It’s late at night. Someone is visiting your website and they like what they see. They want to donate to your cause, but it’s too late to call the office and too bothersome to write out a check. Where is the “Donate Now” button? You do have one, right?

Most nonprofits are heavily dependent on donations from the public to sustain their programs. A nonprofit’s website is increasingly the first public face of a nonprofit - and an excellent channel for receiving donations. Not quite sure? Watch this TechSoup webinar on making it easy for supporters to give by accepting online donations.

Say “no” to money. We dare you. 

I am Katie Laird, co-founder of the Houston Net2 chapter and Communications Director / Social Media strategist for a Web firm called Schipul - The Web Marketing Company.

It's been a couple of years since I've been able to attend a TechSoup conference and I am very excited to see both new and familiar faces.  Working for a business that serves both for-profit orgs and NPOs, I have had my hands on many different kinds of marketing projects, fundraising campaigns and technology builds.  I hope to learn about new tech / networks and be able to offer advice or guidance to others in any way I can.

This post is cross-posted from the TechSoup blog. You can read the original post and any comments here.

Who can help? Has this been done before? What is the best route? How can this project be sustainable? Crowdsourcing is being used to help find the answers to these and many other questions. According to Wikipedia, "crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call." Organizations are crowdfunding, crowd voting, crowdsourcing jobs, and even crowdsourcing films (see Life in a Day). Presentations illustrating its use have also been made available at this year's CrowdConf2010.

For this month's Net2 Think Tank we hoped to help expand online giving to a broader focus than simply online fundraising. Through the wonders of new technology, the process of donating money has become dead simple. So, we asked you, what can organizations do to make online contributions of time, talent, and skills just as simple? Who's doing it right and what should others be doing?

Below is the round-up of responses we received. Feel free to add your ideas in the comments section at the bottom of this page.

The May Net2 Think Tank hopes to expand online giving to a broader focus than simply online fundraising. Through the wonders of new technology, the process of donating money has become simple. From text-by-mobile to the use of personal giving pages like JustGiving, it takes just seconds for money to be transferred from donor to cause. But, what can organizations do to make contributions of time, talent, and skills just as easy?

A Website called IDonateToCharity.org just might be the next best online fundraising website to help charities and non-profits around the world. They are the only free website to allow charities and non-profits to auction off items and raise money online.

It seems that there’s a bit of a thread out there on a few blogs, something in the air, a terrible question that’s being asked: are social networks actually a useful fundraising strategy?  Read more...

We just wrapped up a couple of days ago our fundraising campaign at the Diabetes Hands Foundation, which was maintly done through online donations made using a ChipIn Widget on a number of web sites, starting with TuDiabetes.com.

 There are many lessons we learned and many things we will apply the next time we run a fundraising campaign. Nevertheless, we are VERY happy with the results: we raised a total of $7,000 and the entire outreach process was conducted online.

Here is a Thank You video I posted thanking our members for their support: