I don’t think I’ve ever worked with an organization quite like Epic Change. Founder Stacey Monk believes that “intention makes a powerful difference.” Epic Change is really all about intention: intention to build, fund, and support a school that literally changes children’s lives. Intention to listen. Intention to include everyone who wants to be part of the organization, and let everyone own this thing called Epic Change.

Epic Change is an example of an organization that really gets the idea of following its members, and intentional listening. Allison Fine recently wrote about this concept of “followership.” The bottom line, as Allison puts it is to “follow or become irrelevant.” If your organization isn’t willing to listen and include its followers, then it may well become irrelevant. As I have written before, Epic Change is anything but. Stacey and co-director Sanjay Patel invite anyone who is “heartfully-connected” (Stacey’s words) to become part of every online campaign, from planning through execution. They have three signature events: To Mama With Love, LalaLove, and now, Epic Thanks. Followers’ ideas are listened to seriously and included in the final product. In turn, Sanjay and Stacey also bounce their ideas off of the group and ask for feedback, always listening and always respectfully incorporating ideas. What is Epic Thanks is truly a result of great followership.

One example of followership is the gratitude dance idea. Sanjay Patel posted a video of the dance within the Epic Thanks planning group. Within minutes, the conversation within the planning group evolved from “I’m so not dancing” (me) to “what if we had a dance-off ?” (Stacey) to” let’s make a thank-you dance video if we hit our target amount!” And of course Stacey replies, “Let me see what we could build to host the video…may be able to get something up tomorrow…” Later that day, Stacey writes that she’s already filmed Leah, Gideon, and Mama Lucy (from the school) dancing…ready for their final thank-you dance video.

I cannot think of a better example of followership than Epic Change.

This Thanksgiving season, as in years past, Epic Change is raising money to support the Shepherds School in Arusha, Tanzania. The past three years, Epic Change has supported the school through a worldwide gratitude event called Tweetsgiving. It raised thousands of dollars to build and support the Shepherds Junior School, a primary school. Now the kids who had nowhere to go for an education are hoping that their dreams of becoming lawyers, doctors, and astronauts will continue with a secondary school education. The kids that started in 5th grade three years ago are ready for secondary school, but there is no secondary school in Arusha that will nurture and support these dreams. I met two of these students, Leah and Gideon, when they came to Boston two weeks ago with Mama Lucy (excuse the fuzzy photo of us at the bowling alley, but it’s the best image we have). If I do nothing else, I want them to have a chance to make their dreams come true.

So here’s my promise: I’ll dance if I reach my fundrasing goal of $100 for Epic Thanks. Please consider donating any amount, even $1 towards a worthwhile cause. And an organization that supports followership, intention, and children’s dreams.

I’m a terrible dancer, so this could get interesting… (But not as bad as Matt, apparently. See video below.)

Infographics are multiplying like rabbits. I run across them everywhere, and about all types of subjects from the power of social fundraising to the what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Some are great, some not so great. The abundance of data we now have to process is fueling the trends towards content curation, data consolidation tools, and information visualization. As Beth Kanter remarked on a public Google Plus thread about creating useful infographics, “I think that information visualization is a necessity in this age of data overload and seeing the forest beyond the trees.” I agree with that statement, and personally jump to view the “shiny new storytelling toy” whenever I see an infographic. Infographics represent an exciting new storytelling avenue for nonprofit organizations, enabling them to share important data stories, visually.

Infographics as storytelling

Infographics represent a natural extension of storytelling: telling the story of data. It’s not a coincidence that storytelling is growing as we struggle to understand all the information coming at us and overcome cause fatigue. Karen Dietz, who uses storytelling to help business grow, says that “infographics are another form of visual storytelling and many of the same oral storytelling principles apply. We’ll be sorting out the issues of authenticity and key messaging and quality as infographics become more popular and easier to produce.” And therein lies the rub: quality. Just as all stories are not created equally, neither are all infographics.

Passing the infographics litmus test

What makes a great infographic? Urs Gattiker, Chief Technology Officer of ComMetrics, frames it perfectly: “The question is, can viewers see the overall shape of the data more easily and quickly with infographics than any other visual aid? Most infographics fail this acid test.” Urs Gattiker’s ComMetrics blog post describes in detail what makes an infographic dashboard or design useful. (It’s chock full of great resources and data.)

Dave, of Communication Nation, created a “manifesto” of what makes a good infographic:

1. It’s a visual explanation that helps you more easily understand, find or do something.
2. It’s visual, and when necessary, integrates words and pictures in a fluid, dynamic way.
3. It stands alone and is completely self-explanatory.
4. It reveals information that was formerly hidden or submerged.
5. It makes possible faster, more consistent understanding.
6. It’s universally understandable.

I would add to this list: The reader does not have to search for the key data points or key story elements.

As Urs points out in the comments below, it takes quite a bit of time and skill to create a good infographic. A non-profit needs either money to work with the right designer or have a designer on staff to create a good one. However, you can experiment with some of the DIY infographic tools listed in the infographic ideas and resources at the bottom of the post.

