The Power of One

Remember the Chipin fundraising widget and Beth Kanter’s campaign? Well, Beth met her goal, raising $872 for the Sharing Foundation.

But she didn’t stop there. She launched a second campaign, using Network for Good’s Charity Badge, a fundraising widget that goes Chipin one better and allows you to personalize it with photos and video. Three weeks later, Beth has raised $49,847.

That’s $49,847.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

Her fundraising prowess helped the Sharing Foundation net a matching $50,000 gift from Yahoo, as the organization to garner the most donations before December 31, using the Charity Badge. (You can still donate.)

When I read about Beth’s first campaign, which had a modest goal, I thought, sure $750 isn’t so much money, but if you multiply that by the number of volunteers who’d like to help out, it's not so small anymore. Ask 20 volunteers to raise $500 each and you’ve got $10,000. And who wouldn’t like an extra $10,000?

But her Charity Badge campaign blows me away. Why did it work?

Beth details her multi-layered approach to her first campaign here (scroll down). She didn’t just add the widget to her site and forget about it. And I assume she ramped up her efforts for her Charity Badge goal.

I don’t know Beth personally, but she looks to be an extremely well-connected and well-respected person in the nonprofit tech community – check out her impressive bio. She’s one of the connectors that Malcolm Gladwell was talking about. 

Can you identify your connectors? Are they tech savvy enough to use a widget like Charity Badge to its best advantage? Do you have anything to lose by giving them the tools? Whatever they raise, how awesome will they feel making their own campaign for you?

[Edit: Be sure to read Beth's comment.]

Comments

[Beth]

Thanks for your kind words! There was a huge amount of person to person asking that occurred, but offline! Although I'm about turn 50, I'm one of the younger people on the board .. most of our board members are connected to their communities and large networks offline. We turned those people who turned to others via email. WE probably got very gifts from strangers and my personal connections were only a small percentage.

[Manijhé]

How does the widget work?

[Maryann Devine]

Manijhe, I'm not a programmer, so I can't tell you technically how each fundraising widget works. I suggest you visit chipin.com and the Network for Good Charity Badge site at https://www.networkforgood.org/pca/PcaLandingPage.aspx for more info.