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Is Blogging is an Effective Way to Raise Money?
I got an email recently from a staff member of the American Foundation for Children with AIDS who asked:
"Do you believe blogging is an effective way of fundraising? What is the best way to get our message and need for funding out to people through the Internet?"
I figure that Net2 readers have resources to share around this topic, so I thought I'd post the question here for folks to comment on.
Here are some examples of, and resource for, Internet fundraising from the NetSquared blog archives:
* ProBlogger's Blogging for Chickens campaign.
* Chez Pim's Menu for Hope fundraiser for UNICEF.
* DonorsChoose's program, BloggersChoose.
* Pledgebank
* Online Fundraising article from the February 2006 issue of Wired Magazine.
* Madeline Stanionis' book, The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to Raising Thousands (if Not Tens of Thousands) of Dollars With Email.
* Make a Wish Foundation & the American Cancer's Society Relay for Life on Second Life.
From the NetSquared Conference:
* New Web Tools and Their Revenue Models: Fundraising 2.0 for Nonprofits? Here is a link to the podcast recording of this session.
* Real Philanthropy in a Virtual World.
From the NetSquared Case Studies:
* Kiva
* Grameen Foundation USA
* Earth Share of Washington
From Tech Soup's Learning Center:
* A Primer on Online Fundraising for Nonprofit Organizations by Michael Stein.
* Online Donations: Sorting Out the Chaos by ONE/Northwest.
* Internet Offers New Way to Do Auctions by Will Wade.
* How One Nonprofit Raised Millions on the Web by
and many more if you search for "online fundraising" on TechSoup.
From Tech Soup's Community Forums:
Online Fundraising That Worked
Most of these examples are of how to use the Internet for fundraising, rather than a blog in particular. What are some other examples of effective use of the Internet or blogs for fundraising?
Do you believe blogging is an effective way to raise money?
Photo Credit: Money money money by Whatknot
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social networking and fundraising
I'd make two points about blogs and fundraising. First, more and more nonprofits are adding blogs and bloggers to their "online outreach target list" when they promote a fundraising campaign that has an online component. That means that nonprofits keep a list of blogs and bloggers and then email them when the campaign starts ramping. Nothing too unique about this, and it's mixed in with outreach to listservs, web portal editors, etc.
Second, some nonprofits are creating blog-specific outreach campaigns, whereby they have creating unique blog marketing campaigns. I'm thinking of folks like DonorsChoose and their BloggersChoose campaign to raise money for schools. They build some blog widgets that are distributed by partners like Typepad so bloggers can easily add fundraising thermometers that are automatically updated.
I'd actually expand the frame from blog fundraising to the whole universe of social networking services (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, etc). The phenomenon is about making it very easy for anyone interested in a cause to add a "widget" to their social networking web page to encourage friends to make small micro-payment donations. So, a college kid that wants to raise money for a cause can add a fundraising widget to their Facebook page, which dozens of friends will see. It's a 2.0 version of friends-asking-friends.
Add to that the potential of giving $5 via text messaging on a mobile phone and the whole thing busts wide open.
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M I C H A E L S T E I N : Internet Strategist
Blog: http://www.michaelstein.net
mstein63@gmail.com | Berkeley, California USA
Landline: (510) 883-9998 | Mobile/SMS: (510) 717-6050
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