Moneybomb!How Much Money Can You Raise in One Day?

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In 2007 the term ‘Moneybomb’ was coined to describe a grassroots political fundraising campaign in support of Ron Paul’s candidacy for President.  The explosive nature of the term is meant to dramatize the mass marketing frenzy intended to generate as much media buzz and excitement as humanly possible.  Everything is meant to happen in one day with the intent of raising boatloads of cash.

 On the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in 2007 a group staffed exclusively of volunteers participated in a Moneybomb, an effort that rose between $6-6.5 million in a twenty-four hour period.  That effort is still the biggest one-day political fundraising event ever. 

 A bake sale just doesn’t cut it when running for President.  Looking for new and innovative ways to reach more people in less time political fundraising campaigns began tapping into the potential of technology and the evolution of online communities.  Social media has become the ideal vehicle for informing your entire base – and connecting with new ones – of where and how to donate with a simple click of the mouse.

 Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn boast hundreds of millions of registered users and unlike traditional forms of political fundraising, including direct mail marketing campaigns and email campaigns, social media provides a platform for connecting with your communities immediately in a much more intimate way.   Friends can discuss and share ideas in real-time while accessing those discussions on a variety of devices: desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices.   As friends discuss passionate ideas they invite more friends and so on.  In no time groups of social networks are engaged and the possibility of discussions going viral is considerable.

 Facebook is predicated upon the idea that users are part of a community of 677 million Friends: more than twice the population of the United States.  Now online fundraising platforms are developing to meet the twenty-first century demands of a connected world by creating tools specific to political fundraising that integrate with Facebook and other social media spaces like LinkedIn and Twitter.  The possibilities are limitless when you have the potential to reach 677 million people.

 Online fundraising platforms give individuals and organizations the power to create fundraising campaigns with a simple sign up.  A hosted donations page is created immediately with the functionality to customize a single page or fully integrate into your existing website.  All for free.

 Scalability is a key feature when considering how to get the word out to your donor base.  Whether your goals are $500 for a tee ball team or $1 billion campaign for the White House, online fundraising platforms help causes raise money online fast and effectively.

 

Texting To Support the Cause: Texting Donations vs. the Benefits of Raising Money Online

Fundraising organizations have been turning to text messaging as a way to raise money.  A text messaging campaign raised over $30 million for the people of Haiti in the wake of the tragic earthquake that devastated the small island nation on January 12, 2010. 

The immediacy of text messaging and the convenience of typing in a short code on your mobile device, instead of a complete phone number, has been an effective way for charities to raise money.  It is estimated that 1 in 3 people in the United States alone will own a cell phone by 2012 and as the age of Internet children mature – children born after the advent of the Internet – text messaging and mobile devices will become as ubiquitous as televisions.

Convenience comes at a cost.  A fundraising organization accepts donations by partnering with an intermediary like mGive, a wireless application service provider.  mGive provides a software application that connects the fundraiser with major cell phone carriers.  The software creates a code, donors type in the code on a cell phone, wait for a response to confirm, ‘yes’ and the donation is made.  Each donation is billed to the donor’s monthly cell phone bill.

100% of the donation is passed to the fundraising effort.  But software licensing fees can cost the charity $400 to $1500 a month plus a small transaction fee for each donation.  These charges add up quickly.

Texting your donation is a quick and easy way to pledge your support for a needy cause.  But that’s where the quick and easy stops.  Donations can take 30-90 days to process.  In the wake of a disaster, like the earthquake in Haiti, the delay can cost lives because assistance is needed immediately.

Efficient and cost effective ways of supporting your favorite cause through fundraisers have been developing to capitalize on the growth of the Internet.  Online fundraising platforms, like Piryx have been created to provide charities with a way to raise money online fast and effectively.  A fundraiser can be created in just minutes by signing up for free.

Online fundraisers can be accessed by donors on a myriad of devices including laptops, mobile phones and tablets.  The donations are made immediately like a text donation by clicking a donate button on a webpage.

Unlike texting, online fundraising platforms are free to setup, free to manage and provide the charity with tools to collect donations in a variety of ways.  And the charity receives the donation within a maximum 10 days.

