Step 1. Find a donor ahead of time willing to match up to $500, $1000 or some similar amount.  If you don’t have a single donor willing to contribute this amount, try asking 5 friends to each donate $200 and pool the money for a total of $1000.

Step 2. Create your group on Facebook with the message “For every person that joins this group, $1 will be donated to help [NAME OF YOUR FRIEND] fight cancer [OR FILL IN THE BLANK WITH ANY ILLNESS]“.  Ask your friends to ask their friends and spread the word to as many people as possible.  Also, make sure to let people know that the total amount will capped at $500, $1000 or whatever number you choose, so that your generous matching donor isn’t on the hook if 5000 people end up joining your group.  You might also want to set a time limit (e.g. two weeks).

Step 3. Once you have a large enough group, you can start asking group members for donations.  We’ve seen that the most successful fundraisers create a sense of urgency with their donors by creating time-sensitive “mini goals”.  For example, you might write something like:

“We’re trying to raise $2000 in the next 48 hours for [NAME OF FRIEND].  Please help us reach our goal by donating and spreading the word to your friends.”

Or if you can get someone to agree to become a matching donor, you might write something like:

“If we can raise $1000 in the next 24 hours, a generous donor has agreed to match it with another $2000.”

While this strategy takes a little bit of extra planning, we’ve seen it work incredibly well for our users in the past. Here is an example of a fundraiser on GiveForward that used this technique to create a Facebook group of nearly 4,000 members in just one week.  In total, they ended up raising over $88,000 on their GiveForward fundraising page.  Hopefully, this strategy will work as well for you as it did for them.

These events don’t have to be extravagant; a simple bar night, dinner function, bowling party or (legal) poker tournament could give your fundraiser a big boost. Simply think of what type of fun your friends might like to have and plan your event accordingly. If you already have a fundraising page set up on GiveForward, you can use that to sell pre-sale and/or raffle tickets in addition to collecting donations from those who can’t attend the event but would still like to contribute.

The inspiration for this fundraising tip actually comes from the “Team Nicole” fundraiser, which has just organized a cornhole tournament for September. Each team’s $40 entrance fee will go towards helping Nicole pay for breast cancer treatment, as will 15% of all food sales at the event and any donations made by spectators. It’s too bad we can’t get to Virginia for this tournament, but we’re sure it will be a smashing success!

If you need ideas on how to plan your own bar night, bowling party or soirée, here are a few more examples of people who have thrown successful fundraising events. You can check out their pages to see what they did right!

Organizers of the “Minty Python Benefit” fundraiser sold raffle tickets and earned more than $20,000 to help a young girl with a rare type of brain cancer.

Organizers of the “Ronai-Going-Away Party and Fundraiser” sold pre-sale tickets and raffle tickets on their GiveForward page and raised more than $12,000 to help pay for chemotherapy and radiation treatments for their friend.

The combination of online and offline fundraising is clearly one that we wholeheartedly recommend. If any of you decide to throw a cool event that happens to be in the Chicago area, please let us know; we’re always up for a good time to help out a good cause!

In this blog, Ethan suggests four of the best, most simple strategies to apply to your Facebook usage as you work towards achieving your goal. The four things I would like to suggest you do now: read the post, adopt the techniques, raise those funds, and poke us.

Why an anti-fundraising tip? Because when you, a friend or a loved one is facing huge medical bills, the reality is that fundraising is only half the equation. The other half of the equation is reducing your medical bills so you will not have to raise as much money — in other words, anti-fundraising. For example, if your medical bills total around $200,000 and you need to raise that much money on GiveForward, it can be a rather daunting task. But, if you can lower those bills to around $100,000 or even $75,000, your goal becomes much more attainable. We’ve seen a family raise over $85,000 for medical bills on GiveForward before, so we know it can definitely be done!

