners didn’t have set plans when they
started, they just started. Friends of friends blogged on their behalf,
sent text messages, walked dorm room to dorm room laptop in hand
raising friends, asked their office colleagues for help. There was no
one right way to win the Challenge and all of the winners had a robust
mix of online and on land efforts and learned in real time throughout
the Challenge how best to connect with their friends and potential
supporters.
Personal connections were critical in activating the viral effect
of successful cause efforts – by large margins (between 61-74%), cause
champions reported reaching out for donations and outreach assistance
to people they knew personally, including known supporters, family,
friends and colleagues first to spread the word and encourage
participation in the Challenge.
Most winners reported that the friends that they raised during the
Challenge were new donors to their organizations. The urgency of the
effort enabled groups to turn friends into funders. This is a
critically important finding not only for the Challenge but for groups
using Causes on Facebook.
The America's Giving Challenge ended on January 31, 2008 and the idea of using social media and social networking tools has taken off. We're seeing more organizations and individuals use these tools and more organizations set up giving competitions and events that encourage the use of these tools for good causes. Take for example, the Summer of Social Good initiative recently launched by Mashable.
I hope you’ll have a chance to read the report. I’d appreciate your reactions and ideas as would The Case Foundation as they prepare for the next Giving Challenge later this year.
Allan Benamer had a bet with Causes founders last September but it required disclosure of total amounts raised on Causes. Allan thought it might be something like .25 cents per user (over 3 million users), but Causes never disclosed their numbers.
The recent America's Giving Challenge from the Case Foundation reported on the Causes numbers - there were a total of 32,885 donors giving a total of $571,686 with an average of $17.48 per donor.
This is a really cool idea - you can have special buttons made up that promote your cause - sort of like a physical widget that you can wear at face-to-face events or to distribute at conferences or events. Buttons of Hope founder Michael Gibbons created this button for me to promote the Sharing Foundation's work. How do you creatively and effectively use promotional items to promote your organization or cause?
Sharing Foundation's founder and president, Dr. Hendrie just forwarded me this 10 second video clip of the children in Roteang Orphanage. Thought I'd share it here.
The final, official results have arrived for America's Giving Challenge and I'm happy say that we came in first place for global causes! This was truly a group effort - no one person could have done this alone. I want to thank each and everyone of you who donated, asked their friends and network to donate, spread the word through blogging it or other ways, and helped us cross the finish line in first place! Special thanks to Michele Martin!
The title of this blog post is taken from an article posted over at Slate mostly talking about the Facebook component of the recent America's Giving Challenge, posing the question, "Can social networks and virtual communities revolutionize charitable giving?" After an analysis of the amounts and totals raised by the winners in Causes, the writer asserts:
The amounts involved show that Case understands these endeavors are
more social experiment than nonprofit sweepstakes. Sure, prizes of
$50,000 matter for the winning organizations, as do the overall dollars
raised (Idea League brought in $62,000, and Love Without Boundaries
$94,000). But the denominations of the donations remain small, and it's
not clear that one-off contests will lead to more. Any fund-raising
professional knows that most nonprofit organizations secure the bulk of
their money from a relatively small number of large contributions,
either from wealthy individuals or institutional sources. Those gifts
demand personal cultivation, and an online nudge doesn't usually do it.
The article goes on to quote Jean Case
"Philanthropy shouldn't be defined as a bunch of rich people writing checks," she told the New York Times.
"Small amounts of money given by large numbers of individuals can be
combined to do great things." Barack Obama's success at raising money
online from thousands of small donors is the hoped-for model, though
nonprofits recognize that political fund raising is different in some
ways.
I have agree with Case about small dollar amounts given by large numbers of individuals. But, it not necessarily anything new.
I took the photo above in a Lowell, MA in a Cambodian grocery store when my kids and I were raising money for our America's Giving Challenge (unfortunately, not many of our friends there had either credit cards or email addresses - so they couldn't participate). The photo is a fundraiser for a local
Budhist Temple which is trying to raise $100,000 for a building
project (a large amount for that community) and money is coming from many small donations. This is a very
common fundraising approach in immigrant communities, neighborhoods, and churches - where many
people may contribute small amounts to help others.
The charity that I was raising money for built its preschool building with $35,000 in quarters raised from school children in schools throughout Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina.
Over at the NTEN blog, the question is raised:
So I wanted to open this discussion up to the NTEN community: will this
"social experiment" of many-to-many and social networking campaigning
prove a bust, or can the Obama model be replicated by other
organizations?
My answer:
The America's Giving Challenge campaign that I just finished was my
fifth person to person fundraising campaign using social media. I have raised
over $100,000 for the Sharing Foundation (not counting any prize
money) with and without contests. I have to say that I've had a good percentage of were repeat
donors - people who donated to more than one cause. This is because I
believe that it is important that the wired fundraiser serve as a
bridge between the cause and the donors, building relationships, and asking again.