 Innovations in technology continue to provide community fundraising organizations with the power to reach their donors in newer and more efficient ways.  The most successful ones carry out due diligence to determine which are the most efficient and cost effective so they can concentrate on the most important part of their work: supporting the cause.

Does Your Non Profit Have The Fundraising Blues?

Don’t allow the campaign season to dig into non-profit revenue.

 U.S. Charitable Giving was up 8.1% in the first quarter of 2011.  But, according to Rob Mitchell, former Chief Development Officer with The American Cancer Society, charities can find their fundraising efforts hamstrung as individuals divert money earmarked for their favorite charities, making a choice to support political candidates instead.

 “Historically, election campaign fundraising has a negative impact on the charitable giving economy. With the U.S. economy growing at glacial speed, much of the giving momentum gain produced so far this year will be eroded as election campaigns divert funds that would have gone to nonprofits. The impact will become more pronounced as electioneering activity increases—especially if the economy is not growing fast enough to blunt much of the blow.”

 For those non-profits looking to compete for the limited funds available innovation and non-traditional means of raising money are key.  Online fundraising platforms allow non-profits to create turnkey solutions, reaching scores of potential donors with a few clicks of the mouse: At zero cost.

 The social media revolution has increased interconnectedness exponentially.  With friends, followers, communities and the ability to reach people with common interests the potential to raise money and awareness is limitless.

 Online fundraising platforms integrate social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even SMS texting.  With the click of a button you can reach an unlimited number of potential donors through any device the tech world can throw into the market. 

 Beyond spreading your message far and wide the online fundraising platform can accelerate more traditional means of raising money like charity events.  Tickets can be sold online and the money can be processed securely just like donations.

 An online fundraising campaign can be established in just minutes with a simple sign-up process.  It can be configured to meet your non-profits’ needs, whether you require the ease of a simple hosted online form or the complexity of full integration into your website and brand.

 The ease with which to create an online fundraising campaign frees up resources and time for staff to concentrate on more important details like creating successful programs that can benefit your cause for years to come.

 Donor pools will decrease with the coming political season in the face of increased demand for the same funds.  Online fundraising provides the non-profit with the ability to reach more donors, quickly with less effort, increasing your potential for raising money even in these difficult times.

Political Fundraising – Viral Fever: 2012 elections will take the Internet by storm!

Ever since Obama set the trend by using social media for his online fundraising campaign in 2008 there has been a surge of politicians using the Internet for fundraising. The 2012 elections is about to take the internet by storm. President Obama “announced” is re-election bid via digital video that reached 13 million of his supporters and tied up with none other than Facebook to hold a town hall meeting to answer questions from both in person and “online attendees”.

Having learned their lesson since 2008, rivals and contenders have hopped on to the social media wagon. The benefits of taking your political fundraising campaign online stare at you in the face; you can reach a wider audience in a cost effective way, engage more discussions and field more questions than possible with in-person meetings and political rally’s. Yet, most importantly, fundraise for your campaign online and monitor progress by tracking the number of followers online. Politicians now understand that rallying support to get them elected is not just visiting small towns in middle America for fundraising but also becoming savvy with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter that has most of the country’s young and old hooked! 

An article in the Associated Press by Beth Fouhy is calling this “Welcome to the Social Network, the presidential campaign edition”. While this is great news for politicians and supporters alike, taking your political fundraising campaign online also makes you vulnerable to an uncomfortable level of transparency. Get ready to be inundated with more rhetoric as the presidential elections gain momentum online.

 I bet no one thought that limiting your message to only 140 characters would actually be sought after by politicians, huh? With little or no control over messages that are distributed via social media, the slightest slip-up could work against the campaign. And with the world of politics being murky as it is, there will be a lot of controversy and mudslinging to watch out for with very few avenues for damage control.

Also, the next presidential election campaign will see those that have used online fundraising tools before get more sophisticated as they use new tools and innovative online fundraising ideas for political fundraising; and there will be a many new and first-time online fundraising users who will leverage social media to get their message out to voters. With the presidential elections just around the corner, there will be many more political fundraisers to watch out for.It seems like ‘Viral Fever’ will be inevitable this upcoming presidential election!