5 ways that nonprofits can utilize infographics

There are a lot of great ways that nonprofit organizations can utilize infographics. Below are five ideas for nonprofits who want to tell stories using infographics. Feel free to add to this with your examples and ideas.

1. Show the need for a program. This infographic illustrates the need for clean drinking water. This infographic from the World Wildlife Federation shows the impact of climate change in the coral triangle region of the world.

2. Visualize the data from a report, such as this infographic summarizing the eNonprofit Benchmarks study.

3. Move people to action. Voices for America’s Children created an infographic showing where children live in poverty in the USA, overlaid with where the important elected officials live. The infographic is located adjacent to its “take action” online letter to elected officials.

4. Donation impact. Charity:water created an infographic called How Your Birthday Can Change the World to show the impact of donations.

5. Impact of services. The American Red Cross’ infographic illustrates the many ways that they are helping victims of US natural disasters.

Infographics ideas and resources

Looking for ideas and inspiration? Visual.ly has a pool of community-created infographics that you can subscribe to by RSS. For storytelling inspiration, check out Wilton Blake’s scoop.it curated topic “Storytelling = Nonprofit Sustainability” and Jennifer King’s “Storytelling for Social Change” scoop.it curated topic. Jonha Revsencio curates the scoop.it topic “Awesome Infographics,” Also worth looking through is the Flickr infographics pool. Beth Kanter writes, “Can Stories be Data?,” postulating that storytelling is as much about the stories as it is about the data, while making sense of the data that comes from stories.

Looking for tools? Create and explore your own data visualizations with visual.ly (and this article about it). Check out Wild Apricot’s blog post on tools to make your own infographic. Get started with creating your own charts, diagrams, and more: 32 free tools to create different diagrams. Fast Company reviews the five best free tools for making slick infographics.

I’ve been looking forward to the promise of “social media+fundraising” for a while now. There are plenty of fundraising solutions that leverage social media, relying on fundraisers to tweet, share, and post their fundraising pages to their social networks. There are also fundraising solutions that fully rely on and live within a social platform, such as a Facebook fundraising application or a fundraising widget you place on your blog. Then there is the newest evolution: fundraising that innately utilizes the social media platform. In the slide presentation (above), I describe in more detail the three categories of social media fundraising, along with my thoughts about how social media fundraising has finally “arrived.”

Sharing is huge

A Share This report states that sharing generates more than 10% of all internet traffic. In order of frequency, most people click on links shared within Facebook, followed by “other” (blogs, social bookmarking, etc.), email, and Twitter. Facebook is the largest sharing channel, at 38%, which is why so many online fundraising pages are shared – and shared again – on Facebook.

Social fundraising is growing

By all definitions, online fundraising is growing. Social fundraising is also growing. Network for Good’s online giving study’s quarterly giving index illustrates that, despite the current poor economic outlook, social giving is still rising. In Q1 and Q2 of 2011, social giving increased (though Q1 giving may have been skewed by Japan tsunami relief fundraising). The 2011 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report on US nonprofit social media use has some fascinating stats showing that Facebook is the social media platform most nonprofits are using if they are participating in social media fundraising. The catch? A very small percentage of US nonprofits have raised significant money using Facebook.

Social sharing of fundraising pages yields results: Social media fundraising that leverages social networks

When fundraisers share their fundraising pages to their social networks, giving increases. Blackbaud recently issued a report and created an infographic about the power of peer-to-peer sharing. Blackbaud found that Twitter and Facebook posts convert 0.25% of impressions into donations. It also found that Twitter users increased donations nearly 10x more than those who did not use Twitter. FirstGiving found that for every share to Facebook, 5 people returned to a fundraising page. FirstGiving also found that the value of a share to Facebook was worth $10.87 in donations.

Peer to peer online donation solutions (such as FirstGiving, Razoo, Crowdrise, Donors Choose), where a fundraiser creates a fundraising page and shares that page, are increasingly used by nonprofit organizations. It is clear from all the data that the culture of online donations is growing. Sometimes these solutions are also called social media fundraising, because they rely so heavily on social media for amplification. These solutions are ideal for leveraging an organization’s base, and increasing donations through personal social network sharing. However, it’s just as important that the nonprofit also have a vibrant social media presence to amplify these efforts and engage with fundraisers.

Giving that relies on or lives exclusively within a social network

Social media fundraising can also be defined as fundraising that happens within a social network, rather than shared to the network. Most examples of these fundraising solutions live within Facebook. Examples include Causes, fundraising tabs that you can add to a Facebook page or profile (such as the What Gives and FirstGiving solutions), as well as fundraising applications developed for a Facebook Page. These fundraising solutions rely on Facebook to thrive: you have to connect using Facebook, and they count on fundraisers sharing with their Facebook friends for amplification. Other examples include Google checkout for nonprofits on YouTube or fundraising widgets placed on a blog. This type of fundraising is growing, but certainly is not mainstream, and best used where you have the most supporters and know you can energize them.

