GiveForward - Fundraising Made Simple

GiveForward is looking for bright, enthusiastic, highly-motivated rising juniors, seniors, new graduates and grad students who want to really sink their teeth into a project and run with it.  You must have excellent writing and communication skills, and a sense of humor is a REQUIREMENT. Additionally, the ability to finish a two pound burrito from Chipotle in one sitting is viewed favorably (see below).

If you are interested in applying, please send a resume and a short cover letter explaining why you want to work with us to jobs@giveforward.org.

Please include which position you are applying for in the subject line. We are currently hiring for the following positions:

This could be you...

Fundraising Coach Extraordinaire: Are you a fundraising king or queen? Do you enjoy helping people and coming up with creative ways to raise money for good causes? If so, you could be perfect for this position.

We need someone who is an excellent communicator both with emails and on the phone.

Responsibilities will include:

* Working closely with individuals and organizations to help them better understand the ins and outs of online fundraising  (don’t worry, if you don’t know the ins and outs, we’ll teach you)

* Reaching out to new users to help them do a better job of fundraising

* Serving as the “face” of GiveForward to the Giveforward community and the outside world

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As many of you faithful readers already know, the GiveForward interns are preparing to face off against the Imerman Angels interns in an epic burrito eating contest.

In an effort to strengthen the weakest member of the team (me), GiveForward brought in a world-class competitive eating coach. Watch what happened, show it to all your friends and family, and (if you’re in the Chicago area) come out to see if it paid off tomorrow!

Who: GiveForward interns vs. Imerman Angels interns
What: First Annual Burrito Battle Royale
When: 1:00 p.m. on July 28, 2010
Where: Chipotle (6 W Grand Ave, Chicago, IL)

Those in the Chicago area are strongly encouraged to come cheer us on. Those who just want to help a good cause, regardless of geographic location, can make a donation here and get one of our team jerseys (aka a Giveasaurus T-shirt) in return. All of the money raised will be donated to Imerman Angels, a non-profit cancer support organization that cannot beat us in an eating competition but has proven to be amazing at helping people beat cancer.

We’ve had a number of fundraisers on GiveForward for people with colon cancer. We’ve obviously enjoyed helping those people, and we’re now very excited to reach out to even more folks with this awful disease by partnering with the Colorectal Cancer Coalition, “a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization that fights colorectal cancer through research, empowerment and access.”

C3 is a great organization that helps a lot people, and we are very proud to have the opportunity to help them help others. Just today, they posted a blog about how the “uninsured with rectal cancer are more likely to die,” and we are really hoping we can change that by helping all those uninsured patients raise the money they need to get proper treatment. For more information on how you can help this cause, check out their website at http://www.fightcolorectalcancer.org.

At the ill-advised request of GiveForward Co-founders Desiree Vargas Wrigley and Ethan Austin, I will now be making a semi-regular post on this blog that has a little more to do with things that make me laugh, and a little less to do with things like online fundraising for medical costs (or any other reason you would come to this site). read more…

As the seasons change, so too do the faces atop the hard-working bodies around the GiveForward office. In other (much better) words, a new crop of interns has arrived for the summer, and we want to get electronically acquainted with the site’s users.

In order to make this happen, I conquered my fear of talking to women and chatted up each of the ladies surrounding me in the trenches. And when I say I chatted them up, I mean I e-mailed them all a questionnaire and then used/butchered their responses to shape the following bios.

Also, to liven things up a bit, we’ve decided to play a little game with you all that some of you may be familiar with: “Two Truths and a Lie.” Essentially, each of us will give three one-sentence-long statements about ourselves or our lives. Two of these statements will be completely true, and one will be at least partially false. The first person to correctly pick out the lie from each intern by July 12 will get a FREE Giveasaurus t-shirt! To compete, you may submit your guesses as a comment on this blog, via e-mail at dshar@giveforward.org, or on our Facebook page.
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We here at GiveForward are flattered to have been mentioned honorably in Greg Ferenstein’s (@Ferenstein) latest article on Mashable.com. In the piece, Greg outlines “some of the most useful ways to raise money for your charity or creative project.” He was kind enough to give us an honorable mention in the “Cause” category.

Crowdrise, the site he gave top billing to in this category, was started by actor Ed Norton and has done work with comedic mega-star Will Ferrell. I’m still a week away from starting my next class at The Second City, so we can’t be mad at an honorable mention. Plus, they’re doing some wonderful things over there; check them out. Thanks for the love, Greg!

The ORIGINAL Lemonade Stand with founder and leading saleswoman, Alex Scott

We are proud to announce our new ‘Cause of the Quarter’ is dedicated to fighting childhood cancer.  As the leading cause of death by disease in those under the age of 15, Pediatric Cancer is an area of medical research that needs to work harder than most to find cures.

