UPDATED 5/23

Last Sunday, the Music City-Keep on Playin’ benefit concert on GAC took place and it was an unquestioned success raising well over a $1.4 Million for the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. The viral momentum of this campaign continues this week with another Televised special benefiting the flood victims in Tennessee. This time the Academy of Country Music and CBS television will air a 2-hour Brooks & Dunn Special. During the broadcast viewers will be directed to CBS.com/Give where they will be presented with a KIMBIA-powered form to accept their donation.







Fundraising events like these are uniquely successful because they are able to promote and accept donations directly their own Websites. Perhaps even more impressive is that continued success of the viral fundraising application, as organizations all around nashville participated by grabbing the form and promoting their own sites for fundraising. Of course, every dollar of funds transacted through these forms goes directly to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, allowing them to see a realtime snapshot of which sites are participating in raising the much needed dollars.


Below are some more screenshots of other sites who have generously participated in this unique fundraising event.


http://dothewritethingfornashville.blogspot.com/p/donate-directly.html





http://www.einashville.com/




http://nashville.competitor.com/features/donate-to-nashville-flood-relief/





http://www.nashvillerising.org/

UPDATED 5/13

This sunday 5/16 at 8pm ET, The Cable network GAC will present Music City Keep on Playin’ – a Benefit Concert for Flood Relief victims. The 3-hour live fundraising event will be hosted by Kimberly Williams-Paisley and James Denton, and feature many country music stars Brad Paisley, Lady Antebellum, Dierks Bently, Martina McBride, and many more.

All funds will go to Benefit the Community Foundation of Middle Tennesee. Online donations will be accepted through the KIMBIA-Powered Guidestar Giving Widget currently being hosted on sites throughout the Internet and now available on the GAC Flood Relief Webpage. Please check out the donation page below, make a donation, and spread the word about this event on Sunday night.





Original Posting

In any natural disaster, a “rapid-response” online fundraising strategy is crucial. Powered by the combined efforts of KIMBIA and GuideStar’s DonorEdge platform, the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee (CFMT) was able to be the first major fundraising organization to respond with a custom online fundraising campaign.


Recently, KIMBIA and GuideStar began a partnership to enhance the fundraising potential of the GuideStar DonorEdge platform with KIMBIA powered fundraising forms. DonorEdge provides large fundraising organizations like The Community Foundation with an online platform to easily match donors with organizations in their community who need their help. Over the past week, the CFMT was able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by leveraging their existing relationships with media outlets and using agile fundraising tools. Here’s a rundown of the good work they are doing…

1) Created New Profiles for Flood Relief Funds

Using their Donor Edge Platform at GivingMatters.com, the CFMT was able to create new organization profiles for the two funds created to aid in relief efforts. Within a day, each of these two funds had a unique “donate now” landing page on GivingMatters.com with a KIMBIA powered donation form. Check them out now Metro Nashville Disaster Response Fund and The Tennessee Emergence Response Fund

2) Launched Giving Widgets on CFMT.org

Initially, The CFMT sent all donors directly to the two links above at GivingMatters.com, which was very effective, but still added an extra step and a change in URL before a donor could make their transaction. With the help of KIMBIA and GuideStar, the CFMT was immediately able to create a custom sized and styled widget that was able embeddable directly on the CFMT Website. Now, donors could come directly to CFMT.org, pick the flood relief fund they wish, give to a styled form directly on-site, and then have the option to grab the entire form and embed it on their own sites.

3) Leveraged Relationships to Push Widgets and Spread the Word Virally

Once the Widgets were built and deployed on CFMT.org, the next step was to get the community involved directly by hosting the forms directly and/or sharing a link back to forms. The CFMT contacted local media outlets and let them know that they could grab the full donation form widget and place it directly on their own flood relief pages. This is beneficial for two reasons. 1) The media outlets below were able to promote their own sites and allow visitors to give a complete donation without every clicking away. 2) Having donation forms on many sites distributes the load of donations to many sites across the Internet meaning that the CFMT Website doesn’t have to shoulder all of the load of traffic. Check out the local Webistes below who generously posted the donation form directly onto their own sites.

• News Channel 5 Nashville
  
  




• Country Giant 94.7 and Magic 98.5
  
  
• Section 303 – A Nashville Predators Fan Site
  
  

From there is wasn’t long before the efforts went viral across the Internet…

• Former Vice President Al Gore tweeted and blogged about the efforts on The Huffington Post
  
  
• Groupon offered valuable promotional space on their “Deal of The Day” emails and on their Web site promoting the efforts of the CFMT.
  
  

Overall this is an excellent example of how smart strategies, combined with flexible tools can enable fundraising organizations to quickly mobilize people to action and get funds into the hands of the people that need it most.