Fundraising – Benefits of Fundraising Online

Every school, organization, club, and team needs some kind of funding to do what they need to do. That money usually comes from fundraising efforts or donations from a benefactor. Traditional fundraisers, like candle sales and car washes, are usually a hit or miss. You either make sales or you don’t. There is nothing you can do to fix that. If you want a bigger guarantee though, you may want to focus your efforts to fundraising online. This is a revolutionary process that could do wonders for your group or cause. Here is a look at the benefits of online fundraising.

When you start fundraising online, you can pull from a much larger group of people. Think about a standard car wash in comparison. With that kind of fundraising, you can only rely on money to come from the people that happen to pass by your car wash. If you market the event for a few days earlier you may be able to pull some people in from neighboring towns, but that will be it. When you work through social media on the internet to market your cause, you can literally get funding from across the world. The potential earnings are endless.

Managing your fundraising is much easier online. You can see just how much money is coming in and going out for your fundraising efforts, and you can see where you are getting the most money from. If you find that one fundraiser is working better than another, you may think about focusing more efforts on the successful one. You can make a plan that will actually yield results, and then you can adjust your fundraising to fit your needs. All of this happens in an instant through the World Wide Web.

Online fundraising is simple to do, and you can manage it all from home. You never have to think about going out and spending a whole day at a bake sale only to make $5. You can stay at home and still earn money for your fundraiser. This is one of the most convenient and fast paced ways to go about fundraising nowadays, and it is sure to change the way that people earn and donate in the future. If you have internet access and a cause you need money for, think about putting your efforts on the web. You may only be a few clicks away from the money you need.

For free fundraising tools that will help you effectively raise money online for your fundraisers, you can create, manage, and track the success of an unlimited amount of online fundraising campaigns today by using a robust online fundraising platform. Fundraising online is now easy for your fundraisers by using these free fundraising tools today.

Innovative ways to fundraise: Creating a sense of belonging for your donors

With so many non-profits fundraising for causes and just as many willing donors, it has become imperative for non-profits to make sure that they continue adding to the new pool of donors and make sure their donors keep coming back.

To keep your donors coming back to you, it’s important to keep your non-profit on “top of mind” for your donors. It’s important for donors to feel a sense of belonging to the cause so they can continue to donate as well as champion for the cause. It’s always easier to attract donors who have had a personal connection to the cause – often the ones who come forward have first-hand experience with the cause themselves or through a family member. It’s difficult to attract donors who don’t have similar associations and they often tend to question the legitimacy of the non-profit or ask themselves if it’s a cause they really feel strongly about.

Non-profits have often tried to personalize their fundraising approach. Usually fundraising events are a platform for non-profits to engage potential donors and explain how every dollar donated is being spent. Obviously, this kind of outreach can’t be sustained as events cost money and don’t always reach out to everyone. Non-profits have also used direct marketing approach via postcards and literature about their causes.

Given the volume of postcards and handwritten notes that must be sent out, RST Marketing has created Real Pen, a product that can send out hundreds of “handwritten” notes for non-profits. Keith Kanode of RST Marketing says “I think if you can’t speak one on one with a donor, your next best option is a personalized, hand addressed-looking package.” Several other personalization strategies used by non-profits have ranged from activities such as marathons, bake sales and gift baskets, yet all these strategies are limiting and cannot be sustained for long-term fundraising.

Today, with a boom in social media and internet marketing, the personalized approach has been taken a step further. Companies like Piryx work with non-profit organizations to build their very own non-profit fundraising pages at no cost and also train them to leverage social media tools such as Facebook & twitter for their fundraising campaigns. Using the internet for fundraising not only reduces the cost of mailers & postcards that eventually get recycled, but most importantly allows non-profits to engage with new and current donors and keep track of all the donations coming in more effectively. Allowing the donor to research the cause, create their own donor profile and keep track of how their donation adds to the overall fundraising goal, gives them a sense of pride and belonging.

At the end of the day, making sure your donors feel good about what they have done to support your fundraiser will automatically translate into a loyal donor and more new donations.

Raise Money Online For Your Causes’ Fundraiser

There are many ways to raise money online, some of which are ways that you may have never imagined or at least were not aware of previously. Most of these efforts to raise money online have to do with large fundraising operations that are used to benefit catastrophes or other large disasters, but not all. There are many different charities that try to raise money online for a number of causes that there are for people who wish the money raised is as numerous as the stars in the sky.

That is the way that it has been for raising money online. It is completely possible to raise money online in large volume and with minimal time and effort; however you need to really have the right tips and tricks for it. The reasons for this are numerous because many different non-profit organizations out there try to gather the donations that people are giving away every year. To say that competition is fierce out there for funds would be an understatement, so it takes a special type of person and cause to be able to raise money online form various donors. However, with the right training and instruction anyone can increase their ability to raise money online either now or in the future via the social web.

The reasons for this type of training is simple, many people will not give money to a cause that they don’t believe in. Therefore, you need to be able to sell your charity that you’re trying to raise money online for. It should also be noted that you should widen your spectrum geographically too. You should not try to limit yourself to just the local area in which you live because you could be denying yourself the opportunity to reach a much larger audience online.

To raise money, you really need to be cognizant of the audience that you wish to reach out to and raise money online from. Now, this audience may not just be limited to the people in your city or town. It may be a cause that affects people across the entire world and therefore it would be a good idea to broaden you search for donators to the entire world rather than just your own city or town. To do this you will want to try to use larger medium to raise money online.

These mediums will most likely include using email, blogs, websites, applications, widgets, press, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. You may be familiar with one or even all of these mediums; however they can be used to great effect in raising money. With these someone around the world from you can hear your message and understand that charity that you are trying to raise money online for. These mediums help you to reach across the world and broaden your exposure to people and places that you would not be able to on a regular basis. So it would behoove you if you are trying to raise money to look into either one or all of these different mediums to raise money online. There is no harm in trying and that is literally all you have to do, try.

Plays Well With Others: Socializing Your Fundraising Campaign

Often it feels as though something hasn’t happened until it’s happened online. And that’s as true for your fundraising efforts as it is for relationship statuses and your baby’s milestones (in excessive detail). People live almost every aspect of their lives on the web. It’s where they get information, do business, entertain themselves and most importantly, share with others.

Therein lies your fundraising success, an opportunity to maximize your efforts by reaching people through multiple platforms that have already laid the groundwork for you. But the pace at which these platforms are evolving is non-stop, inventing new ways to connect with people and increase your donor base. Still, one constant remains: human beings are social. They want to interact, to be engaged and acknowledged, and doing so, will spark the greatest reaction. Luckily, there are countless resources at your disposal to help you do just that. The trick is in knowing how to use them properly.

Twitter: no spam is good spam (unless you’re desperate. Then only on pizza.)

Twitter is great for quick updates and real-time campaigning, but you’ve got to be able to cut through the clutter to keep anyone’s attention. There’s a lot you can do with 140 characters to spread your message, but such limited space means each character needs to pull its weight:

• Strip your tweet. Keep it simple so the message isn’t bogged down by fluff, and room is left for others to re-tweet it. Include relevant keywords and stylize your tweet enough to sound human, but keep it short and sweet.

• Hashtag that puppy. Include Hashtags with topical nouns, causes, industries, etc that are associated with your message. This makes it more search friendly and helps to incorporate it as part of a conversation with users who are interested in that topic. Encourage others to re-tweet it.

• Follow tweeters carefully, and engage in a dialogue with them. If someone tweets you, respond back and re-tweet them. Ask your users questions, offer incentives and pass comments along. People are more likely to react if they feel like they’re talking with a human being, not a faceless organization.

• For the love of canned meat, don’t spam. Keep tweets relevant and engaging, not a barrage of useless information. Talk with your users. Don’t give them a rambling monologue.

Facebook: You like me! You really, really like me!

Facebook is all about community, to establish a link between you and your donor base. Once you get people to officially “like” you, they’re privy to all the great content updating your page. It offers a space for more in-depth conversation than Twitter and a richer atmosphere for your cause (with photos, profile information, associated groups and so on). But to avoid a moot Facebook profile that just sits there, you’ve got to create an experience for your fans:

• When creating your profile, define a vision or purpose for your page. Consider it from your fan’s viewpoint. What does you audience get out of “liking” your page? How can they interact with the cause and feel more connected to it?