Innately utilizing a social platform for donations

This is the promise of social media fundraising. What if someone could donate just by tweeting, posting an update, Liking a comment on Facebook, giving a Linkedin recommendation, or writing a blog post? This is the true convergence of social media and fundraising. A few companies are offering these types of social media fundraising solutions: Help Attack!, Twitpay, and Givey.co.uk.

As Ehren Foss, CEO of With Help Attack! explains, “we wanted to make the message itself a donation. We wanted to figure out methods for giving that are contextual to each specific platform, so that the very act of being online could be a donation.” With Help Attack!, for example, fundraisers can choose to give by assigning tweets, Facebook posts, using certain key words or hashtags, etc, until they reach their pledge amount. Ehren writes that “HelpAttack! donors frequently tell us they make more updates than fewer, hoping to reach a certain level of giving (“three more Tweets to $25!”). In addition, many donors choose to share their pledges with their networks on Twitter and Facebook. ”

Givey and Twitpay offer similar services, but neither are as developed or offer as many ways to give as Help Attack! A fundraising solution like these are great to use during an online or fundraising campaign to raise awareness, increase donations within a limited amount of time, and energize your base. I suspect that you will also need to educate your fundraisers about this brand new way of fundraising merely by tweeting or posting.

I think the future of social media fundraising has just arrived. I can’t wait to see how it matures.

The Campus Kitchens project just pulled off its first fundraiser, a competitive fundraising riff on college basketball’s March Madness, and the key to winning was…Facebook. The March Madness fundraiser was conceived within the national office of Campus Kitchens as a play upon college students’ natural pride and competitive spirit during March Madness. Campus Kitchens invited their college campuses to compete with one another over a 30-day period. The winner would be determined by which campus kitchen raised the most money during that time. Fourteen campuses competed, which were narrowed down to a Final Six halfway through the competition. One of the Final Six was to be the campus kitchen that receives the most Facebook Likes on its FirstGiving fundraising page. The March Madness event raised $13,433 and the Campus Kitchen at Gettysburg College won the tournament by raising $3.572.

I interviewed Jasmine Touton, social media coordinator for Campus Kitchens, and Kim Davidson, coordinator of the Gettysburg College Campus Kitchen, to find out more about the fundraiser, and their use of social media to support it.

What turned the corner for the fundraiser was taking advantage of Facebook’s features, most importantly, Like

As a matter of course, Campus Kitchens asks each participating college campus open and maintain a Facebook page. Towards the middle of the month, Jasmine noticed that the number of Likes on Campus Kitchen Facebook pages increased, across all 24 Facebook Campus Kitchen fan pages. According to Jasmine, “We weren’t sure how they were going to use it (the FirstGiving social share features), but Facebook was exactly where they were sharing it.” The month of March, the kitchens gained 254 Likes, which is a big spike compared to a normal month of 50 Likes across all pages.   A few Campus Kitchens created Facebook Events.  Those who created Facebook Events got more Facebook Likes, and which ended up comprising the same Final Six.

They also thought outside of the box by asking the PR department of each participating university and college to post information about March Madness on their official Facebook Pages. Many did. The biggest jump in Likes was when a fundraiser was posted onto the official university’s Facebook Page. Jasmine notes that a lot of donations come in because of that. They also reached out to the PR offices of Gettysburg College and Northwestern University and asked them to send information about the fundraiser to the alumni, which helped spur donations to the fundraiser.

“My whole Facebook newsfeed was March Madness,” says Jasmine Touton

One campus even combined offline with online Facebook action: The Gonzaga University coordinator stopped students on campus to ask them to click “Like” on Facebook. “This really did help to share it,” notes Jasmine.

Gettysburg College’s Campus Kitchens was the March Madness winner. Kim Davidson, campus coordinator, also believes Facebook was critical to winning. “We began email and social media blasts while students were on spring break and the majority of the people who gave at the beginning were from the local community. Local farms and the Farmers Market Association also linked to it through their Facebook pages and e-newsletters. When students came back we started soliciting within the college community. The big boost came when the Office of Web Communications at Gettysburg College agreed to post the competition on their Facebook feed. Parents and Alumni were able to see it and contribute as well.” (You can visit their fundraising page here and their Facebook page here.)

I asked Jasmine if anything surprised her. “We didn’t expect that it would be so easy to get colleges to post on their Facebook pages. We also didn’t expect as many alumni donations. On the donor comments, many are rooting for their schools instead of just the causes. We also didn’t expect all the Facebook likes on the individual FirstGiving fundraising pages. Once the kitchens began promoting the Facebook likes (via email, on their Facebook pages, using Facebook events), we saw a big return.”

The Campus Kitchen project is a student-led and powered organization operating on 29 college campuses. They empower thousands of students each year to recycle food from their cafeterias, turn these donations into nourishing meals, and deliver those meals to those who need it most.

