3 tees to combat slavery on Sevenly.

Using ecommerce & social networking to help 52 causes a year

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, cause organizations, brands, businesses, general public.

Guest post by Ryan Wood
Director of Public Awareness, Sevenly

Many Socialbrite readers may not have heard of the social enterprise Sevenly, so here’s a quick explanation of what we do and how we came about:

For every shirt you buy with Sevenly, we give $7 to a charity, and we focus on a different cause every week — 52 charity T-shirt campaigns per year, like this week’s effort for hunger relief efforts in Haiti. We’ve raised more than $400,000 so far toward charitable causes with this simple model: For every T-shirt purchased, $7 goes to charity.

We’ve run campaigns for organizations such as Autism Speaks ($22,855 raised), the Somaly Mam Foundation ($14,812 raised), The Girl Effect ($8,218 raised) and Pencils Of Promise ($9,884 raised), with many more on the way. Our ultimate goal is to help people, fund worthy causes and offer the magic kick some charities need to keep changing the world.

The big idea: Birth of a new kind of cause campaign

Before founding Sevenly, Dale Partridge and Aaron Chavez were both running highly successful businesses with incomes to match. They had always dreamed of becoming successful entrepreneurs because of the freedom it allowed, but soon realized that they weren’t giving back to society. So in April 2011 Dale and Aaron created Sevenly. After nearly a daylong conversation about how to tackle poverty, the idea of Sevenly emerged. They came to the realization that the biggest problem is not the fact that millions of people are in need; it’s the fact that billions are watching it happen. Sevenly was developed around the belief that people matter, and we figured that if we could just get people to start giving, then we could get them to start caring.

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36 million pages makes it easy for people to find their favorite causes

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, cause organizations, cause supporters.

Guest post by Janet Fouts
Social Media Coach

You may have read my post here a few months ago about social fundraising, and I wanted to share a new start-up in this category that has a unique twist.

Founded by Wayne Yamamoto and Jason Culverhouse, both of whom have several successful start-ups to their credit, Charity Blossom has listed close to a million nonprofits on their website. The list of charities runs the gamut from huge multi-national organizations like the Red Cross to tiny, very local charities like my favorite, Town Cats, which may not have the bandwidth to set up fundraising pages on their own. Listings on the site give an in-depth background on the charity based on their Form 990 documentation, so donors can make informed choices and even add comments or update some of the information on the charity, upload photos or discuss the charity right on the page.

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Wide use of social media by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

A look at how nonprofits are using social media to fund-raise for social good

Guest post by Frank Barry
Director, Professional Services, Blackbaud

According to a study by Blackbaud, NTEN and Common Knowledge, over 92 percent of nonprofit organizations have a presence on at least one social networking site, but most raise very little money through their social activity.

In fact, 87 percent have raised under $1,000 on Facebook since they began using the platform.

A big part of what holds nonprofit organizations back is the fact that they can’t risk full-fledged social media adoption because they’re short staffed and must focus on creating revenue and running programs — helping real people in the real world.

Yet despite the lack of widespread fundraising success, social media is clearly a hot topic in the nonprofit space. Conferences dedicated to helping nonprofits learn how to leverage social media for social good are popping up. Big social fundraising days coupled with workshops and other training events are taking advantage of the groundswell of social fundraising activity. And large online publications like Mashable are even covering social media for social good.

According to Darian Rodriguez Heyman, author of “Nonprofit Management 101″ and creator of the Social Media for Nonprofits conference, “In a world where Facebook is the equivalent of the third largest country on the planet, we have to ask ourselves, ‘How can nonprofits leverage the immense word-of-mouth potential that social media makes available to causes both large and small?’ Nonprofit leaders need practical tips and tools for fundraising, marketing, and advocacy if they are to maximize impact online and in general.”

So what is holding nonprofit organizations back and how are the top 1 percent succeeding? It’s clear from the data below that three big things contribute to the lack of fundraising success: 1) lack of budget, 2) lack of staffing, and 3) lack of focus on raising money.

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At the Vivanista Charitable Fundraising Summit and Bootcamp, held Saturday in San Francisco, Janet Fouts and I closed out the afternoon with a wide-ranging conversation with nonprofit representatives in the audience about social media tools and strategy.

The night before the summit, I put together a one-page color flyer in the visually pleasing style that has characterized these handouts from Socialbrite. Social Fundraising Tools for Nonprofits & Causes (a PDF found at bit.ly/fundtools) lists 10 platforms for raising funds, including:

The view of Coit Tower from the Art Institute on Saturday (photo by JD Lasica)

• Relative newcomers like Rally and give2gether

• GiveForward, a new platform to help people who need financial support for medical purposes

And others. Be aware that your mileage may vary with some of these platforms — they differ not only in pricing but in placement (your site or theirs), effectiveness with social networks, metrics dashboards and rules governing data ownership.

We’re releasing the flyer under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license, like others in this series of handouts:

• 40 hashtags for social good
• 12 steps to mobilize your cause
• 10 iPhone apps for social good
• 12 social action hubs

Video of sessions coming soon

After a full day of sessions, the give and take turned out to be a good way to wind up the summit, held at the San Francisco Art Institute (following a wonderful reception the evening before at the 12 Gallagher art gallery). Questions covered a range of topics, but many centered on internal processes and expectations. For instance:

Q: What do you say to an executive or department chief who insists on hitting certain milestones, such as 1,000 Twitter followers within six months of launch?