Previously I have mentioned patient advocate, Kairol Rosenthal, author of Everything Changes: The Insiders Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s, and her awesome expertise in the often confusing world of cancer. On her blog, Kairol shares tips on how to go about getting your medical bills reduced.  The first two tips include:

“1.  Have a positive attitude. Your odds are good: 50% of people who ask for reduced costs get them, plus your chances might be higher using these savvy strategies.

2.  Talk to the right person, face-to-face: Your doc, your doc’s or hospital’s office, business, or billing manager.  Don’t do it by phone or letter.”

Please visit Kairol’s blog for the rest of the tips.

As Kairol Rosenthal explains, haggling is no longer left to the savvy flea market customer.  While employing the eight tips will take time, effort, and as Kairol puts it, “chutzpah,” that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try.  Consider it another step in reaching the medical bill trifecta– reducing costs, raising money, and ridding yourself of the bills once and for all!

To read more from Kairol, please visit her blog.

There are many restaurants out there that are doing similar things for individuals and other non-profit organizations.  Panera Bread offers gift cards to be purchased at a discounted rate and then re-sold.  But if selling gift cards isn’t your thing, there are other options as well.
 
Chipotle, (a favorite spot of a certain second banana here at GiveForward) offers in-restaurant fundraisers similar to that of Chick-fil-A.  If you’re more into pizza than chicken and burritos, Cici’s Pizza will host your fundraiser at one of their restaurants and donate a portion of the proceeds to your cause.  My favorite option however is the FUN-Raiser offered by Sweet Tomatoes, one of the greatest places on earth.  They will donate 20% of the proceeds to your organization and provide you with fliers to pass out to friends and family.
 
Supplementing your online fundraising with hosting one of these events is a great way to get friends and family together for your cause.  It’s also a great way to kick start your online fundraiser and build confidence going forward with your fundraiser.

When a friend or loved one gets sick and is facing huge medical bills, the quickest and easiest way to raise money for them is through an online fundraising page.  Before getting started, however, it’s critically important to come up with an organized fundraising plan.

Since we know that most people raising money for their loved one’s medical expenses may be fundraising for the first time, we’ve done the heavy lifting for you by creating a step-by-step plan that will make it super-easy for you to reach your fundraising goal.  If you are about to start a fundraising page for a friend or loved one, please take the next 15 minutes to read through the plan — trust us, it will make a HUGE difference in the success of your fundraiser.

Step 1:  Build a Fundraising Team to Help Spread the Word

If you are thinking of raising money for a loved one, before you get started ask a few of your mutual friends if they would be want to help in the efforts to spread the word. With the assistance of a few friends all sending emails and Facebook messages out to their different networks your team will be able to reach out to 4-5 times as many potential donors as you could by yourself.

As the team leader or team captain, you will, of course, still be responsible for drafting the emails and coordinating the efforts, but your team members will be able to help you in spreading the word to a wider group of people.

Note — If you cannot get a group of friends to help with the efforts, don’t worry about it.  Creating a team of friends is definitely helpful, but is not absolutely necessary to be successful.

Step 2: Kick Off  Your GiveForward Fundraiser With a Donation From Yourself

Getting off to a good start is the single greatest thing you can do to make sure you reach your goal.

If you can afford to do so, the first thing you are going to want to do is set the tone for your fundraiser by donating yourself. Donate as much as you can afford, as this will show people how important this effort is to you and will set the tone for the rest of the fundraiser — if you set the tone by donating a large amount, others will do the same.

Step 3:  Get the Ball Rolling With Big Donations From Your Inner Circle.

After you donate yourself, the next step is to notify a handful of your closest friends and family (your inner circle) and ask them to make large donations  (e.g. $100-$500 each) to get the ball rolling.

The reason this is important is because of the law of monkey see, monkey do. (Yes, we know, it’s a very scientific name).   Simply stated, when people visit your fundraising page, the first things they do after reading the description is check out the donor list to see who has given and what the average donation size is.  Then, they donate a similar amount. If they see that their friends or colleagues are donating between $100 and $500 then they will likely donate between $100 and $500 as well. On the other hand, if they check out your donor list and see that most people are donating between $10-$20, then they’ll probably donate between $10-$20 too.  Seeding your fundraiser page with large donations from friends and family at the outset is probably the most important thing you can do to ensure a successful fundraiser, so we really want to stress how important this step is.

