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:

My colleague Eric Rardin just posted  a calculator on our Frogloop blog
that allows you to plug in your data and measure the value of an email
address. I thought everyone might be interested.

Twelve groups are sharing in an amazing $327,000 raised from thousands of voters in the first-ever Ploughshares Fund online Peace Primary. The Vermont-based TrueMajority garnered the most votes and came away with the grand prize of a $100,000 grant from Ploughshares Fund. Every other group experienced a fundraising boost at this critical time, and most came away with new members and new donors.

Peace Primary final results:

1. TrueMajority
2. Refugees International
3. American Friends Service Committee
4. Union of Concerned Scientists

Care2's nonprofit online marketing blog, frogloop, recently released a dual post on social networking worthy of a read from even the most staunch social networking gurus. Both the ROI Calculator and The Long, Long Tail of Facebook Causes articles will help you determine whether marketing on social networking makes sense for you.

The first one, an ROI Calculator, will help you calculate an estimate of cost and return on investment for the recruitment and fundraising efforts of your staff in social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. It works sort of like an online mortgage calculator.

Just enter the starting assumptions like cost per hour of staff/volunteers, social network "friends" recruited per week, and the average response rate for outreach or advocacy mailings, and the tool calculates results automatically. This is a fantastic way to help you determine whether or not developing a presence on social networking sites is worth your hard earned dollars and precious time.

Hi, I'm Martha Kurtz and I'm really excited to be the project champion for FamilyFarmed.org!

Another excerpt from Madeline Stanionis' outstanding new book on online fundraising has been published, this time by the good folks at TechSoup.org.  The excerpt is entitled: Learn key writing components to help capture constituents' attention and this is another "required reading" for anyone conducting online fu