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.