The recipient for our Cause of the Quarter is Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. Not only was this amazing organization started by someone diagnosed with cancer, it was started by a 4 year old diagnosed with neuroblastoma who went on to raise $2,000 at one lemonade stand in her own front yard.  Kind of makes you wonder what you were doing at 4 years old, because I know I wasn’t inspiring a life changing and insanely influential organization that is dedicated to curing childhood cancer. I was making mud pies.  Hopefully Alex Scott’s story motivates us all to put this cause on our radar and to give back to a cause that is truly deserving.

We are so proud to support them for all the other resources they provide to cancer patients, their families, and everyone in the community who has been touched by childhood cancer.  From assisting with travel and lodging expenses while receiving treatments, to providing the support and information that families need in order to cope within a community who cares.  And mark your calendars for Lemonade Days, in honor of  the first weekend Alex Scott created her very first lemonade stand.  To read more about ALSF, head on our to our Cause of the Quarter page.  So here’s to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation: Fighting Childhood Cancer, One Cup at a Time.  We raise our plastic cups to you!

1.  Personalize your fundraising page as much as possible with a heartfelt description and lots of photos.  The fundraisers who do the best are the ones who really make an effort to tell their stories.  Explain to your donors what you are raising money for and why it is so important to you.  If your friends and family see that you are passionate about your fundraising efforts, they are more likely to give and give generously.  More tips on how to personalize.

2.  Promote Promote Promote! The more you promote your fundraising page the better it will do. Here are the best ways to promote

• Email everyone you know! Even if you haven’t spoken to them in years, you’ll be surprised at how many people will decide to donate when you ask.
• When you email your friends and family ask them to share your page with their friends and co-workers using the “Tell-a-friend” button on your page.
• Set up a Facebook group that includes a link to your GiveForward fundraising page.  If you have a Facebook account definitely set up a group.  This has been far and away one of the most successful strategies for our users.
• Add the URL from your fundraising page to your email signature
• Add the URL to your AIM, Gchat or Facebook status message

3.  Send email or facebook updates to your friends and family. One of the single most important tips to online fundraising is to be persistent.  While some people will donate the first time you ask them, the reality is that it will take at least 2-3 friendly reminders before the majority of your friends and family open up their wallets for you. Fundraisers who keep their donor base engaged with frequent updates tend to be the most successful. Read more here about how and when to send out email/Facebook updates.
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On Saturday August 22nd, GiveForward sponsored our first ChasePoint challenge in City Chase Chicago!  Stationed at the Blues Jean Bar on N. Halstead, our challenge asked contestants to trade either a GiveForward pen or a sticker for a non-perishable food item to be donated to the Chicago Food Depository.  There were two rules: 1. The item had to be bigger than the size of your fist, and 2. There had to be photo documentation of the transaction.

Runners hit the streets, asking passerby, visiting restaurants, and even knocking on people’s doors to make the trade–and they came back with some pretty strange stuff!  As if pork rinds, beef sticks, and gigantic tins of baby corn weren’t enough, donations also included pigeon peas, canned escargot, and my personal favorite: pickled cactus.

Overall the event was a big success, and we were able to collect about 100 lbs of food to be donated to the food depository.  We’re looking forward to continuing our partnership with City Chase next summer and keeping our event focused on charity.  But don’t worry–the challenge changes every year, so we’ll be sure to have a surprise in store for next year’s participants.

In the September issue of Mindful Metropolis (a monthly magazine connecting Chicago’s conscious community), GiveForward was highlighted as one of five social entrepreneurs making a difference in Chicago. The article, written by freelance writer and editor Christina Galoozis, focused on bringing transformational change to the city–one donation at a time. We are so thrilled to be a part of it! Check out our section of the article:

Where $5 Funds a Kidney Transplant

Desiree Vargas, 27 & Ethan Austin, 28

I told a friend about my idea for GiveForward, a website that connects worthy causes with everyday donors, at a Super Bowl party last year, and she surprisingly knew someone with the same idea. Ethan and I immediately hit it off on the phone, and he moved from California to Chicago a few months later to launch the business with me.

As an intern at a non-profit during Hurricane Katrina, I recognized the desire of average Americans to donate directly to afflicted families, and not through large organizations like The Red Cross. At the same time, Ethan had reached $6,000 through a personal fundraising Web page for his first marathon sponsored by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. With these personal experiences in mind, we wanted to give everyone with a credible cause–from transplant surgeries to mission trips–a place to collect small donations, even as little as $1, and reach their goal.

To start, Ethan and I were able to pool $50,000 in capital, which we spent entirely on site development, and GiveForward.org first went live on Aug. 14, 2008. We now generate revenue through the 3 percent fee charged to every fundraiser once they reached their goal, as well as Google Ads. People are generally honest, but we police the site for fraudulent behavior.

So far the site has done amazing things. The largest contribution has been $5,000 to help fund a local woman’s kidney transplant, which we’re happy to say was recently granted by the hospital for a reduced rate. Her sister raised a total of $32,000 on our site. We also sponsor “Run for a Reason,” where runners can raise money through GiveForward for any cause and run the Chicago Half Marathon and 5K together on Sept. 13.

Like our donations, we started out small. Our ultimate goal is to become bigger–like the eBay for giving.