Epic Change is one woman’s quest to change the world permanently…through gratitude. Stacey Monk is a changemaker, a fountain of gratitude, and an incredible connector. She founded Epic Change in 2007 to amplify the voices of grassroots changemakers and social entrepreneurs. Since then, Epic Change has been raising money through gratitude, one tweet at a time.

She did it all through the lens of gratitude. In 2008, Epic Change created Tweetsgiving, ecouraging the Twitterati to tweet what they are grateful for, and connect that to a donation for as little as $10 to build a boarding school in Tanzania. That raised $11,000 in 48 hours. Tweetsgiving 2009 raised $30,000 from 657 donors. This past Mother’s Day, Epic Change’s collaborative artspace, To Mama With Love, raised $16,000 from 329 online, spurred on by twitterers, bloggers, and facebook users.

Tweetsgiving 2010 is called Epic Thanks. The campaign utilizes gratitude cards, online evangelists, and community organizing.

Epic Thanks is also one of the great online fundraising campaigns of 2010.

Epic Thanks is a worldwide celebration of gratitude that began November 23. The idea is so simple it’s incredible: bring the thankfulness back to Thanksgiving. Show the gratitude in our hearts, share it, and transform the world. This Tweetsgiving, Epic Change has selected three changemaker organizations to recieve the donations: Mama Lucy’s school in Tanzania, Subhash Ghimire’s Peace School in Nepal, and Mike Halley’s Halley’s K-9s for Veterans.

You only have to visit www.epicthanks.org to see gratitude on display. This campaign site makes you smile, and it’s easy to express  gratitude on the site. Who doesn’t want to donate out of gratitude?

I personally love the Gratitude Cards. They are fun, beautifully designed, easily shareable, and a great donation incentive. Stacey explains: “This year, when you create one of these postcards on the site, you’ll be asked to give before you send the postcard. People can give from $10 to ‘a gajillion dollars.’ If someone wants to give a gajillion dollars, then we’ll figure out how to do that.”

Stacey tells me:

“In my dream world 10,000 people will create postcards and post them.”

To understand the mechanics of how Stacey Monk, Sanjay Patel and the incredible Epic Change volunteer team made this happen, you only have to understand Stacey:  that intersection of intention, determination, gratefulness, and community.

Early on, the Epic Change team reached out to almost 100 supporters personally, asking them to host a local Epic Thanks fundraiser, and/or become an online campaign evangelist. Every volunteer committed to completing at least one Epic Thanks activity, such as donating money, asking five friends to donate, writing blog posts, etc. (Disclosure – I completed the form and one of the things I agreed to do was write a blog post about Epic Thanks. Another was to donate.)

Volunteers were invited into a closed discussion group. Stacey got the group rolling by asking us to introduce ourselves and talk about what we are grateful for. As the event date grew nearer, we discussed what we are each doing to promote the event, encourage donations. Stacey is our cheerleader. Bringing supporters into the planning and implementation jump-started this year’s Epic Thanks right out of the door with abundant tweets and gratitude cards. That’s community organizing at its best.

Last year, I was also invited to participate in the online volunteer group, and I was curious what is different about this year’s group. Stacey answers:

“Our planning group this year is much bigger than previously and more geographically dispersed. We wanted people who are heartfully-connected rather than people who would lend us their name. Intention makes a powerful difference. Influencers are bombarded by a million different requests and don’t have the opportunity to get deeply connected to something that they are personally sharing. ” And that’s what this group really is – everyone is incredibly generous, and heartfully-connected to Epic Change.

As I write this, 118 grateful souls have invested $5,876 in the dreams of three incredible changemakers. Thus far #EpicThanks has been tweeted 1,483 times! Stacey Monk’s fundraising goal is $1 million. Let’s tweet gratitude and re-tweet it often.

Intention makes a powerful difference

I hope you’ll participate in Epic Thanks in one way or another, and donate. I have.

This week I was shown an example of great social network fundraising. Epic Change launched an online fundraising event called To Mama With Love. It is a “collaborative art project that honors moms across the globe and raises funds to invest in one remarkable mama who dreams of building a home for children in her village.”

To Mama With Love takes Mother’s Day away from greeting card companies and merchants, and reminds us that the meaning of Mother’s Day is gratitude and honoring a mother.

What is so innovative about To Mama With Love is that it’s an engagement strategy. To Mama With Love encourages you to create a “heartspace” dedicated to a mother you want to honor, and decorate it with photos, film, words, and art. It personally engages the donor, and guess what? It also extends reach by touching someone else through the engagement. In other words, if I honor my friend or my own mother, I’ve touched that person. Maybe then the person that I honor will honor another mother, in turn.

Epic Change has created a new fundraising model that, at its essence is:

- A conversation (in this case about gratitude and mothers), but not about needed funds.

- About giving in more ways than from your pocket.

