GiveForward - Fundraising Made Simple

When Amy Cowin’s sister was told by doctors she needed a kidney transplant, Amy decided she couldn’t wait until Medicaid could pay for the operation.

So she did something that a growing number of people are doing: She reached out to her personal network on Facebook and GiveForward.org to raise more than $44,000 for Jessica Cowin’s transplant.

“It just spread like wildfire,” Amy Cowin, 23, said. “It baffles me how fast the word got out and how people responded. Complete strangers were donating money and sending messages of hope.”

Cowin is an example of the growing popularity of using social networking sites to raise money for charity. Eighty-nine percent of 200 charities use some form of social media to raise money, according to a study released in June by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.

Forty-five percent of the non-profits studied in 2009 reported social media is very important to their fundraising strategy.

The sisters live in Northbrook, Ill. When Jessica Cowin, 26, was told she needed to qualify for Medicaid in February before Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago would do the procedure, Amy Cowin sprung into action. She started a “Help Jess” page on GiveForward.org, a start-up website that allows individuals to raise money for causes.

“She’s my only sister, and I felt if I didn’t step up and do something I was going to lose her,” Amy Cowin said.

In the midst of Amy’s fundraising efforts, Jessica was approved for surgery with assistance from Medicaid and Medicare. She received the transplant April 2. The money Amy raised has since been directed to the Children’s Organ Transplant Association.

Rick Shadyac, CEO of ALSAC/St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital, said online fundraising increases the profit margin by cutting costs associated with traditional methods of fundraising, such as direct mail campaigns. The Lupus Foundation of America (LFA) uses the Causes application on Facebook to engage its members by sending out e-mails and notifications two to three times a week.

Wick Davis, the director of online services for LFA, said cross-promoting all of the non-profits’ communication vehicles — message boards, blogs, e-newsletters, social media and the website — has helped LFA see a generous spike in giving online.

LFA had fewer than 3,000 members on its Facebook fan page in January and raised about $630 through the Causes application. Now the non-profit has 25,000 fans and has raised more than $6,300 in the past seven months.

“This is a revenue stream that we weren’t really doing anything with,” Davis said.

Companies and non-profits that have launched innovative ways to give online include:

•Target, which launched Bullseye Gives, its first giving campaign on Facebook on May 26, which allowed users to decide how to divide $3 million among 10 national charities. St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital won $797,123 after tallying the most votes over two weeks. The campaign also generated more than 97,000 new Facebook fans for Target and 3,000 wall posts of personal stories related to the charities.

• Individuals can support the rain forest by tending a virtual garden on the Facebook application (Lil) Green Patch. The game has raised $210,000 to the Nature Conservancy‘s Adopt an Acre program.

• During the holiday season or for a birthday present, individuals can buy a “good card” which is a gift card that allows recipients to donate to their favorite causes through the Network for Good. The good card can be purchased online and sent via e-mail or by regular mail as a plastic card.

Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, a marketing agency in North Carolina, cautions that companies and non-profits still encounter challenges in using social networking sites to spur donations.

“The jump to get someone to take out their credit cards is still a tough jump,” Tobin said. “You may get a lot of people to join your cause on Facebook but raise a small amount of money.”

Though it is important to be creative and develop a sound marketing strategy to get out the word about a firm’s social media presence, too much exposure or an overload of information can generate negative responses.

“I think people make a mistake of overdoing it sometimes in a social space like putting six or seven updates in a two-hour period. So for the people who choose to shout too much, there will always be ways to block them just like you can put e-mail into a spam pile,” Tobin said.

The Nature Conservancy sends about seven tweets a day to followers but tries to limit its Facebook posts to one to three times daily. “You want to keep the messages clean and limited,” said Digital Marketing Manager Amy Ganderson.

Still, even as fundraisers’ report increasing success with e-mail and Internet methods, neither is as effective as direct-mail solicitations and major gifts from individuals, according to Indiana’s Center on Philanthropy 2009 giving index. Thirty-three percent of fundraisers surveyed said they have had success using the Internet compared with 61% using direct mail.

That gap is expected to close in the next six months with Internet fundraising success rising to 42.7%, according to the center.

“The growth of online giving is not eroding the growth of traditional methods,” said Tim Seiler, director of the Fundraising School at the Center on Philanthropy. “The overall decline in giving totally in the U.S. is definitely tied to the downturn in the economy. With the decline in the stock market and personal income, giving declines.”