Fundraising / Charity Ideas Blog

Our last post was about back to school fundraising ideas. Lets turn that on its head with schools doing the fundraising.

Charity water is starting a campaign for September called Water for Schools. It challenges schools to come together to fundraise for schools in developing nations. The need for clean water and sanitation is accute in the third world. A lot of kids who are school age are spending the day helping their parents getting food and water so the cycle of uneducated children continues.

Money collected will go towards clean water, clean sanitation and education. You might want to think about getting involved to whatever degree you can on this project. You can improve entire communities with your effort.

Go over to the water for schools page and read up on the project. It’s worth your time.

You might also want to consider fundraising for water with our products. We have water fundraising ideas that can help your school or class raise money for this cause.

Wow what a year 2010 is turning out to be. Catastrophe after catastrophe. It’s a rough year for sure.

take a deep breath… on to the next.

Check out this latest news report on the Pakistan flooding here.

You can make your donations at:
Red Cross
www.globalgiving.org
Let me suggest our scratch cards that you can get to help out those affected by the floods in Pakistan.

I think social media for charities and fundraising is still in its early stages.  Online platforms like facebook and twitter etc. are still jockeying for position. The only qualifiying yardstick for this should be effectiveness, which can be HUGELY different from popularity. We still haven’t seen what will turn out to be the fundraising media center on the web yet. Lets see what Jumo can come up with when it’s online.

When people think about an online campaign they think facebook causes and I see the logic. Facebook has TONS of traffic plus a cause page for every charity. That’s great and everything but the effectiveness of facebook for fundraising isn’t great.

According to the 2010 Social Media Bookmarks Study :

Only a small fraction of the 180,000 organizations on Facebook have raised more than $1,000.

Popular..YES
Effective..No
Not slagging facebook. What they do, they do very well. I’m merely stating that there are more effective ways to generate money for your causes.

Ok so where should you go to spread your impact on the web?

Razoo
100% of the money raised gets passed to the charities. Non Profits can start their own page and Razoo has a portable widget that you can port to other websites.

With twitter being ( argueably ) the next most influential social media outlet,Twitpay helps you generate money through retweets. Twitpay has a good system for generating donations, it’s quick, easy and has proven successful. The only issue I have with this service is their paystructure. I quote:

Twitpay only charges a percentage of the donations actually paid including a small per transaction fee.

Are they charging two fees here? Seems a little mysterious on this. I really think they could have been a more upfront with numbers on this.

Crowdrise
Our buddies at crowdrise do a fantastic job of gathering people at the grassroots level. This site is designed with the fun connectivity between people that makes facebook fun. Non Profits will find it easy to set up their presence as well. Crowdrise takes 7.5% for their expenses.

Those are just a few that I’ve taken a look at. What other systems have you tried and where do you fundraising through social media headed?

Ok so I’ve spent post after post recently telling you fundraising tips and new ideas in charties. Well the training wheels come off today boys and girls! It’s your turn to pick what you would like to support and get to it. Fly …. be free!

I’ve read about internet sources that help you raise money for causes that are important to you. I’ve come across one lately that I really like called crowdrise

Created by Edward Norton (yea the incredible hulk guy) and Shauna Robertson crowdrise helps people create fundraising projects and raise money for their causes. Create your profile and update it with stories, videos and pictures of what you are doing in your charity life. You can sign up with specific causes or vounteer opportunities to join other peoples.

It’s free to use and users can wind prizes like hats, t-shirts, along the way for donations. Crowdrise charges a 5% deduction from donations to stay in business so it’s very reasonable. The only small print that I saw is that it’s currently only donating to US charities. I would like to see this changed in the future when this business concept takes off. However I understand the legal complications of such an endeavor would be HUGE!

The Crowdrise brand is all about answering the call to service and having the most fun in the world while you do it.

While your working away at your fundraising don’t forget us at justfundraising.com maybe we can help you out along the way.

Now off you go and tell us what you’ve signed up for in the comments.

Here’s an idea for getting involved for fundraising with whatever skills you have.

Jade Sims has a great idea with crafthope. People enjoy making crafts and it brings them peace, why not channel that into contributions for worthy causes. Quilting and craft volunteers fromthe United States, Germany, Australia, UK and Canada have sent in items for projects. Interested people go about creating scarves, pillow case dresses, quilts, bean bags etc for the project. Their efforts benefit a wide range of people and places around the world. A small sample of the causes they have donated to so far are: Little Heroes PreSchool Burn Camp, Liberia Orphan Education and the Miracle Foundation. They also have been active in helping Doctors Without Borders in Haiti. Their crafts are sometimes created for the recipient or sold to raise money.

Craft hope has a flicker group that shows their amazing work and the quantity the volunteers produce.

The next project that Jade is adding to is helping the animal victims of the BP oilspill. The crafthope group will work with The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, The Audubon Nature Institute and The Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge to help clean the animals covered in oil.

So here is what we are going to do… They need hand towels and wash rags to clean all of the nooks and crannies of the dolphins and sea turtles. They only need small hand towels and wash rags, no large towels please.

If you can sew, knit, or crochet this project is for you. We are asking that you create sets of hand towels and/or wash rags to send. Preferably in sets of 10 or 20. These do need to be handmade since we are ‘Craft Hope.’ If you are crocheting or knitting, please send whatever you can. You don’t have to send a set unless it is something you are up for.