- A movement (in this case, connecting me with everyone else honoring a mom)

- Personal engagement

A conversation and a movement: what is brilliant about To Mama With Love, is that it is not about any single gesture of love – it means to be bigger. My gesture of love will not create homes for children. To Mama With Love globally links together all of the moms that have inspired this gratitude (in a beautiful visual graphic image on the website). As soon as I saw this, I knew I wanted to honor my mom in this way for Mother’s Day.

This is a screen shot of the global graphic. Every dot is a mama that has a heartspace.

Personal engagement:  If I want to honor my mama with a “heartspace” on the site, I can’t do that without first donating money to the cause (build housing on the school grounds for the kids at Mama Lucy’s school). After that, I will be able to create a “heartspace” for a mama, decorate it with art, video, photos, words. I can share it using an e-card, email link, or on the website.

A screen shot of the giving process:

Now that I’ve given to Mama Lucy’s school, this is what I get back:

Giving in more ways than from my pocket: I’ve participated in a global art project that is bigger than my heartspace, and honoring my own mom. I’ve given money in my mother’s honor to make the world better for a group of kids. I’m part of a new vision of Mother’s Day. I feel really good inside, too

After creating a heartspace, I can share it socially through facebook, twitter, email, etc. I can add a badge to my website, add a twibbon to my twitter or facebook avatar, and Organic Beauty Now will generously give $1 per tweet (up to USD $2,000) when your tweet includes #ToMamaWithLove and/or www.ToMamaWithLove.org. In other words, there’s a whole host of ways I could become a cause evangelist for To Mama With Love.

Lastly, it’s important to note that this event is a good horizontal extension of Epic Change’s fundraising strategy to raise funds.It’s a nice extension of the branded Tweetsgiving fundraiser, but doesn’t take away from the Tweetsgiving event. To Mama With Love puts the gratitude back into Mother’s Day, relating to Tweetsgiving‘s idea to “put the thanks back into thanksgiving.” Both events raise funds for Mama Lucy’s school in Arusha, Tanzania, create conversations, and integrate the recipients (Mama Lucy and the Twitterkids) into the events.

I’ve written before about best practices in social network fundraising. To Mama With Love embodies the best of these practices. In every way, Epic Change keeps the ideas of community, connectedness, and social network fundraising at the forefront. With To MamaWith Love, Epic Change continues to innovate and inspire social network fundraising. If you want to tweet this post, won’t you include the hashtag #tomamawithlove?

To Mama With Love is not an online fundraiser. It’s a heart-raiser.

For more information, visit http://www.tomamawithlove.org. Mother’s Day is May 9, 2010.

Feel free to view my heartspace there in honor of my mom, Susan Askanase: http://www.tomamawithlove.org/heartspaces/2059.

(If you want to read more about the back story, see Stacey Monk’s video interview on blackbaud.tv here.)

I’m in the session at SXSW Interactive “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0″ panel discussion, moderated by Michael Cervino of Beaconfire Consulting, capturing the discussion through live blogging.  In this discussion, each panelist offered his/her definition of “donation 2.0,” which I’ve highlighted in orange. The discussion centered around each nonprofit explaining how they have incorporated the “donations 2.0″ model into their platform, and the best type of design architecture. I’ve summarized my thoughts about the panel, and the backdoor twitter discussion at the end of this post.

Panelist Milo Sybrant (@milosybrant) is the online fundraising manager for Amnesty International. My definition of donations 2.0 =  the tactics and strategies NGOs are using in response to changing environment, especially these three trends: 1. Nonprofits don’t have the institutional monopoly on doing good. 2. Donors are more than ever shopping for impact. 3. Online donors have rising expectations about organizations’ transparency.

Amnesty International’s “America I Believe In” campaign highlighted our concerns about human rights to members of Congress. We put ads up in bus shelters around Capital Hill, and said we’d send the physical ads to all sponsors. Several people who sponsored the ads were actually student groups, who then sent us photos of them posing with the ads. What made it donations 2.0? Knowing that contributions would make a direct difference, the initial outcome was really tangible, we were really transparent, direct sponsors had a real relationship with it, and sending physical ads to sponsors incentivized the sponsors.

Panelist Katie Bisbee (@katiebisbee and @donorschoose) from DonorsChoose.org. DonorsChoose has about 15,000 classroom projects in schools that donors can choose from, and each project has a cost report and shows what actions that have been taken. The impact to date of donations, in total, is $49 million. My definition of donations 2.0 is from our model’s perspective: using the web as choice, accountability, and transparency. Why it’s donations 2.0: There is a direct connection between the donor and the individual or group that the are supporting. This is really “true philanthropy,” as there is a direct connection between the donor and the recipient (peer to peer) and there is a feedback loop that goes back to the donor.

Panelist Ruth-Anne Renaud, Vice President of Philanthropy at OptINnow.org (@rarenaud and @optinnow). Opportunity International has been in microfinance, internationally, for almost 40 years. We provide loans to entrepreneurs, but also savings, insurance and insurance programs. It is an end-to-end full-service microfinance provider.