• Update regularly with statuses and wall posts that are applicable to your cause and will get people to act upon seeing them: whether it’s just checking out your page or following a link through to a full donation. The spam rule, as always, is in effect here. Avoid hyperbolic statements and excessive capital letters that make people feel as though someone’s yelling at them.

• Be generous with your information, time and resources. Offer incentives that compel people to move forward and respond to comments quickly and keep a conversation flowing on your page. Make it so that people feel acknowledged and rewarded for helping your cause, be it with interesting linkable content or documented credit for donating that they can share on their own profile.
Piryx: the Swiss Army knife of social media.

While Facebook and Twitter are the most highly used networks, they’re only a sampling of the myriad of options for marketing your cause. In fact there are so many, that undertaking a complete social media campaign can feel daunting. Piryx understands this issue, having built a fundraising platform that gives access to countless social media sites and the tools to easily manage them, from one online hub.

A free account offers links to your online fundraising page through email, Facebook and Twitter, along with a simple analytics dashboard to help you keep track of your online influence and donations. Information and tips to master your social media campaign and spread your content throughout the web allow donors to market your cause for you and multiply your audience. Piryx makes the process as simple and manageable as possible so you can dedicate your time to raising money and championing your cause, without getting lost in tedious details.

Embracing the marketing potential of social media is necessary for any fundraising campaign that wants to make an impact. While door-to-door canvassing and bake sales are good for fresh air and a sugar rush, operating online is the best way to reach your donor base and maximize support. And learning the nuances of social media now, puts you in a greater position to adapt to the constant evolution of online marketing. So, hop online and master the fundraising campaign of 2011. Before we start quoting Bob Dylan.

By using the Piryx online fundraising platform, you can create and track as many facebook fundraising and/or twitter fundraising campaigns as you wish. Increase your causes’ reach worldwide, gain new supporters, donors, and donations with ease. All you need to do is create a free account at Piryx today!

By: Hayley Mullen

Online Fundraising: Get out of the Woods and Out of the Hole

Say you want to have a dinner party. A potluck! You’re pumped about this potluck, and want to make it the luckiest pot this side of the Mississippi (whichever side you happen to be on). Needless to say, you want a lot of people to come because, well, if nobody shows up then no food will appear and that would be a pretty useless dinner party. So you better start pimping that shizz.

The thing is, you live in a cabin deep in the woods, that’s tough for people to get to. Sorry ‘bout that. With no Internet connection and therefore (gasp!) no Facebook or Twitter accounts. So, your grapevine consists of you and your buddies’ phone numbers. You rack up your bill calling everyone you know and even spend the dough to get some flyers made, with a little map to you. You want this to be the potluck of the century! To end all potlucks! When the day rolls around you’re in the red, but the massive turnout is sure to make up for it in casseroles and Jell-O mold. It’ll be a huge spread and declared a massive success. Right? CUE DRUMROLL!

On second thought, cue “wamp-wamp” trombone: your friends show up with their girlfriends and a few others. An elderly couple that passed a telephone pole one with one of your flyers taped to it on their way to go mall-walking. And a couple of stoner kids who misread the meaning of “potluck” on the ads you stuffed under the wiper of their ’95 Cavalier. Anyone else that heard about it couldn’t figure out how to get there. So for those who actually brought food, there’s barely enough to make it worthwhile.
Oh yeah, and then a bear comes charging out of the woods and gobbles up what little there is before anyone gets a chance to eat it. Psyche!

What happened? Well, you were over before you began. Because you live amongst bears, but also because you’re not online, while everyone else is. It’s where the kids go for all their information nowadays – kids being almost anyone who, at one point, had a mother and father. Which brings us to this just being an elaborate metaphor for a small non-profit that relies on offline fundraising practices. TA-DA!

The party = your cause

The cabin = being offline and harder to find

Guests = donors

Potluck food = donations

Phone bills, flyers = traditional marketing costs

Evil bear = the numerous fees and expenses that go into running a fundraising campaign and end up devouring most of your donations since you didn’t reach enough people

Basically, if you’re not working from an online hub, the ratio between your efforts, costs and rewards will be seriously out of line compared to the benefits of using social media.
For a non-profit, getting online is the easiest and most cost-effective way to raise awareness for your cause and connect with donors at an exponential level. Social networks act as platforms that allow you to create fluid campaigns and reach targeted audiences - audiences that will do a lot of the legwork for you if you take advantage of the resources at your disposal and connect with them in the right way.