Jay Cross is exactly right. "It never ceases to amaze me how many
people assess the cost and benefit of projects with accounting
approaches developed in Venice in the five hundred years ago." And, of
course, such metrics are useless. "Organizations that make decisions
based solely on things that are sufficiently tangible to be counted
might as well consult a Ouija board to set their goals."
In my keynote, I spoke about the importance of intangibles for a couple of reasons.
1) Intangibles often come in the form of stories or anecdotes about the technology value and if used along with numbers can help make the case.
2.)The discussion around trying to quantify it - can lead to productive conversation about why the technology is important to mission. If the conversations focuses on the results, not the measurement unit.
I tried to make the point by raising the question, "Can you quantify the intangible?" Of course you can't. But intangibles are important to note and often inform decisions.
I'm trying to shift myself off the forward movement and into reflection mode around the America's Challenge. I caught up with Jen Lemen's post "To Cambodia With Love" I met Jen at Blogher last summer in a session about Global Women Bloghers. One of the panelist had asked the room on my behalf for t-shirts for my suitcase campaign and Jen gave me a her blogher schwag!
Jen's shares how she was engaged in the whole drama of the competition:
True confession: With less than twenty-four hours left to go, I am practically obsessed with America’s Giving Challenge,
the charity fundraiser sponsored by Parade Magazine. I’m not sure why
exactly. Whatever the reason, it probably also explains why I cry
during any movie involving a race, an underdog and/or a girl with a
dream. The cheesier the better.
.....
All of this has been happening off my radar for the most part this
year, but over the last few days I haven’t been able to shake the
urgency in Beth Kanter’s
reports on Twitter. A little poking around and I realized that
Beth–awesome person, mother to adopted children from Cambodia and board
member for her org, The Sharing Foundation–could actually
help win this thing. She is in FIFTH place right now, just
forty-something donations away from nudging into the top four at 3PM
EST! (You can read more about her cause here.)
She called her network to action and they responded. Read the comments, they all gave to the Sharing Foundation because they trusted Jen and because Jen trusted me. This is an example of how love spreads. This is an example of the networked effect.
Now, I could quantify it ... sort of it with a network diagram .. that is if the back end of the donation tool tracked that sort of thing or at least gave me data to map it out. I could track it sort of manually, but not sure how to begin to do that. So, I won't attempt to quantify love, but just point it out as an intangible.
Maybe the Case Foundation will evaluate this project and provide some methods for doing this type of analysis ...
I'm going to write up a case study or maybe make a screencast or something. Not sure yet. But Audrie noted in a comment that she would like to see a concise set of bullet points. Of course, that will be included, but I will also include some stories.
Since I kept a diary and a number of you were following along, I'm curious what take aways you got as outside observers of this process? This would be helpful to me if you could share your observations. I'm too close to it right now.
Update:
Beth Dunn has a great post here and some good insights from Scott Beale in the comments. z
I'm going to take a nap. Please continue to share your observations in the comments or if you write a post track it back to this one or use a reflect_beth (reflect_beth)
I was so busy online working my social media and social networks that I failed to notice the article from the New York Times about the America's Giving Challenge titled "Charities Vie for Prizes in Online Giving Experiment."
One of things I did as a last ditch strategy was to email out a group message to various contacts and it seemed to have brought in some last minute contributions. I did the bcc of group emails. However, Google thinks I'm a spammer now and has disabled my email account. I'm not sure how long this will last - I read 24-72 hours. No good deed goes unpunished.
I need to figure out a way answer email ...
In the meantime, I have written on a blackboard 100 times: I will not spam for good.
I have not slept very much in the last two days and I am about to teach a social media workshop which I haven't prepared as well I as usually do because I spent the last few hours seeing this campaign to the end.
We finished in the top 4 (as far as i can tell), with 1711 donors and over $40,000. I am in shock, awed, and really happy!!
I owe this all to you, each and every one of you who helped this campaign go forward to success!
I will be writing up a huge big thank chronicling the best moments of the campaign - and from there also develop some lessons learned...
Yesterday after flying for four hours and having serious anxiety about not seeing the numbers, I pitched the young lady sitting next to me, a Harvard student. We got off the plane, I opened up my laptop with wifi and she donated. I said thank you and then found this awesome post from Chris Brogan. Thank you!
Now we are really in crunch time, and at a very scary place-- The On-line contest began weeks ago[it ends later today, the 31st, at 3 pm EST . We are in serious danger of being left out entirely--In the beginning we ran along smoothly at 1st or 2nd , and we are 5th, -- OUT
It is not the $$ that count, but rather the number of donors-- here's the leader board, and you can follow this race, if you wish, to its finish tomorrow! We hope not a sad conclusion !