OptINnow was launched over a year ago to help people contribute directly. Our definition of donations 2.0: Providing a connection for donors to beneficiaries through timely stories, photos and video in order to create a more relevant and tangible giving experience. Why it’s donations 2.0: OptINnow gives donors the ability to choose an individual (by country, by industry) to be be able to fuel their business’ growth. Through the website, you can see how the donation impacts the entrepreneur specifically. OptINnow platform also shows the entire range of impact on lives. OptINnow also allows donors to pass on a gift card to empower an entrepreneur. There is a new (as of this week) OptINnow feature: the individual platform for individual pages to track individual fundraising.

Panelist Skylar Woodward (@skylar and @kiva): in charge of launching Kiva’s API. (The API application programming interface allows two computers to talk.) The Kiva API allows Kiva to talk to other computers and apps. Our definition of donations 2.0: Decentralizing from a donor-charity system to a person-need model. It is facilitated by technology and a general cultural shift to interact in social communities (digital or physical) It prioritizes the needs of the community.

Why it’s donations 2.0: Kiva.org puts all of the donation needs out there and donors choose. It prioritizes the community needs, and is extremely transparent. You loan the money, the loan goes out into your profile, and you see the progress of the loans being paid back monthly. You can then relend the money again.

Michael: How do you manage the quality of the applicants to make sure the needs are valid?

Katie: We verify that the teacher is a public school teacher before they can post. Once a project has been posted, we screen it and verify it to make sure that what is in the shopping cart is what they are asking for. Our staff reads every classroom project to make sure it is compelling and gives feedback to the teachers as to how to make it more compelling.

Skylar: Kiva works with a microfinance institution and we spend a lot of time vetting our microfinance institutional partners to make sure we can trust them. This includes a 2-month evaluation pilot period, and then we look at how they respond to posts, etc. There is a growing phase of trust. we work with 110 partners right now. After the partners have gained our trust, we are more hands-off.

Ruth-Anne: We are a fundraising organization and we deliver funds to our partners in-country. We are end-to-end. We have staff in other countries as well. Our loan officers are responsible for building relationships, gathering reports, and feeding that back into the banking system and reporting. Kiva is an aggregator, and we are end-to-end and within our own organization. Complimentary models are a good thing.

Michael: User experience – tell me about it and how you built the system.

Ruth-Anne: Our system is completely custom-built. We were the first to use Facebook Connect to make it as easy as possible for people to use the platform. Katie: Our system was entirely custom-built, also. And for improvements, we have an email distribution list on donorschoose.org called “new feature list” and ask people to just send a new feature idea to us. Skylar: We built our system entirely from scratch. We are very tech-centric. The CEO wanted to built a new social network within two weeks and made it happen within 48 hours and created “Kiva social networking.” Now, this defines us, and loans are public and people are social. With the Kiva API, we have a whole other codeland that is exterior to us for anyone to play with.

Michael: Is it possible to build a donation system with a classic donation system that can be modified?

DonorsChoose (answered by the systems architect): I don’t think you can do this without building a custom system. We put a lot of effort into thinking about the donation relationship and the whole life cycle first and then build the technology to support that. Skylar: By using a framework with an existing code, you’re locked into the code that is already out there. I don’t advise choosing an existing content management system and building a product off of it because it’s not the experience that you want – you want to really include the user experience and customize. Ruth Ann: There is a lot of value in having coding expertise in-house to gain efficiency as you scale, become more responsive to user-feedback, etc.

Michael: Whatever you do needs to be transparent, authentic, and focused on the culture of your stakeholders with messaging. You have to be authentic so you won’t lose numbers.

Editorial summary:

There seems to be general agreement that “Donations 2.0″ means direct connection between the donor (and donor’s needs) and the funder. Each platform enables choice, transparency, efficacy, and authenticity, and prioritizes the needs of the community. System architecture of the donation platform has to be unique and custom-built to meet the needs of the donors, the recipients, and the organization and pre-fab platforms won’t serve these needs.

The back-channel hashtag on twitter, #donate2, generated a secondary discussion about whether these platforms are controlling the clients’ stories for the organizations’ benefits (asked by @aspenbaker) and how do we allow clients to have more voice (credit to @skylar for asking that last part). Myself and @nolandhoshino think donations 2.0 is more about mobile-based fundrasing and widgets as secondary platforms. @skylar says “disagree! ’2.0′ model will evolve to mobile. One day, Bump-a-Loan via @kiva to an entrep in your ‘hood.”

I think Kiva’s API is the future and really embraces donations 2.0 in philosophy: it gives donors more control and choice (you don’t like something about the platform, add to it!) and crowdsources the best innovations for the platforms that will provide the best services to funders and recipients (you want a new feature, then create it and see which add-ons the stakeholders most utilize). The API also gives a feedback loop to Kiva – pointing out where the stakeholders want added features. I also give kudos to Kiva for relinquishing control over the platform and allowing users to own more of it through the API.

