GiveForward - Fundraising Made Simple

This week we have a special fundraising tip of the week.  We asked one of our users, Amy Cowin, who raised $30,000 on GiveForward for her sister’s kidney transplant to write about her experience and share with everyone how she did it.  Here’s what she had to say:

On April 2, 2009, I donated my left kidney to my one and only sister to save her life. Jessica was in renal failure, also known as kidney failure and needed a transplant. Upon completion of testing, Jessica was cleared for surgery and listed on the transplant list. In hopes that I would be a match to donate one of my kidneys, the hospital did some testing on me. Most of the testing was done, when the hospital called Jessica to let her know that the transplant process was going to be stopped. This meant that until Jessica received Medicaid, which could take at least three months to get or until we could pay for the transplant up front there would be no kidney transplant any time soon. Upon hearing this discouraging news, I jumped into action to start raising some money for the transplant.

Not knowing exactly what to do or where to go to get started raising money, I turned to Facebook. I wrote a somewhat frantic message to a small group of close friends and confidants, specifically chosen based on their various capabilities, knowledge and connections to different facets of the business world. Original message sent on Facebook:

Subject: “NEED HELP ASAP”

“Hi,
I’m sure most of you know that Jessica needs a kidney transplant and she will be taking one of mine. Unfortunately we have had some major problems with insurance and have hit another bump in the road. I need to figure out how to raise some money asap. If any of you know how to do this through Facebook or know of someone who knows how to do this let me know. The insurance will only cover $30,000 and the whole transplant will cost over $100,000. The rest we will have to pay out of pocket, which we definitely do not have. The hospital will not move forward if they don’t think we can pay for the transplant. She cannot wait another 3 months for a kidney.
PLEASE let me know!
Thanks so much,
Amy”

Within three hours I had responses from my friends, some were how they wanted to help me, times we could meet up to figure out ideas and websites to look at, including the one I chose to host my fundraiser, www.giveforward.org. The GiveForward website had everything I needed to start fundraising almost immediately. I spent three intense hours on Give Forward to make sure I had all of the information that the website required, such as a description of why I was fundraising, pictures, where the money would be going, a timeline, and much more. This process helped me strategize, organize and get excited about fundraising; because fundraising is a daunting task, especially for medical purposes.

I wanted to raise up to $100,000 in less than 90 days. In three hours of having the fundraiser published online, I had over $5,000 in donations. I didn’t raise the $100K like I set out to do, but I did raise $30,000 in less than 30 Days. Here are a few of the strategies that helped me raise $30K in 30 Days.

1. The most important step is to organize your thoughts and get all of your facts in order so you can successfully answer these questions. Why are you raising money? Who or what is the money for? Where is the money going? Why should people donate? What is your time frame? How much money do you need to raise?

2. Now that you have all of your thoughts and information in order, set up your fundraiser on GiveForward. Fill in all of the open fields and be as specific and thorough as possible. It might take you a little while to fill in everything, but get all of your facts, thoughts, and information out at once because you don’t want to have to go back and fill in details later that might be significant in raising the much needed funds you are looking for. I sat on my bedroom floor for three hours filling in every part of the website before I published it. I felt that if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t get it done. If this is important to you, you have to make the time to do it.

3. Send out a preliminary email to your close friends and family with the website link for the fundraiser, a short description about the fundraiser and why you need their help. You can send the same message to close friends on Facebook or change it up a bit. My message on Facebook was sent before I knew about Give Forward, so it was a little frantic and obviously short and to the point of why I needed help finding a way to fundraise online. My amazing friends and family forwarded the email I sent to everyone they knew, along with their own personal message to help make it their own.

4. Make your fundraiser an event on Facebook. Make sure the end date for your Fcebook event coincides with the end date for your GiveForward fundraiser and use the same information for both. This keeps it simple and it will be easier to add updates of your current situation. I created a three-month event on Facebook because I didn’t have all of my friends’ emails or phone numbers. I knew that if I sent an invitation for the event on Facebook and asked for people to invite all of their friends, more people would see it and more money would be raised.

5. Another good way to use Facebook is to create a 24-hour awareness event on Facebook.  This is where everyone “donates” their Facebook status message for 24 hours. For instance, we asked all of our friends and friends of friends to change their status to “Help Jess @ www.giveforward.org/helpjess”. This creates a large mass of awareness all at once and draws more people to your fundraiser. I called my event “HELP JESS DAY” and set my 24hour event for a Tuesday/Wednesday, because most people are on Facebook during the middle of the week. I also kept the website link as my Facebook status before and after the event because I wanted to reach my fundraising goal.

6. If people make their own fundraising event to help raise money for your fundraiser, make the effort to go to them. If they are taking the time and making the effort to help you, support them by showing up. This is a way to say thank you and put a face to the cause of what the fundraising is for. A good friend of mine was hosting an event for green businesses and asked Give Forward to set up a table, so as people walked around the event and stopped at the various tables, people could stop this table and donate a little money right on the website. Another event hosted by the Give Forward team was held at a bar after the Chicago Shamrock Shuffle. All the money raised was for my fundraiser.

7. Contact your local state politician/congressman if you need help with government resources, such as Medicaid or Medicare. They have the ability to make calls into these agencies to help move the process forward. My mom initially contacted Mark Kirk’s Office in our Illinois town. Upon hearing that the hospital was turning down treatment because of the lack of Medicaid and Medicare, they contacted the agencies to help expedite Medicaid and Medicare for Jessica. They also contacted the hospital to understand the financial situation to see what else they could do to help Jessica get the necessary coverage.

8. Contact the media, such as news papers, radio stations, former or current school media departments and if you are dealing with a medical situation like ours, where the hospital is not doing everything they can to help, contact the media relations representative at the hospital and patient representative’s office. If the hospital sees that you are concerned with the treatment that you are getting or lack there of, they will do what they can to find out what is going on within their own hospital. In our case, friends and family took it upon themselves to contact media and we were soon interviewed by newspapers, radio stations and had articles written about us. Since we were having so many problems with the hospital, it was beneficial to us that the media was involved. Each situation is different, but we were grateful that people were so interested in our story and wanted to help.

9. Be persistent, gracious and focused on your goal. Update your fundraiser weekly and if your friends and family want to help you in some way, let them. If people ask if they can blog about you, interview you for a newspaper, radio or school magazine, DO IT! It will help get your fundraiser noticed. Use your network, social network and keep adding to it, this will help you now and in the future. Good luck!

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it”- William Arthur Ward