Word-of-mouth is the most effective marketing tool and the best part is that it’s possible to achieve with little to no cost. Madness? Sorcery? A shady deal that sounds like it would come out of the mouth of a bridge-dwelling troll? Actually, no…and don’t call us trolls. We just haven’t had a coffee yet.

Enter Piryx, a free fundraising platform that gives non-profits a space to create awareness and reach donors without the energy and money-draining minutia of traditional offline tactics. Time that would be spent organizing expensive charity galas and convincing people you’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses during door-to-door canvassing could be used to reach thousands of potential donors through Piryx’s social giving platform. Via email, Facebook, Twitter and multiple other applications (for free!) you can share your cause with others and enable them to fundraise on your behalf. Simple payment processing makes donations quick and easy, and access to analytics helps you keep track of your fundraising campaign’s performance.

All you have to do is supply information and create linkable content that donors will respond to and want to share, easily managed with Piryx’s free fundraising tools and services. Have you noticed that the word “free” comes up a lot? It’s not a typo – there are absolutely no costs associated with a Piryx account, beyond a 4.5% transaction fee for all the donations that come rolling in. None. Seriously. We ripped up the flyers and shot the bear. No, that would be cruel. We sent him to live on a farm far, far away.

So, the bottom line is: you can spend time and money busting your non-profit butt to register on peoples’ radar the old-fashioned way, and reach a fair number of people. Or let the World Wide Web do the dirty work and watch your donor base grow like bamboo on steroids. Piryx believes that causes shouldn’t have to begin raising money from the bottom of an expensive red hole, and that donations should go towards what they were meant for. Instead of gimmicks, events and expensive marketing campaigns that, offline, are necessary to get people to donate in the first place. A little counterproductive, wouldn’t you say? We say yes! So, we did something about it.

Go on. Sell the cabin, call your Internet provider and join the rest of the world. Everyone’s just wandering around with crudités and deviled eggs in search of a potluck to go to.

Fundraising Ideas That Help Causes Raise Money More Effectively

There are many ways to go about trying to brainstorm for quality and creative fundraising ideas. These ideas could be used for any number of applications however it would be a good idea to look at the root of the problem of why people want to go ahead with fundraising rather than trying to take it completely out of pocket. The idea about fundraising is that people do not want to pay everything for an event or fundraiser, completely out of their own pockets. So, they go out and look for an idea that could involve numerous people who would donate their time to try and to raise more money over their time invested into fundraising.

This could also be used to have children help you who may be too young to hold a job that could put money toward the cause at hand. This helps in many different ways when you’re trying to come up with fundraising ideas. Most of us have had to come up with fundraising ideas ourselves for either one group or another. We have all had to go out and sell something that we were not necessarily happy with selling, just to raise money. In a way you can almost think of this as a rite of passage of being in school and for raising money for any one of your causes. However, fundraising ideas have sprouted into many other different areas. The traditional means fundraising have proven to be not as successful as fundraising online, as this is what has advanced new fundraising ideas in lieu of new technologies, mainly web based.

New and creative fundraising ideas have slowly turned to the Internet as the Internet began to gain in popularity. This popularity was mostly due to the fact that the Internet started to be center stage in the lives of people who either use it as a social nerve or as a contact medium for any number of people. Using web channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, causes using these channels have become a standard for both getting your message about your fundraisers to the masses.

Another reason the Internet is so great for getting your message out about your fundraisers, is because it increases your exposure and engagement with potential new donors. With normal and traditional fundraising ideas, they were kept as close to home as humanly possible so that you would not have to go very far while you were involved in any fundraising efforts. However, with the advent of the Internet it has made it much easier to describe your fundraiser as well as send the message about your fundraising ideas all across the world. This will also help you reach people who may have interests that are extremely similar to your fundraisers but are not geographically nearby you.

In closing, there are many different fundraising ideas out there. However, the only thing that is limiting you in the amount of exposure your fundraiser has to both the outside world but also to the community around you. It would be a very good idea to explore all your options with fundraising while you have the opportunity to do so.