A Small Change- Fundraising Blog

I am excited to bring to you this month’s feature organization, Charity for Debt. They are looking for some input from you on the most effective way to bring in $1,000 donations. Please check out past Org of the Months and if you want to promote your small non-profit download the sign-up form and email to infosmallchange@gmail.com.

What is your non-profit about? And what areas do you serve?

Charity for Debt is a new non profit aimed at alleviating student loan debt in America and staffing charities with reliable, motivated individuals through a transparent and personal donor-volunteer experience. Charity for Debt serves students and recent graduates with student loan debt, non profits and charities in need of volunteers, and our donors.

The Charity for Debt model enables our donors to select a student volunteer who matches their interests and values. The student volunteer works with the donor to decide on a charity to contribute his/her time. The charity then receives a reliable, motivated volunteer to fill any labor gaps in their operation. The volunteer works for the charity for 4 to 6 hours per week, usually for 6 weeks, and at the end of this time is awarded up to $1,000 paid directly to the student’s education loan company. The donor receive weekly progress reports and activities, which are tracked and archived on the volunteer’s online portfolio. The model creates a transparent process for the donors, students, and charities to track progress and easily show the positive results that were made possible.

What are the major fundraising programs you have?

We just started the Green Light Campaign to attract $10,000, which will enable two pilot programs of the Charity for Debt model to begin in Washington DC and Dallas TX. We are actively looking for individual donors and corporations to sponsor a student volunteer for $1,000 or more in these communities. The sponsoring donor’s name will be forever attached to volunteer’s positive outcomes porfolio on the Internet to show the results the donor enabled in their community. We hope to create a personal connection between the donor and the volunteer and allow the donor to see how their dollars are being spent.

What sector do you raise money for?

We raise money for the financial debt sector and for non profit staffing needs.

What geographic area does your charity serve and where is it located?

We are located in Washington DC and are currently serving the DC and Dallas, TX areas. We hope to serve every community in the United States at some point. We have been approached by an individual in Wisconsin and South Africa who want to open Charity for Debt branches in their communities. We are working with these two amazing individuals (and our lawyers) to create an expansion system that will easily allow other communities to establish a Charity for Debt branch serving their citizens. If you would like to open a Charity for Debt branch in your community, please contact us at charityfordebt@gmail.com.

Any tips on how to approach donors in your area?

Be honest, show transparency for their dollars, create a personal connection for the donors.

Any pointers for organizations in your area that help non-profit professionals?

Explore the advantages of running non profits more like entrepreneurial ventures.

Do you have any problems or questions that you would like to ask for answers form the philanthropic community?

• What are the most effective methods to find individual donors that will give $1,000 or more?
• What donor materials (simple brochure, flier, postcard, emails) are the most effective communication tool to attract new donors?
• What are the most efficient expansion models non profits have deployed to expand to communities across the U.S., and world?

Sometimes I am frustrated by the idea of what is known today as “Philanthropy” or “Fundraising.” The unspoken definition of these words is “asking for money from wealthy people.” I think that is misleading and misinterpreted. In some ways the modern day idea of philanthropy exists because of the gap of wealth between the top 1% and the rest of the world.

But I would like to suggest that philanthropy and fundraising are for people of all ages and wealth demographics. It is all about relationships with people and wanting to make a difference. I have been amazed by how much change one person can make if they concentrate on their community of friends and a compelling idea.

I think that people today want to tell there friends about the needs in the world and want to give of their money but they feel like their circle of friends and their “small” donations can’t really make a difference. I want to suggest that with many organizations (like the ones you’ve seen on my Org of the Month) you can make a huge difference as an every day person.  A ten dollar donation goes a long way with an organization like SEDA, Epic Change, or Wellspring.

In todays technology world sometime just telling the story or voting for an organization can provide significant gifts. Think about the recent competition on Ideablob or the 2007 America’s Giving Challenge. Those ideas are supported by the every day person that take a few seconds to vote or give a few dollars.

What can we do?
• Leave a comment below with your idea
• Join the conversation on the A Small Change Facebook Group
• Check out one of the Orgs of the Month and offer to help out

I hope you had the chance to visit the Ideablob website to help out Epic Change in their competition. Check out yesterday’s post for more information on Epic Change.

If your non-profit is interested in becoming an Org of the Month download the sign-up form and send it to infosmallchange@gmail.com

What sector do you raise money for and how is that different from raising money in another sector?