One only need give $10. If you have already given , I am very thankful [we don't get names till long after] and am sorry for this intrusion, again. But , if you have not---please, please please -
Thanks for reading this = Beth has struggled mightily for weeks, but I wanted to make one last ditch effort- to get us out of < just > into the losers! Thanks loads for any help you can provide , and any friends you can involve.
Here's the deal. We need to be in the top four charities that get the most unique donors in order to win the $50,000 for the Sharing Foundation.
Essentially, I am asking YOU for $10 (USD) to help children in Cambodia. Donate here before the contest ends 1/31 at 3:00 PM EST.
This has been a labor of love and I've had lots of support from my generous network (thank you). I am just one woman along with many other generous people who want to make a difference in the lives of Cambodian children. I'm amazed at the power of the Social Web to help my charity get this far, but please don't let the $50,000 slip away! We're so close. I can't bear the thought of letting those children down.
The competition ends Jan. 31 3:00 PM EST. Please join the over 1,000 unselfish people who have donated to the Sharing Foundation and help make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged Cambodian children. Donate here.
That's a photograph of the donation box at the Watt in Roteang Village where the Sharing Foundation has most of its programs. I photographed it in 2004. Phonetically, one may pronounce this "pouttch bautha", and it means "donation to the Buddha." I think about that photo when I think about a culture of giving.
The experience has shown me there are many different things that
influence ‘giving’. Economics. Geography. Religious beliefs. Personal
philosophy. And culture.
What makes some people dig into their pockets to contribute money to
help a nameless, faceless person who lives halfway across the globe -
someone whom they have never met, and very likely never will?
It’s such a fascinating ‘mystery’. I’ve discussed this many times with my wife, friends and daughter.
It probably distills down to the influence of culture.
“That’s why I don’t do memes; that’s why I rarely
refer people to other sites which may be calling for donations for
worthy causes. If I open that door, I will (and do) get flooded.“
Dr. Mani has a different view on influence and how it can be used for social good. Go read it. There is a connection here to something that Doug Haslam pointed me to on ThinkFree - "How Aggressively Should I Get Connected?" That's something worth a lot of reflection.
There has already been over $23,000 for the Sharing Foundation's America's Giving Challenge raised through the unselfish giving of
over 850 people like Roger Carr and Dr. Mani. There is only a little more than 24 hours left to donate
and change a child's life.
One of the best learning opportunities in this campaign is to see how my awesome and talented colleagues who are ace marketers re-shape or improve my fundraising messaging.
I'm a longtime member of the Nonprofit Circuit Riders community. Don't know what that means? Here's a definition:
Circuit riders travel throughout regions of the United States and
parts of Europe providing technology assistance to nonprofit
organizations. As one organization providing such services defines the
group: “Circuit Riders are a community of people with technology skills
who help nonprofit organizations be more effective through the use of
technology. We share a spirit of generosity towards each other and a
commitment to social justice, a healthy environment and human dignity.
We hold a fundamental belief that technology and all of its benefits
must be made available to everyone” (MediaJumpStart, 2002).
If you're curious, there's a whole chapter about it in this book "Geeks for Good."
This is a wonderful community. The photo above is of me, Cheryl Hanback, and Joel Remigio from 2002 when we won the "Swimming Upstream Award" for the diligent staff person who worked on the Riders Conference to make it a success. The trophy was a retro trout fishing trophy." I know about the fish because I schlepped the darn thing through airport security in Orlando and it sat on my desk for almost a year, from April 2002 until March 2003. A proud reminder of my 15 minutes of shared fame with Cheryl and Joel.
Last night, Teresa Crawford, who one the "Dirk Award" that year posted this message to the Riders List.
I am not sure if everyone is following the ups and downs of Beth Kanter's online fundraising for the Sharing Foundation in America's Giving Challenge. It has been quite a learning experience for me as she
puts into practice all the how to's of online fundraising and documents it on her blog. This is exactly the kind of example we want to give to our clients.
Beth has given alot to the Riders community over the years - online and offline mentoring, organizing the Day of Service, blogging about all our great work to help nonprofits make the most of technology.
If anyone has been holding off on donating to the Sharing Foundation Campaign don't wait any longer. There is just 36 hours left to the end of the challenge and the campaign is in the lead by 16 donations. They
have a good chance of securing 50,000 for the Sharing Foundation. For this small organization which is doing alot of good in Cambodia a prize like this means new children can benefit from their education programs,
more young people can attend college and more families can move out of poverty.
Donate $10 or more to the Sharing Foundation through Global Giving Fundraiser set up by Blogger Michele Martin of the Bamboo project!
Teresa
PS: Beth did not ask me to do this. I figured this was one more network
to help put the Sharing Foundation over the top!
I just want everyone to know that I plan to continue to share what I am learning and after this contest ends on January 31st - minus the ask for the money.
Thank you for your support!
