It’s certainly not the only service of its type, but the relatively new Crowdwise.com — founded in part by actor Ed Norton — was profiled in Sunday’s New York Times.   He and his partners do seem to have at least a basic grasp on individual fundraising:

He knows that a majority of people who now donate to charity don’t do so online; they write checks. But he and his partners contend that Crowdrise, with its mix of edginess, silliness and good-humored competition, can change that habit, especially for young people.

But the important thing is that the focus here — with its ability for donors to have personal pages — is on the viral potential of philanthropy.  The article is a quick and interesting read.

One more thing about the $50 million raised via text messaging after the Haitian earthquake:  Convio’s survey stressed the generational differences between those who texted (or who considered it) and those that gave some other way.  They found that while 77% of US donors were aware of the Haiti text-to-donate efforts, 17% of Millennial respondents and 14% of Gen Xers said they actually made a donation using text message, while only 3% of Boomer and Mature respondents did.

While it is a compelling storyline that younger people are giving, especially since — as Vinay says — non-profits have already “optimized fundraising with seniors,” what would be of more interest to me is how long these people will stick around.  (Read on …)

Convio released a study yesterday (summarized neatly on USA Today’s “Kindness” blog) about the frenzy of mobile philanthropy or texts-to-donate that happened around the Haiti earthquake.  At least $50 million was raised this way, from about 6.5 million people.

My first reaction when it was happened was that this was the tipping point for this not-so-new way to give.  (Read on …)

I have long been an advocate of using sweepstakes (or raffles) to raise money.  We had a very successful sweeps while I was at Thirteen and here at CBA, we’ve helped KQED run their very successful raffle for quite some time.

Sweeps got a bunch of bad press in the 90s as some of them (not ones that non-profits ran) were seen as deceptive, especially to the elderly.  As a result, many non-profits let theirs fall to the wayside (including Thirteen unfortunately).

That’s too bad, as sweeps can be very profitable because they give donors another way to give.  (Read on …)

In my 15+ years working in and along with public broadcasting, there’s been a growing debate on the role of “membership” in individual fundraising and whether it should continue to be emphasized in pledge drives and direct mail — or even continue to be the model at all.  The generational argument is the one most often used — that Boomers don’t like to join things like their GI Generation parents did.  That they don’t like the perceived commitment but would rather just throw their money at something and take their tote bag and run.  And certainly many of those community bastion-type organizations popular in 50s and 60s civic life — the Lions Club and the Elks and their kin for example — have seen their numbers dramatically fall over the last few decades.

So, on public broadcasters’ websites, we don’t see “Join” or “Become a Member” as much as we see “Support this station.”  But is that still the right thing to do?  Has that tactic really borne fruit in the half dozen years or so since it was summed up best in a study that net consulting firm Adaptive Path did for PBS? (Read on …)

The New York Times technology blog had an observation worth noting today.  It turns out the idea of a facebook isn’t all that new.

Bryan Benilous, a historical newspaper specialist at the digital-archive company Proquest, said he and his colleagues came across a Boston Daily Globe article from August 24, 1902, titled, “Face Book The New Fad,” describing a party game where revelers sketch out cartoony caricatures for fun.

“I think it is interesting to note the similarities with this first iteration of Face Book as a shared social experience,” said Mr. Benilous. “It’s almost like having friends write on your wall in a much less tech-savvy way.” (Read on …)