For more information check outh the crafthope website. Ladies and Gentleman grab your knitting needles and get to work!

If you want to go about fundraising for the oil spill or any other activity in a different way check out our products that you might want to use for a campaign.

There is a fantastic site called The Green Music Group comprised of musicians, music fans and music industry people who are trying to bring more sustainability to the music and touring scene. There has been criticism the past couple of years with the amount of power and co2 pollution concerts and touring groups produce.

Green Music Group is a project of

Reverb, a 501(c)(3) environmental organization founded by Guster guitarist/vocalist Adam Gardner and his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan. Since 2004, Reverb has greened over 80 major music tours while conducting grassroots outreach to over 10 million music fans.

The goals of the environmental group are:

1. Creating an engaging online community of musicians, music industry leaders, and music fans all committed to addressing our greatest environmental concerns.

2. Facilitating large-scale greening of the music community through touring, venue, and label standards, resource development, green grants mentoring, and viral video and public service campaigns.

3. Providing environmental nonprofits with a megaphone for their cause, allowing them to expand their reach and support base.

4. Creating a sustainable green music guild to support and inform the efforts of the music community and position leaders in the music industry as voices for change, working to shine a light on the most pressing environmental issues of our time.

The green group targets music venues, transportation, waste reduction and enery offsets to minimize the damage a tour may due.

Dave Mathews, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Maroon 5, Bonnie Raitt, Bare Naked Ladies, The Roots, Guster and more are involved in the project. The bands are hoping to inspire a shift in your environmental thinking as well. The Green Music Group have contests every couple of weeks to help motivate you. The latest one involves picturing yourself commuting in the most sustainable method you can think of. The industry would like you to get involved and keep in touch by signing up with an email list.

All in all a solid effort by this group to help think environmentally and get the audience involved.

The Make a Wish Foundation are real life heroes who help out people with life threatening illnesses. For thirty years they have been granting wishes, pulling from a network of 25,000 volunteers and people from every trade. Elton John, Beyonce, Michael Jordan, Jeff Gordon, John Cena are a few of the celebrities who take part in this foundation.

One of Make A Wishs’ latest adventures involved Electron Boy! After some dastardly shennigans in Seattle involving Dr.Dark and Blackout Boy, Eric Martin received a call from Spiderman himself and was called into action as ELECTRON BOY!

If your excited about Electron Boy check out his facebook group. It would be nice to see a comic for the continuing adventures of Electon Boy. Just putting that out there.

The Make A Wish Foundation International has chapters in 36 countries. All told the number of wishes granted maybe just short of 500,000! They are always looking for people who would like to volunteer so if you can spare a few minutes, you too could ease suffering, change a life and become a super hero.

You can run an environmentally friendly fundraising campaign. These fundraisers help the environment several ways:

- Selling products that help the environment. Products like energy efficient light bulbs or by planting flowers.

- Fundraisers that divert objects from landfills like bottle drives, printer cartridges and cell phones recyclers.

- Be environmentally conscious during your fundraising. Hand out less paper flyers and direct people to your online webpage.

If you want to help fundraise for the environment we may have a few suggestions for you with our reusable bags, energy efficient light bulbs and candles.

There are new emerging companies on the web that have fresh ideas on generating cash and helping the environment. Check out Recyclebank and Terracycle

Share your ideas and suggestions for running an enviromental fundraiser.

A simple way for you to get involved for Earth Day is to go to the movie theater.

This year, Disneynature is releasing OCEANS, the sequel to the incredible documentary Earth it premiered in time for Earth Day 2009 last year.

Nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered by water and OCEANS shows in crystal clear imagery the seas amazing life . Narrated by Pierce Brosnan, the feature-length film showcases spectacular never-before-seen imagery captured by the latest underwater technologies.

Yup..there’s a connection between this movie and fundraising…wait for it…

Disneynature will contribute a percentage of proceeds from OCEANS opening week take(April 22-28, 2010) to The Nature Conservancy to save coral reefs.

Not bad huh! Another major company stepping up to the plate with a contribution to the greater good. You can also do fundraising for the environment by putting on your own fundraising campaign. We have a lot of ideas for you.

Earth Day 2010 is this weekend. Your probably thinking…hey didn’t we just get finished with earth hour? I’d understand why you might be getting a little worn out from these environmental causes but let me show you a little video I saw this week to give you a little motivation for another go:

That’s just a portion of the anarchy going on in the environment these days. Ok..now that we have that over with here’s what’s coming up for earth day.

Earth Day Network’s Campaign for Earth Day 2010

Global Days of Service – April 17-18 – Join millions around the globe to make your community and the world cleaner and more sustainable.

Help Generate a Billion Acts of Green – Register individual, community or business service acts and take action for Earth Day.

Events on The National Mall in Washington, DC

•Earth Day 40th Anniversary Events – April 22
•Change the Climate Rally – April 25
•Exhibitions and Performances on The National Mall – April 17-25
Arts for the Earth – Get involved in art that promotes environmental themes.

Song for the Earth Contest – Youths 18 or under who are passionate about music and the environment are invited to compose and submit a song. Winners will perform on The National Mall.

Athletes for the Earth – Athletes are signing up to change the climate!

40th Anniversary Global Advisory Committee – See who is part of the team!

It’s good to see activities for every interest included (hmmm I wonder if any of those musicians are looking for a drummer?) So over the next week make an effort to set things right and drop a comment telling us what you did.