Once your friends and family in your innermost circle have donated, rinse and repeat by reaching out to your next closest group of friends (e.g. 5-10 college friends or high school friends).  Do this until a large number of your close friends and family have donated.  Then, and only then should you move on to step 4.

Here is an example from a past fundraiser page that illustrates why this strategy works:  Team Nicole Fundraiser

If you look at their donor list, you can see that they got big donations from their inner circle before notifying others about the effort.  By the time “the masses” on Facebook saw the fundraiser the family had already raised close to $3000.  This made the newcomers who were seeing it for the first time much more inclined to donate, as they could see that the fundraiser already had a lot of momentum.  In total, the family raised over $25,000 in just one week.

Step 4. Reach out on Facebook

Almost all fundraisers that have raised $10,000+ on GiveForward have done so because of the help of Facebook.   This is probably the second most important tip we can give you.  Facebook is an amazing tool and just helps spread the word more quickly…

So, once you have reached out to your close friends and family, and maybe a second or third tier of closer friends and work colleagues as well, you’ll now want to reach out to the “masses” on Facebook.

To spread the word on Facebook, you will want to set up a group for your friend or loved one.  Invite all your friends to join the group and be sure to ask them to ask their friends to join the group as well.  Ask some of your close friends to become administrators of the group and have them invite everyone they know to join the group and donate as well

Once you have the group set up you can use it to send people updates about your friend or loved one’s health status or just things that are going on in their life.  You can use these updates as an opportunity to ask for contributions by including a link to your GiveForward fundraising page in of all the messages.

Here is an example of Facebook group that worked really well for one of our past users who was raising money for her friend’s daughter with Leukemia.   The Miss Madison Facebook Fan Club

Step 5:  Be Persistent

Once you have built a large enough Facebook group (and/or email list), continue to ask people to donate.  The key is to be persistent! Not everyone will donate the first time you ask, but if you keep asking, most people will eventually come around.

Also, it’s important to remember that sending requests for donations is a two-way street. You want people to be eager to receive your email or Facebook message, not to delete it or dump it in the trash right when they get it.  A great way to keep your donor base engaged is to start your emails or Facebook messages with a “thank you” and then give updates about your friend’s health, progress, etc. whenever you are asking for donations.  Another way to keep people engaged is to start off your emails with updates about the progress of the fundraiser (e.g. “WooHoo!  We just hit 20% of our fundraising goal today! Thanks so much!!! You guys rock!!)

PART II

If you follow the first five steps you should be able to get off to a great start.  As time goes on, however, it’s inevitable that people’s interest in your fundraiser will begin to wane. The next five steps are specific fundraising “promotions” designed to help you keep your donors engaged once the initial wave of enthusiasm has died down.  All of these ideas have worked well for our past users.  However, it’s important to note that you do not need to do all of them.  You can mix and match and choose the ones you think would work best for you.

Step 6: Do a Matching Donation Drive

The way a matching donation drive works is you issue a challenge to your network to raise X amount of money in a short time period with the promise that if the goal is reached, a generous donor will match the total raised.

For example, you might send out an email or Facebook message that says “If we can raise $2000 in the next 36 hours, a generous donor will match it with another $2000.”

This tip has worked really well for some of our past fundraisers. For example, the fundraiser below used two matching donation drives to raise over $85,000 in just a one month for a young father battling renal cancer:  Johan’s GiveForward Fundraising Page

For detailed instructions on how to set up a matching donation drive, check out the blog post below:

How to get Matching Donations

Step 7:  Offer Your Donors a Chance to Win a Prize

Friends and family commonly hold offline raffles at their local community centers as a way to raise money for a loved one who needs help with medical bills.  This long-held fundraising method can easily be applied to your online fundraiser on GiveForward as well.