While right now, we’re working on an education project in the developing world, the Epic Change approach may be adopted across many sectors: we may eventually fund a health, poverty, art or other type of project. Let’s call the segment we focus on the “social innovation” sector. For us, these are primarily donors who feel that traditional charitable models have been ineffective and others who feel that they’ve been excluded from charitable giving because they didn’t feel they could personally give enough to make a difference. To appeal to this group, we’ve focused our fundraising efforts on two key ideas:

Partner Empowerment: I believe the reason social entrepreneurship and social innovation have become such popular ideas recently is because many people are starting to believe that traditional models of giving haven’t yielded great - or sustainable - results. A parent of one of the children at the school we’re building in Tanzania once said, “If you tell a man he is weak, he will be weak; if you tell a man he is poor, he will be poor.” And yet, many charities seem to do just that by employing fundraising models that foster long-term relationships of direct dependency that, in my opinion, serve to perpetuate and reinforce an implicit sense of inequality. At Epic Change, we believe that local leaders possess the strength, power and resources (i.e., their stories) to improve their own lives and communities - and even to improve other communities in need elsewhere on the globe. Every relationship we enter into between a donor and an Epic Change partner has an exit strategy that’s based on our partners’ (i.e., loan recipients’) development of their own stories into sustainable sources of non-charitable income. Our donors like the idea that their contribution yields a long-term solution rather than a short-term band-aid or, worse yet, and endless cycle of continued dependency on charitable contributions.

Ultimately, social innovators are interested in our longer-term strategy to eventually avoid the “donation” model altogether; the Epic Change approach is based on the entrepreneurial hypothesis that eventually we’ll be able to raise funds to support our projects primarily through sales of storytelling products and loan repayments rather than traditional donations. We see our current donors as start-up investors and, hopefully, future consumers of Epic Change products.

Donor Empowerment: Unlike fundraising efforts in many sectors, so far we’ve put minimal emphasis on large gifts (though that would be nice!) and are really trying to cultivate a broad base of small donors/investors who can give to our cause with their time and energy as well as their financial contributions. We try to keep these donors engaged by constantly connecting their contributions directly to the impact of their gifts through stories in our blog and email communications. We also provide them with as many opportunities as we can to get directly involved in our efforts, and tools they can use and adapt themselves to spread the word as friendraisers – like YouTube videos they can circulate via email and widgets they can deploy on their own social networking sites. I’ve seen Nirvan Mullick at The One Second Film call this concept “micro-collaboration,” the process by which “many people to work together in lots of little ways to collectively create something bigger than we could alone.” This idea definitely seems to resonate with our base.

Any pointers for organizations in your area that help non-profit professionals?

LinkedIn has been a really helpful tool for connecting with great advice on several topics about which I’ve had questions. There’s a broad network there of non-profit and for-profit professionals who have, in my experience, been really receptive to questions I’ve asked, and provided me with great answers and references to a range of helpful resources. I actually met Jason, the host of this blog, on LinkedIn. Because we’re located in a small town in Florida, I’ve found limited resources in my own geographic area, but more than plenty using online social networking tools.

Do you have any problems or questions that you would like to ask for answers from the philanthropic community?

As I mentioned, it’s only been six months since we received our 501(c)(3) status from the IRS. While I have some experience in grantwriting, we’ve been waiting to approach granting organizations until we’ve demonstrated some success so that they’ll really take our request seriously. Just last week, the doors opened to a school we funded in Tanzania – in only three months since we provided our original loan, a significant accomplishment that I believe provides some insight into the potential of our organization. At what point do you believe a new non-profit is ready to make the leap into applying for grants? Are you aware of any granting organizations that may be particularly applicable to our mission and stage of development, or our current project in Tanzania?

This month’s Org of the Month is Epic Change. This non-profit is a pioneer in online fundraising and has a lot of really great things to say. Below is a short YouTube video about the organization.

Help Epic Change right now. Visit Ideablob where Epic Change is competing to win $10,000. Vote on the Ideablob site for Epic Change to help them win.

What is your non-profit about? And what areas do you serve?

Epic Change helps hopeful people in need share their “epic” true stories in innovative, creative and profitable ways to help them acquire the financial resources they need to create positive “change” in their communities. We use donations to provide interest-free loans to local grassroots leaders to finance their community improvement efforts. We then facilitate loan repayment by collaborating with our partners to share their stories through products that generate income. Finally, we “pay it forward” by recycling repaid loans to help fund Epic Change in other communities. Our first project is focused on rebuilding and expanding a primary school in Arusha, Tanzania.

What are the major fundraising programs you have?

