Here we go San Diego!  In just 10 hours of online fundraising, the generous people of San Diego have raised over 1 Miliion Dollars, but Dr. Evil you are not.  Led by the San Diego Foundation, you are proving that your city is filled with people who care about local non-profits.  Please keep things going, this unique event goes until 7pm PST tomorrow.  How much more can we raise!

Only 2 hours into the GiveBIG San Diego giving event and theres alreay over $200k raised.  Way to stay classy San Diego.

Today (11.11.11)  is Veterans Day and KIMBIA is proud to be working with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to facilitate fundraising efforts.  Together, we built www.VeteransDayMatch.org allowing several ways for donors and advocates to participate today.

Donations can be made directly at VeteransDayMatch.org/donate.  Any donation made today will be matched making donations even more impactful.

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Also, people can watch the ceremony  and donate directly live on VVMF.tv

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Advocates can create their own personal or organizational fundraising pages to accept donations and reach their own goals.

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Finally, Gary Sinise and Senator John McCain teamed up to create a video and email asking people to contribute today.  You can view the video and donate here.

If your organization is a 501(c)(3) public charity or private operating foundation, it could be eligible to win $5,000 in the GuideStar-KIMBIA 2011 Giving Season Giveaway. (We regret that private nonoperating foundations are not eligible to participate in the giveaway.

Three Steps to a Chance to Win $5,000

1. Obtain the GuideStar Exchange Seal for your organization by November 15, 2011.
2. Register for the contest.
3. Get the most donations* through your profile page on GuideStar between November 1 and December 31, 2011.

*Note that the charity or private operating foundation that receives the greatest number of donations—not the most money—through its GuideStar profile page during the contest will win the prize. See the “Winner Selection” paragraph of the Official Rules for more information.

What You Can Do before the Contest Starts November 1

1. If your organization has not yet earned the GuideStar Exchange Seal, Update your profile to Seal-holder level. Although you have until November 15 to get the Seal, only donations made to organizations that already have it will count for the contest. Don’t lose ground when the contest begins—update your profile today!
   GuideStar Exchange Seal Requirements
2. If your organization already has the GuideStar Exchange Seal: congratulations! But check to make sure that your profile will stay up to date during the contest.
3. Register for the contest. You can register now. (Only one registration per organization, however.) We’ll send registrants a reminder e-mail when the contest begins November 1.
4. Give your supporters a heads up. Only donations made through the GuideStar Web site between November 1 and December 31, 2011, will count for the contest. So let your donors know that by making their end-of-year gifts through GuideStar, they could help your organization win $5,000. (FYI, neither GuideStar nor KIMBIA makes anything from the donations or this contest.)

Get started now!

 
About the GuideStar-KIMBIA Partnership

UPDATE — 10/6/2011 6:02pm EDT

What an Amazing Raise!

After 36 Hours of giving in Richmond and Central Virginia.  The 2011 Amazing Raise is over, and what an event it was.  Nearly a half-million dollars was raised for local nonprofits from nearly 6,500 gifts.  Check out the leaderboard as of the end of the race.

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UPDATE — 10/6/2011 12:15 pm EDT

CONGRATULATIONS RICHMOND!  The Amazing Raise has reached 5,000 donations and is still going strong.  For acheiving this milestone, another $50,000 in grant fundshave been made available by the Community Foundation

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UPDATE — 10/6/2011 10:45am

What a day and night yesterday for the Amazing Raise.  Congratulations to the organizations who won evening and late night prizes last night.  The Richmond Symphony won the Sunset prize and Offering won the Midnight Madness Prizes of $1000 each.  Nice Work!

The work is not over however.   The push to 5,000 donations is on.  Once it is reached, The Community Foundation will release another $50,000 in grant prizes to participating organizations.  So, lets finish strong Amazing Raisers!

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UPDATE 1:37PM EDT

Another milestone has been reached!  Just halfway through Day 1 of the challenge, and The Amazing Raise has generated over $200,000 for local nonprofits in Richmond and Central Virginia.  They’ve also generated over 2,500 gifts so far…that’s halfway to the initial goal of 5,000 donations needed to free up another $50,000 in grant prizes.   Keep it up Richmond!

Also, the early bird contest has just awarded it 20th and final organization for being among the first to get 50 donors of at least $50 or more.  The Early bird prize winners can be found on the leaderboard, indicated by the purple flag next to their name.

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UPDATE 12:10 PM EDT

In just a few minutes Micheal Jones from the Community Foundation will be interviewed again on WTVR Lite98 FM.  If you want to listen live, click here to hear the stream.

