A fundraising effort by Chez Pim for UNICEF is zooming around the blogosphere this week.  Led by Chez Pim, food bloggers have donated a delicious array of raffle prizes for the second annual Menu for Hope.

Here's how it works.  Each $5 donation that a reader makes qualifies them for one virtual raffle ticket to win a prize of their own choosing from the prize list.  The more $5 donations they make, the more chances they have to win.  In the last six days, they have raised $6,473 for the survivors of the of the earthquake in Northern India and Pakistan.

The project is run through Firstgiving which allows individuals to create personal fundraising pages for any registered non-profit organization.  Nonprofits can set up pages too.

What a great alternative to the annual holiday appeal letter and an awesome way for nonprofits to empower their supporters.  What if instead of sending out annual appeals, nonprofits encouraged their supporters to set up Firstgiving pages instead?

For example, I used to work for an arts education nonprofit called Streetside Stories, that uses oral, written and digital storyteling to inspire young people in the San Francisco public middle schools to write and share autobiographical stories.  I could imagine them asking their supporters  to set up pages  to support one class of students.

Obviously though, part of the success of Menu for Hope is that it is being put on by a blogger with donations by bloggers, so the word moves quickly through all of the different blogs' readerships.  So, for a nonprofit like Streetside Stories to have the same rapid success, they would need their supporters to be bloggers . . .hmmm.

Any thoughts on how to replicate this model for other nonprofits?