Providing a little extra incentive by offering a prize is a good way to get donations from those people who might not have responded to your first, second, or third donation requests.  The blog post below explains step-by-step how to pull off your online raffle.

How to set up an online raffle using your fundraising page.

Step 8:  Ask For a Specific Amount on a Certain Date

Another tactic that has worked really well for our past users is to pick a date and ask people to each give a specific dollar amount on that date.  For example, you may ask your Facebook group or email list to donate $15 on the 15th of January.   Asking for a certain amount of money on a certain date helps because it creates an extra sense of urgency and makes thing more tangible for your donors.

You can check out the blog post below for an example of how it helped one fundraiser raise $1500 in a day for her friend’s daughter fighting Leukemia.

Fundraising Tip: Asking for a Specific Amount

Step 9. Hold a 24-hour Facebook awareness campaign

One additional Facebook strategy you can use that has worked extremely well for past users is to do a 24-hour Facebook awareness campaign.  One of our past users, Amy Cowin, who raised $31,000 for her sister’s kidney transplant, used this technique to help her fundraiser go “viral” and start getting donations from strangers all across the country.

Here’s how it works — with a 24-Hour Facebook awareness campaign you don’t actually ask people to donate money.  Rather, you simply ask that everyone “donate” their Facebook status message for 24 hours to:
“Help YOUR FRIEND’S NAME: www.giveforward.org/YOUR-URL”

The idea is that even if your friends can’t afford to donate money, they will be happy to “donate” their status message.  With hundreds or even thousands of people all with the same status message, many strangers around the world will see it and some will be inclined to donate, especially if they can relate to the situation.

To see how to set up a 24-hour Facebook campaign, check out the following blog post.

Fundraising Tip:  How to Set up a 24-Hour Facebook Awareness Campaign

Step 10.  Finish Your Fundraiser with a Bang.

Before the last few days of the fundraiser ask everyone on your email list and Facebook group to donate the dollar amount of the day the fundraiser ends.  e.g.  “donate $31 on March 31st”.

This promotion helps to give all those procrastinators out there a little extra incentive to donate before the buzzer.  Check out the blog post below for more info.

Fundraising Tip:  Finish Your Fundraiser With a Bang

*****

Okay, that’s it!  One last note, before you get started – typically, the very first thing most people want to do after they create their GiveForward fundraising page is send out a mass email to all their friends and family.  We know this seems like it would make the most sense, but it is actually the last thing you want to do.  Avoid the temptation to use this “shotgun” approach!!!  Instead, stick to our step-by-step plan and we promise that you will raise WAY more money.  We wish you the best!

- Ethan and the whole GF Team

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.

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.

To help maximize the amount of money you raise for your cause, you’ll want to make sure you reach out to all your procrastinating amigos and family members in the final days before your fundraiser ends.   Here’s what we suggest you do to finish your fundraiser with a surge of donations:

(1) Three to four days before your fundraiser ends, send a mass email or a Facebook message to all your contacts  encouraging them to make one last push before the deadline.

(2) To spice it up a bit, if your fundraiser is ending on January 13, ask them to donate $13 on that day or if it is ending on February 5th, ask for $5 on the 5th.   People will usually give more than the amount you ask for, so don’t worry if your fundraiser ends on the 2nd or 3rd of the month.  If you want, however, you can ask for $20 instead of $2 or $30 instead of $3, or alternatively ask for donations ending in the number (e.g. $2, $12, $22, $52, $102)

(3) Lastly, make sure to send a friendly reminder email on the morning of the last day to remind them to donate.

(4) Voila!  Lots of donations shall be coming your way.

This strategy has worked well for many of our users in the past so hopefully, it will work for you too!

Oh, and one last thing — if the actual fundraiser ends on, say, the 25th of July, you might want to tell people it ends on July 24th.  This will allow most people to get their donations in on the 24, but  will also allow the super-duper stragglers to make their donations the next day if they forget to do so on the 24th.