Our 501(c)(3) status was approved only about six months ago, and so far we’ve raised nearly $40,000, primarily through small individual gifts made online from our families, friends and colleagues. These gifts have been enabled through the use of a suite of online tools from Network for Good and Facebook to Care2 and LinkedIn. We recently won a $1,000 grant from the Case Foundation and raised over $6,000 in about three weeks through our successful participation in America’s Giving Challenge; we were in the top 5% of nearly 500 participating US-based nonprofits. We always have our eyes out for interesting opportunities; we’re participating in the Ideablob competition right now and we’re submitting an entry to the NetSquared MashedUp contest as well.

While our next steps are to cultivate local fundraising chapters from our current list of supporters, and to reach out to corporate donors and granting organizations for additional seed money, we’re hoping that in the next 3-5 years, we’ll be able to generate the majority of our income through loan repayments and the sales of Epic Change products based on the stories of the people we serve.

What geographic area does your charity serve and where is it located?

Epic Change is a registered 501(c)(3) located in Florida. While our first project is located in Arusha, Tanzania, our next project location is unknown. We imagine that the repayment of our original loan to a school in Tanzania may, for example, eventually fund a clinic in Peru, an orphanage in Eastern Europe or even a program for the homeless in the US. So, the impact of donations to Epic Change are not limited to a particular geographic region.

Any tips on how to approach donors in your area?

Actually, given what we’ve learned so far, and the premise on which our entire model is based, I believe the best way to approach donors in any area is with a detailed, well-told story that personally connects potential donors to your cause, which echoes recent research by Wharton marketing professor Deborah Small. That said, I believe there’s a delicate balance to be played when telling stories to generate interest and encourage donorship. Most non-profits also have compelling stories of happiness, transformation and hope to share. It seems to me that hope and inspiration may be more powerful tools in cultivating potential donors than fear, guilt and sadness.

For one example, check out this story about Glory, a 9-year-old girl who attends the school we’re building in Tanzania. While her incredibly difficult situation is presented realistically, the story is primarily one of optimism and hope. Glory’s story was taken from a blog entry I wrote during our last trip to Tanzania. To me, a blog that’s updated frequently is the single best way to keep donors involved in the story of your organization and the impact of your work. Of course, for donors who aren’t RSS feeders, blog entries can serve as the basis for emails or mailings as well.

Read more tomorrow from Epic Change.

Org of the Month is an opportunity to highlight some of the amazing things that organizations like yours are doing globally (I want to sign-up).

Social & Economic Development Association (SEDA)

What is your non-profit about? And what areas do you serve?SEDA-Laos is working to bring social and economic development to the people of rural Laos. We are a non-profit, non-government, Laos-based organization, dedicated to providing a long-term and sustainable solution to poverty in Laos.Based in the capital city of Vientiane but serving outlying rural communities, SEDA is currently operating several projects aimed at upgrading schools and medical training facilities, increasing HIV/AIDS education and prevention outreach, developing eco-friendly agriculture and plantation skills, as well as an understanding of sustainable business so the people of Laos can earn a stable income for their families.What major fundraising programs do you have?SEDA is still small, so at this stage we have no major fundraising programs. We have recently started collaborating with Global Giving and intend to expand our online fundraising presence. We are currently looking for support and partnership from any organizations, individuals or companies who would be interested in helping SEDA.What sector do you raise money for and how is that different from raising money in another sector?SEDA is raising money for agriculture development, health (HIV/AIDS) and education in Laos PDR. However, in these sectors there is lot of competition for available funds which means never ending grant applications and fund sourcing. Also, SEDA has to look all over the world for funding, rather than just in its own community.What geographic area does your charity serve and where is it located?Over the next seven years, SEDA will focus on remote rural communities in Vientiane Province and southern Laos. For phase two, the projects will extend to central and northern Laos. For those who don’t know, Laos is a small South-East Asian country nestled between Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma and China.

Any tips on how to approach donors in your area?In Laos, finding local donors has been the single biggest obstacle for SEDA. Local businesses do not understand how they can really help, or why, and INGOs operating in Laos have their own projects and are not willing to donate to small local projects. Met with this kind of response, the director of SEDA recently spent eight months in America raising awareness about the organization. For many of those months, it was difficult to get the word out and be recognized. But over time, people began to recognize SEDA as an organization. It took a lot of contacts, networking and persistence, but now the profile of SEDA has been raised considerably and the future looks brighter.Any pointers on organizations in your area that help non-profit professionals?Get in touch with big international bodies that can help in a professional manner, such as sectors of the UN, ASEAN and others, and stay in touch with them through updates about your charity or NGO. These organizations often provide conferences, training workshops and impart valuable knowledge that you can pass onto your team.For more information about SEDA, please visit our website: http://seda-laos.org