Further resources and discussion:

Skylar Woodward’s blog post: Panel-Picking Killer Tweet of Your Fundraising Can Haz Non-Profit Electrodance

Twitter hashtage: #donate2

I had the pleasure of presenting to the Israel Venture Network Fellows today about social media strategy, campaigns, and fundraising. I am really struck me how much of online fundraising comes down to a combination of social media basics plus community organizing principles. The slide show (below) captures why online campaigns are the social proof of these concepts.

Amy Sample Ward, Ivan Boothe, and myself created a slide show for the workshop that we’ll be giving at the Nonprofit Technology Conference. As part of the workshop Bringing Community Organizing Into Online Campaigns, we debated the essential elements of a good online campaign (fundraising or otherwise), the basic tenets of community organizing, and the nature of community organizing. We came up with five basic community organizing concepts. These concepts apply perfectly to any fundraising campaign. They are:

• movement-building
• power analysis
• community accountability (transparency)
• being where the stakeholders are
• leadership development

With any online fundraising campaign, your organization will be speaking about the project and asking others to influence their online ties to do the same. Take the basic principles of social media and continue to use them to raise funds: have shareable content and share utility, utilize the power of influence marketing and the power of weak ties, offer a great product/content, recognize people who give, and thank them profusely. Allow others to have the conversation about you publicly. (And use this opportunity to recruit new stakeholders to your social spaces.) Now mix that with community organizing and this is what you get:

• Link your fundraising project to the larger cause movement to give it emphasis and compelling context
• Power mapping: ID influencers, key donors, and how the donors will share and influence
  
• Develop online influencers and key online donors into organizational leaders
• Be where the people are: make sure that online activity within the campaign occurs where your stakeholders are
• Transparency means: broadcast as much about the campaign, on the campaign site and social media, as it happens

I think of this presentation as a starting point: what else would you consider the “fundamental principles” of social network fundraising? What have I missed? What have I mentioned that’s essential?

(Thanks to Amy Sample Ward for providing the screen shots of the Tweetsgiving campaign example in the slide show, below.)

Resources:

Epic Change (the folks who bring you Tweetsgiving)

How Social Media Can Engage New Donors – slideshare presentation by Steve Drake

Bringing Community Organizing Into Online Campaigns – presentation developed for the upcoming NTC workshop April 9, 2010

Online Giving. What will it look like a year from now? I jotted down an abbreviated timeline that captures some of the major developments in online giving, below:

Based on this graphic, I’ve put together my thoughts about online giving trends and technology for 2010. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, as well:

1. Project-based donation solutions.

Organizational online donations will continue, but project-specific donations will be where organizations will see the interest and growth. Nonprofits know that fundraising is personal, specific, and identifiable.  Even Causes has recently added the Donor Choices option which allows organizations to preselect donation levels that fund specific projects.  Generalized donation portals (Razoo, JustGive, Firstgiving) now highlight specific organizational projects, such as  “donate to a women’s self-defense project,” or “build an ice skating rink.” In the coming year, I see the rise of project-specific soliciting, and donation solutions to meet these needs.

2. The rise of niche donation networks.

In recent years, niche networks are also rising and thriving. JGooders (donations to Israeli and Jewish causes) and IsraelGives (donation to an Israeli charity) both launched in 2009. DonorsChoose launched in 2000 to connect donors with classrooms in need. I also view Jokona as a niche network as well – small projects, worldwide. Just as organizations are beginning to solicit donors for specific projects, niche networks will solicit specific types of donors and match them to their ideal projects. In 2010, I think that we will continue to see the rise of new niche donation portals and networks, and the eventual merging of others in the years thereafter.

3. The emergence of cross-platform donation and donation portability.

In the future I see the ability to be able to donate to a specific project or nonprofit organization across many platforms. Giving Impact is a great example of this. Giving Impact is an online website donation tool designed for specific project campaigns. It is similar to the “donate here” button, but with custom dashboard analysis, and integration allowing individuals to “share” donation impact to their Facebook profiles. Giving Impact just announced that they will be offering a Facebook application allowing integration of the Giving Impact tool with Facebook. It is also built with an API so developers can further design/extend this tool.

One other example of this, though not seamless, is the YouTube Nonprofit Program. Participants can create a “call to action” within the video, or a video overlay, to donate off of YouTube. This isn’t a seamless integration, but it allows portability of donations.

Nonprofits want one donation solution that they can port to wherever their stakeholders hang out online. They don’t want to create a zillion donation profiles and projects in order to get to everyone. I’m hoping that the technology and will develops to meet this need, and that we see the rise of cross-platform donation tools, and donation portability such as the tool developed by Giving Impact.

4. The rise of mobile giving.

Mobile charitable fundraising has been growing since 2008. Today, approximately 400 nonprofits are running mobile donation campaigns, the average donation is rising from $5 to $10, and US charities expect to receive a total of $2 million from mobile fundraising in 2009, according to Mobile Marketer. (Two examples of providers of mobile-based giving in the US are Mobile Commons and Mobile Giving.) Mobile giving is growing in acceptance in countries around the world as well. The rising adoption of smartphones, coupled with the mobile familiarity of the millennial generation, makes this is a trend worth watching. The challenge for nonprofits is to creatively think about integrating mobile giving and social media.

