Harman Interactive LLC » Fundraising

Fundraising Thermometers for Your Website

betsyh — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:54:13 +0000

As nonprofit organizations move into the busy year-end fundraising seasons, many are starting to update their websites with their year-end goals and reasons for supporting the organization. For organizations that want a Free simple graphic thermometer to display their progress toward their goal, here are a few options. All of these are quick and easy for non-techies to use and will let the organization include funds raised both online and off line in the goal progress.
Note – with all of these you’ll need to re-generate the code to paste it on your website each time you want to update your goal.

Fasttrackfundraising.com
Fundraiserinsight.org
usafundraising.com

Joomla and Wordpress also have thermometer plugins.

Charity widgets that include thermometers such as ChipIn and Just Give may also be an option for you. These tools can be used to process your online gifts and will track your online giving in real time. These widgets can also be posted on blogs.
As you add thermometers to your site, keep in mind that nobody wants to be the first one and maybe not even the second one to donate toward your goal. There is psychology involved and once the ball gets rolling, the momentum builds.

Please share the tools that you use to create fundraising thermometers for your website.

Harman Interactive Expertise

betsyh — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 00:01:26 +0000

Betsy Harman has worked for and with nonprofit organizations for 20 years. When you work with Harman Interactive LLC, you’ll benefit from Betsy’s expertise and practical “can do” approach.

She’ll help you fully utilize email and the web in concert with your traditional fund-raising and marketing tools to maximize results.

Harman Interactive LLC can work with your organization on an ongoing retainer, provide a quick development and marketing audit with suggestions you can act on right away, or help you with a specific project. Learn more about our consulting services here.

Widgets To Promote Personal Fundraising

betsyh — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:20:00 +0000

Because so many people have their own blogs, websites, and pages on My Space, FaceBook etc… these days, smart nonprofits are leveraging this fact and encouraging people to post buttons and badges on these sites to spread the word about the organizations they believe in and encourage others to donate. There are a variety of tools out there – several that are nearly free – for this purpose.

I am currently raising money online for Lawrence Hall Youth Services. I will be bowling in a bowl-a-thon in early March. It was actually supposed to be tonight but we have a lot of snow here in Chicago so it was postponed. So – more time to raise money for it!

It only took about 5 seconds to create a badge to post on my blog. The personal fundraising page that went with it took a bit longer to create – maybe 5 minutes.

Early in my fundraising career I worked with an organization that had bowl-a-thons almost every weekend. It would have been great if we had a tool for personal fundraising pages and widgets back then. But personal fundraising pages and badges to promote them aren’t just for “a-thons” anymore. Create a page to encourage people to donate to your favorite charity in celebration of your birthday or ask your volunteers to each create a page that explains why they volunteer and encourages others to get involved too. Have fun with it! And if you feel inspired, donate to Lawrence Hall this month. It is a great organization.

Another organization I donate to and love is WWOZ public radio in New Orleans. They are revitalizing the music in New Orleans. I recently helped them create a celebrity badge using Six Degrees and Network for Good.

Projected Online Fundraising Growth

betsyh — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 03:38:00 +0000

I was just reading through “PBS Development News You Can Use” and found a link to an interesting article from the Harvard Business School Newsletter. It included notes from the 2004 Social Enterprise Conference. Ted Hart, CEO of ePhilanthropy Foundation, spoke at the conference and shared these stats about the projected growth of online fundraising:

Using donor profile statistics from HJC New Media of Toronto, Hart said that online giving ballooned from just $10 million in 1999 to an estimated $1.9 billion in 2003. Online donations are still a small part of overall giving, but at the present rate, by 2010 one-third of money donated will be given online, he predicted.

You can read the whole article here: http://workingknowledge.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=4006&sid=-1&t=special_reports_social2004