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UPDATE 12:00 PM EDT

WTVR-FM Hosted an Interview with The Community Foundation’s Michael Jones and Kim Russell explaining the Amazing Raise and how grant prizes are awarded.

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UPDATE: 10:00 AM EDT

President & CEO of the Community Foundation, Darcy Oman, shares details on a 36 hour fundraising challenge on WTVR-TV Richmond

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UPDATE: 9:45 AM EDT

Congratulations Richmond & Central Virginia!  So far you’ve raise over 1500 gifts and over $100,000 for local nonprofits in just under 4 hours! Keep it up!

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UPDATE: 8:45 AM EDT

Watch The Community Foundation’s Kim Russell talk on WTVR-TV in Richmond, talk about the Amazing Raise and how people can give.

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UPDATE: 8:25 AM EDT

WOW!  We are just over 2 hours into the challenge and The Amazing Raise is almost to 1,000 gifts online!  The Richmond and Central Virginia nonprofits participating in today’s Amazing Raise are doing some amazing viral marketing.   Check out these examples….

First is U-Turn Sports Performance Academy.  They’ve created a fantastic video trailer for today’s event, and  notice how they to have embedded the Amazing Raise giving widget directly into their own website’s homepage.

 

 

 

 

 

Next, check out this promotional video from CHAT (Church Hill Activites & Tutoring) and they too have embedded the Amazing Raise giving widget.

 

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The Amazing Raise kicked off this morning at 6am. The Amazing Raise, launched by The Community Foundation Serving Richmond & Central Virginia, is a 36 hour event to raise money for organizations featured on GiveRichmond.org.   Utilizing KIMBIA’s high-volume giving platform, organizations in Richmond and Central Virginia are attempting to generate over 10,000 individual online donations while competing for $200,000 in prize (grant) money. We are excited to be involved in such an inovative and ambitiious giving event and we can’t wait to see the final results.

To experience a KIMBIA giving event, you can follow The Community Foundation’s progress online at GiveRichmond.org.  Also, check back on this blog post as we’ll be updating it with news from The Amazing Raise headquarters in Richmond.  Lastly, you can follow the progress on twitter by following #AmzgRz

For more information on KIMBIA’s giving events for community foundations, check out our Community Foundation Solutions Page and read a case study covering The Amazing Raise. You can also contact our team at info@kimbia.com.

KIMBIA is a company focused on providing tools that give cause organizations the power to create easy online fundraising and registration applications. Our platform was designed around a few basic concepts.

• Giving or registering online should be simple. 
It should be at least as easy to give online as it is to buy something online.
• Giving or registering online should be in-context.
 A transaction capability should be present wherever there is good content inspiring people to take action.
• Everyone is a potential advocate.
If someone takes action for your organization, then they should have to tools to share and communicate their efforts in the social networks the use everyday.

These core principles have been reinforced in a recent study from the Nielsen Norman Group on non-profit websites and the usability of online giving processes. The study tested 60 non-profit and charity websites from a diverse set of categories. They asked test participants to perform a series of tasks including…

1. Finding a worthy organization to receive an online donation
2. Making first-time and repeat donations
3. Making non-monetary contributions or volunteering
4. Purchasing products from cause organizations, and
5. Using social media to research charity organization

Much as we would expect, the study concluded that online philanthropy is lagging behind the commercial sector in several areas. Here a few summary points from this excellent and comprehensive study.

• Giving money online is about 7% more difficult than buying something online
• Non-Monetary actions & contributions are even more difficult than donating money.
• Finding information about volunteering is a relatively easy process…especially when compared to making online contributions.
• Social Media is a secondary channel for most people trying to learn more about non-profits. Most people on Facebook are interested in hearing from people who’ve benefited from an organization. In other words, Facebook is best used as communications channel for individual advocacy.
• Focus on better content. Most potential donors in this study found it difficult to understand the context in which they are donating. Good content must accompany a giving opportunity

We strongly recommend this report to all of our customers. In fact, this report positively features some KIMBIA customers for the way their giving forms simplify the giving process and make the context of a gift clear to a donor.

If you are a cause organization of any kind, and you want to get a glimpse into the mind of your online donors, please consider purchasing this report today.

On Tuesday, June 2nd, KIMBIA Director of Marketing & Communications, Spencer Whelan hosted a Webinar along with our partners at GuideStar. The webinar was about putting an end to the practice of “slacktivism” and motivating donors take real actions online. The post below also appears on the Guidestar Trust Blog. Below are links to a replay of the live event and slides from the presentation in PDF format.

