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Category Archives: Technology
June 12, 2012, 7:44 pm
Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Gives With No Strings
Steve Jobs may have been mum on his philanthropy, but his Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, was anything but at a gathering of fundraisers last week, surprising many in attendance with his first public talk on his giving philosophy.
“I would never give a gift that has restrictions,” he said, in an appearance at the AFP TechKnow conference, in Orlando, Fla. “I leave that to people who know more than me.”
He told a gathering of technology-oriented fundraisers that he doesn’t often deal face-to-face with nonprofit solicitors. But when he does, he gets involved with their organizations, often in a hands-on way. As a supporter of the arts, he has even performed in ballets and community plays.
Growing up, he wanted to be an engineer like his father. But he also harbored ambitions of being a teacher. So, after he became wealthy, he taught students at a California public school for…
June 11, 2012, 4:34 pm
Tips on Great Web-Site Design With Donors in Mind
The problems with most nonprofit Web sites today are too much text and not enough great visuals, said Ann-Laura Parks at last week’s AFP TechKnow conference in Orlando, Fla., hosted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Charities can go a long way to make their Web site more reader-friendly so potential donors can scan a page and quickly pick up whatever information they need.
For example, instead of using a lot words, Web sites should contain strong visual cues to guide donors. “You can use design to move a reader’s eye,” she says. “Good design means never having to say, ‘Click here.’ ”
As a graphic designer and artist—and director of development and communications at South Arts, a nonprofit arts group in Atlanta—Ms. Parks constantly monitors how her organization’s Web site comes across to visitors and often looks at other charity sites….
May 2, 2012, 2:23 pm
Charities May Soon Get a Way to Seek Bigger Text Gifts
Donors who give through mobile text messages could soon have the options of giving a larger donation and setting up repeat text gifts, say the leaders of two of the organizations that oversee text giving in the U.S. and Canada.
Jim Manis, chief executive of the Mobile Giving Foundation, and Bernard Lord, chairman of the Mobile Giving Foundation Canada, said in an interview that they are working with some cellular service providers to allow $20 donations—double the current $10 limit—and recurring donations, though they gave no timeline on when those features would be available.
Mr. Lord said 75 percent of donors are willing to give $20 or more through text messaging, according to research his group has conducted. Forty-seven percent say they are willing to donate $25 or more through the platform.
Text-message gifts remain popular, the two men say, even though it is quickly be…
April 4, 2012, 12:49 pm
Street Fundraisers Get Smarter on Technology
Soon the fundraisers who solicit passersby on the streets of the world’s big cities will go high-tech.
Some groups are experimenting with using iPads to get attention and speed donation transactions. Charities are also seeking donors’ cellphone numbers so they can instantly thank the donors via a text message minutes later.
Daryl Upsall, a consultant in Madrid who advises nonprofits on the technique, said at a session of the Association of Fundraising Professionals annual meeting, in Vancouver, that street fundraising is growing more common and is now used in 35 countries.
But as the approach has become more popular, it has also spurred a backlash. In London and elsewhere in Britain, the solicitors are often called chuggers, a compression of the term charity muggers, Mr. Upsall says.
Because complaints about harassment have been on the rise, nonprofits have formed a…
March 22, 2012, 6:54 pm
Running a ‘Giving Day’: Lessons From an Effort in Washington
A new report suggests that “giving days“—local efforts to spur donate to give to a range of causes over 24 hours—are not just gimmicks but strong ways to give nonprofits a fundraising lift.
The report, commissioned by the Case Foundation and the Razoo Foundation, looked in-depth at “Give to the Max Day,” a November fundraising event in Washington that was led by the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, the United Way of the National Capital Area, and Razoo, an online fundraising platform.
The fundraising days collected about $2-million from 18,000 donors for 1,200 nonprofits around the Washington area. The size of the average gift donated was about $106, although most gave just $10 online. The average amount raised by a participating charity was $1,681.
Here are some tips for nonprofits taking part in giving days, according to the report:
- Plan to invest…
March 20, 2012, 1:48 pm
Fundraisers Share How They Began Their Careers
Share your #fundraisingstory in the comments below or on Twitter.
You can also see a Chronicle video in which fundraisers describe how they got started in nonprofit work.
February 10, 2012, 6:44 pm
Video Gamers Raise $150,000 for Cancer in 6-Day Marathon
Video gamers often are portrayed as slackers. But at a video marathon last month, participants proved to be adept fundraisers.
The video-game enthusiasts from the group Speed Demos Archive, whose members dedicate themselves to completing video games quickly, raised about $150,000 for cancer research in a six-day marathon of speed gaming. That’s a big jump from the $53,000 the group raised last year in its initial event for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
“It’s really phenomenal,” says Liona Chan, spokeswoman for Prevent Cancer Foundation, which focuses on early detection of the disease. “The gaming community is really supportive. They’re a unique and unusual group of people who are energized to donate money for charity.”
It’s certainly not the foundation’s typical donor group, which skews older. “Most of them had never heard of our foundation,” Ms. Chan says. “They’re a…
January 12, 2012, 11:21 am
Haiti Text Gifts Spur More Disaster Contributions
Donors who made text-message gifts to aid survivors of the devastating earthquake in Haiti two years ago have continued to turn to their cellphones to give after other disasters, according to a new study.
Four in 10 of those donors texted a contribution to help people in Japan following last year’s earthquake and tsunami, according to a survey of 863 people who made a text-message gift after the earthquake in Haiti. More than a quarter of donors to Haiti reported that they gave via cellphone after the BP oil spill in 2010, and nearly 20 percent said they made a text-message gift to help victims of last year’s tornadoes in the South.
The survey was conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, together with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard and the mGive Foundation, with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Roughly…
December 8, 2011, 2:40 pm
Holiday Drive Honors Good Deeds, With a Social-Media Twist
The Case Foundation is asking people who witness random acts of kindness this holiday season to capture those moments in photos and post them on their favorite social network. They may get a nice reward for that good deed: up to $500 for themselves and up to $5,000 for their favorite charity.
The goal of the program, called #GoodSpotting, is to honor “little acts of good that go unsung” by recording them with pictures, much like the popular foodie Web site Foodspotting does with restaurant dishes, says Allyson Burns, a spokeswoman for the Washington foundation started by the AOL founder Steve Case and his wife, Jean.
Organizers say the kinds of photos they have in mind might show people volunteering at a food pantry or giving clothes at a coat drive. Photographers who upload their shots to social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter must label the image with the…
December 7, 2011, 5:51 pm
Charity Creates 250 Videos to Thank Donors
For two weeks, employees of the nonprofit Charity: Water baked cakes, donned climbing gear or tutus, got on stationary bikes, and undertook a range of other stunts—all with the goal of mimicking the efforts the group’s supporters have made in the past five years to attract donations from friends, relatives, and others to bring clean and safe drinking water to developing countries.
The charity captured those efforts as it created 250 videos to mark the organization’s fifth anniversary and send a personal thank-you to each of the 250 supporters.
The 250 people honored with thank-you videos were picked to represent the 250,000 people the charity estimates have helped it raise money. But instead of emphasizing those who gave the most, the charity focused on the people who showed the most creativity in spreading the word about the nonprofit and its mission.
In all, two dozen staff …
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