Safari helmet and machete in hand, I’m crashing through the jungle of the Internet looking for tools that make it easy for enthusiastic individual fundraisers – like my son and his classmates at Jesuit High School in Sacramento – to raise awareness of causes and collect money from people who like to give electronically. But alas, the tools I am finding – cool as they are – take a pretty hefty cut of the action. Talk about a wet blanket, at least for student/fundraisers. Here’s the two I’ve examined. Got any better ideas?
- firstgiving.org provides tools and a channel for “online fundraising for everybody.” To see an example, click here to see Chad Krantz’s fundraising page for a local hospice in Iowa. The bad news: a 7.5% transaction fee.
- sixdegrees.org was created by Kevin Bacon in conjunction with Network for Good. Their cut is less – 4.75% – and they also periodically offer matching grants during special campaigns. Cool t-shirts, too.
I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet – which would be something like firstgiving’s pages but with a smaller cut of the action. As one does in the jungle, I did stumble across some unexpected stuff – this white paper written by Katya Andresen and and Stacie Mann of Network for Good with great info about the potential of individual fundraisers who are powerful emissaries for their causes AND who successfully motivate their friends and contacts to give.
Betsy Stone's The Philanthrophile 