5. Cultural acceptance of social network-based giving.

One of the things that I’ve argued is that users on social network sites aren’t culturally used to donating while on a the network. That’s where they discuss life’s issues. However, that’s finally changing. Online donations via Causes on Facebook and twitter rallies have become more popular. In the coming year, I’m predicting the rise of more fundraising options that integrate with social networks. Along these lines, there’s an interesting post by Joe Solomon that considers what a Twitter fundraising tool would look like.

NOTE: I’m updating this blog post (as of December 9) to include a link to the wonderful slide presentation entitled: The Future of Online Revenue Generation for Charities, by Amy Sample Ward. She places it in a slightly different context than I do, focusing on future demand for better processes, relationships (and empowering supporters), leveraging social media, the gift economy, and authenticity. She also includes some great data about online giving trends.

What do you think? Do you agree with me, or disagree? Can you add to this list, or edit it? I’d also love feedback on the graphic above!

I want to thank my twitter friends who helped me identify some key timelines for the graphic above: John Carnell, Katrin Verclas, Mobile Commons, and Chris Dougherty. Thanks for listening, y’all!

Image courtesy of madnzany

Proving that social media can be used to raise significant funds for nonprofits is “the brass ring” that every nonprofit utilizing social media wants to reach. But it is quite an elusive brass ring! There are a number of challenges to overcome before social network fundraising is as easy (and fruitful) as email donation solicitation, offline donation appeals, or the “donate now” button on the website. On the other hand, social network fundraising is growing: both by adoption, use and acceptance. This post explores the existing challenges to acceptance and raising large amounts of funds using social networks – and brainstorming ideas to overcome the barriers.

Here are some thoughts about the leading challenges in social network fundraising:

Cultural: Social media is still primarily Social

Except for explicit business networking sites (Linkedin, Plaxo, association networks, and the like), social networking sites are still primarily used for…being social. Users are not generally thinking about these platforms as donation portals – yet. I think the social networker’s mindset is slowly changing as more organizations encourage their online fans to donate through social media platforms.

Where is the opportunity? Create real online relationships with stakeholders. By becoming an integral part of a fan’s social web, a donation request will be seen as an extension of the relationship. Nonprofits should identify and cultivate online influencers, and leverage the influencer networks during online campaigns.

Structural: How to Begin, How to Do It?

In these times struggling economic times, nonprofits are looking for new funding sources everywhere. Social networks are an obvious place to turn, but nonprofits aren’t sure how to begin.

In other words – how to do it? Do you create a small fundraising site that pushes people to share on their social networks? Do you run a fundraising campaign that is pushed on all of your relevant, engaged social networks? Do you create a campaign that is only run on one social network? I think the strategic effort involved in figuring this out is a barrier in and of itself. It’s not easy to plan any fundraising campaign, but the “new fundraising” on social networks has a lot of nonprofits wondering where to begin, and how to begin, and it’s a legitimate challenge they face. I don’t think there is any one answer – the approach depends on evaluating the organization’s campaign goals, current social media assets, and available resources.

Financial: Return on Investment

Hesitancy about the “return on investment” of a social media campaign is another concern. Organizations must devote staff, time, and financial resources to any online fundraising effort, and the return is still unproven, and without many benchmarks. We have some data about online donors: “engaged American donors,” the “wired wealthy,” and “social media power users who donate.” New research from Blackbaud shows that peer-to-peer social network fundraising in the past 12 months, using Facebook and Twitter, has generated $o.12 per impression, which offers a specific benchmark. However, social network fundraising is relatively new and untested, without long-term studies. The tools are constantly changing, and the success is wildly varied depending on the specifics of the organization, its social media implementation and use, and its online campaign. Taking this into account, organizations have to develop social network fundraising campaigns and strategies based on a realistic assessment of the return on engagement.

Challenges aside, I firmly believe online donations on social media platforms are the future.

• Social media offers incredible opportunities for nonprofits to reach out to the “borderless activist,” who is a source of new inspiration, energy and funds for every organization.
• More and more social media users want to get their information from blogs and social networks, and these sources are among the most trusted sources of organizational information.
• The viral nature of social networks means that strong social campaigns can spread more widely, and penetrate more markets, than traditional fundraising campaigns and events.
  
• Platform-based donations offer the perfect opportunity for transparency, which donors crave.

I’ve raised a few of the issues facing social network fundraising, and a few thoughts about how to address them. I’m sure there are a whole lot more. I’d like to open up this conversation and hear what you think are the current issues facing organizations raising funds through social media platforms – and the best means to overcome them.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say!

Additional Food for Thought: Social Networking for Fundraisers by Frank Barry and Jeff Patrick