• Watch the Replay
• Download the Slides

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First, thanks to everyone at GuideStar for providing these fantastic Webinar opportunities. We at KIMBIA really enjoyed the opportunity to present the issue of “slacktivism”, and we received a lot of great feedback. I’d like to take some time to follow-up on some of the key themes and specific questions we received after the Webinar.

Defining “slacktivism”:

“Slacktivism” is a primarily pejorative term (a combination of “slacking” and “activism”) used to describe the actions of people who appear to be doing good or supporting a good cause, but in reality are doing the bare minimum required to keep up the appearance of action.

Slacktivism is nothing new. It can manifest itself in many forms, (ribbons, bracelets, etc…) but recently it has taken on new life within online social media. Updating your profile picture, forwarding a cause-based email, changing your Facebook status or simply clicking the “like” button are the new “slacktivist” activities of a generation. Some people have updated the terminology by calling it “clicktivisim”.

Is slacktivism really a bad thing?

Creative terms like “Slacktivism” are both good and bad. The benefit is that it helps people understand a relatively complex psychological & behavioral process by distilling it down to a common vernacular. On the other hand, labeling a complex process can often times elevate the issue to a higher level than it deserves.

I think that is the case here. Slacktivism is not a root problem or some deeply inherent flaw in the make-up of an entire generation of people. Instead, slacktivism is a symptom or something larger — showing us that perhaps philanthropy has failed to react to the changing nature of technology and peoples’ desire to engage online.

Why is piracy in the recording industry a good comparison to the slacktivism within the philanthropic world?

Fourteen years ago, a seismic shift occurred in the world of recorded music. Napster, along with various other ‘file sharing’ services came onto the scene and provided a more efficient discovery and delivery system for music. The consumer market embraced the new technology while the music industry did not. As a result, digital piracy became a common practice.

It eventually took a paradigm shift from the marketplace to realize the people were not to blame. The technology and simple processes of file-sharing systems where what was attracting people towards piracy. They realized most people actually would be happy to pay $1 for a single downloaded song if only the industry would allow it. Thus iTunes and other services were born and finally the tide of pirated music has been turned.

I believe this story is relevant to the world of philanthropy because it is going through a similar phase right now with slacktivisim. Giving online is a hard process in most cases… significantly more difficult than clicking a “like” button. The processes and deliverables are similar. With both donations and music, you usually decide to act when you are emotionally inspired. You almost always make these decision while you are in the context of hearing a song, or listening to a story of need. Also, if the person can receive the social benefits of doing good without the action, then (just like with piracy) they will most definitely take that route. Slacktivism is basically just the piracy of philanthropic karma points.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon us as advocates for philanthropy to find ways to meet donors where they are.We need to recognize that giving online should be simple, and giving opportunities should be plentiful and placed in-context of donors’ inspiration. If we take these steps, I believe we can turn this tide in the same way the music industry has.

How should small and medium size non-profits approach Facebook and Twitter for fundraising?

First and foremost, Twitter and Facebook are communications networks. That is to say that the primary actions that take place are the posting and reading of messages, pictures, etc… To date these channels haven’t proven themselves to be majors centers of fundraising activity. In fact, a recent web usability study from the Neilsen Norman group has confirmed that people look to Facebook as a secondary engagement point behind a non-profit’s full website.

This confirms that people use Facebook and Twitter to promote the “social benefit” part of the giving process. So, its important to understand the context of social media and realize that it is preferable to have messages like, “I just gave and so can you”, rather than messages simply showing that someone has “liked” an organization. Peer behavior can be a powerful force, so make sure your tools encourage social messaging after a donation takes place.

For more information about creating content on Facebook for your non-profit, there are some great resources available at http://www.facebook.com/nonprofits. For information about how KIMBIA integrates donation forms and messaging directly into Facebook, email us at info@kimbia.com

Links mentioned in the webinar.

Finally, below are links to some of the case studies and campaign examples we used during the Webinar. Again, if you have any questions about the execution of some of these campaigns, feel free to email us at info@kimbia.com

Taylor Swift Tornado Relief Donations (Website, Facebook, & Mobile): http://www.kimbia.com/help-now-taylor-swift-fundraiser-for-tornado-victims/

Dallas Vs Miami: YMCA giving challenge on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/YMCADallas

Community Foundation for Greater New Haven 2010 GiveGreater.org Challenge : http://www.kimbia.com/downloads/articles/KIMBIA_Client_Success_CFGNH.pdf

The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee 2010 Flood Relief http://www.kimbia.com/client-success-nashville-flood-relief-efforts/

American Heart Association Go Red for Women: Free Dress Pin on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/GoRed?sk=app_105311519538860

Digital Music trends: The shift from piracy to paid digital singles. http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/021711disruption