A: That’s the wrong metric to emphasize. You can get 10,000 followers within six months, but they won’t be worth much. The quantity of raw followers is less important than the quality — even a few dozen followers can be more useful if they’re passionate and committed to your cause. In the end, what matters isn’t the size of your following in social media but whether those people are taking actions in the real world to advance your mission.

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Learn how to disrupt the traditional practices of charitable fundraising

Guest post by Stacy Coleman
Senior Marketing Associate, Vivanista

Join us on Nov. 11 and 12 in San Francisco to take part in Vivanista’s Charitable Fundraising Summit, which will bring together volunteer leaders, fundraising event chairs and nonprofit development staff for inspiring keynotes, expert panels and training workshops.

With the goal of arming fundraisers and volunteers with tools to increase their fundraising effectiveness, The Fundraising Summit will address how to:

• Improve fundraising profitability and long-term viability in an uncertain economy
• Acquire new, tangible fundraising tools that can be integrated immediately
• Gain access to experts for real-life fundraising and donor-loyalty advice

The summit kicks off Friday evening Nov 11 with the VivaBrite Awards, which will honor individuals and nonprofits who have demonstrated outstanding leadership skills, fundraising acumen and creative thinking with respect to the successful execution of a charitable event.

Know an individual or organization that deserves the award? Nominate them using this link: vivanista.com/vivabrite-awards/nominate/ (Nominations close on Monday.)

On Saturday, Nov. 12, the summit will continue with a full day of workshops, panels and keynotes from leading experts, addressing key areas such as generating event revenue, social media and building sustainable audiences. Socialbrite founder JD Lasica will be speaking on the social media panel.

Additional speakers include: Bestselling nonprofit author Kay Sprinkle Grace; (RED) creator Tamsin Smith; GirlUp at The UN Foundation director Gina Reiss-Wilchins; LinkedIn nonprofit community leader Bryan Breckenridge; and director of nonprofit services at Causes, Susan Gordon of Causes.com, among others. See the full lineup of speakers and the summit’s schedule.

Special offer for Socialbrite readers!

Register now at Eventbrite. Socialbrite readers get a 20% discount by using the SOCIALBRITE-VIP code.

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The 2011 September Campaign. Our 5-year-anniversary video from charity: water on Vimeo.

An interview with the nonprofit’s director of digital

Guest post by Beth Kanter
bethkanter.org

Ifirst came across Paull Young in September 2008 when he launched a birthday campaign as part of charity: water’s September campaign. Fast forward a couple of years, and Paull is following his passion for clean water around the world as the director of digital for charity:water.

charity: water continues to be an innovator in the area of online fundraising. Earlier this month, I stumbled upon their brilliant personalized thank you videos. It got me curious about the overall campaign strategy, how they measure success and learning more about what works. Paull agreed to share his insights in this interview.

Share the organization’s elevator speech.

charity: water provides clean and safe drinking water in the developing world. We direct 100% of money we raise to projects. Every September we launch the September Campaign, an online grassroots fundraising campaign targeting a specific issue. This year is our fifth anniversary, and we’re funding a drilling rig for our partner in Ethiopia that can provide access to clean and safe drinking water to 40,000 people a year.

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Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, fundraising professionals, social media managers, cause supporters.

This is Part 6 of our series on social fundraising. See below for other articles in this series.

If you’re a nonprofit looking to raise funds online or an individual looking to support a favorite cause, there’s a new kid on the block you should know about: Rally. Rally is an online fundraising platform that helps causes raise money faster, easier and in a more social way.

Following in the tradition of Causes, Give2gether, Fundly and other social fundraising services we’ve been writing about in this series, Rally brings some impressive things to the party: a sleek, streamlined interface, a simple business model and a platform that will soon be open to anyone who wants to support a cause. We wrote about Rally in Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks.

The platform is currently restricted to beta testers, like Students of the World, which raised an impressive amount of money in a few weeks, but is expected to open up to everyone this fall. Rally will be for anyone — nonprofits, foundations, political campaigns, churches, sports teams, neighborhood improvement efforts, filmmakers creating a documentary — looking to leverage social media on behalf of a bigger idea. We’ll update this article when Rally flings open the doors wide.

Check out the Students of the World page on Rally to see what it’s all about. Students of the World is a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits tell their story through video and photography, and they achieved success on Rally by interacting with their supporters with photos, videos and conversation.

I recently visited the San Francisco headquarters of Rally — where they also host the “RallyPad” incubator space for fledgling startups — and interviewed Kaitlyn Trigger, Rally’s director of marketing.

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo

Rally is for nonprofits looking for a new revenue stream, Kaitlyn says, but it’s also for any person looking to raise funds to build a neighborhood playground or to raise money to support a friend with a medical condition.

“We know that one of the most powerful ways to get people to donate money is to have a friend ask them,” she says. “It’s the Uncle Joeys and Aunt Lucias of the world. When they tell family and friends about a cause they deeply care about, they’re going to respond much more generously than if an organization makes that ask.”

Rally has no monthly charges, no contract or set-up fees, and a flat per-donation fee of 4.5 percent, which drops to 4 percent when you raise a certain amount.

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Connecting people to causes through shirts that tell stories

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, fundraising professionals, community managers.

This article is part of our series on social fundraising.

Guest post by Brandon Hance
Founder & CEO, GoodThreads

In 2010 our family lost my aunt Carol to breast cancer. When tragedy strikes, I believe it is part of the human condition to find healing through “the fight” against the culprit – be it disease or disparity. Additionally, surrounding friends and family often rally around those who have been affected and show them support, caring and compassion.

This theory became blazingly clear to me as I watched my mother and close friends train for a 39-mile race to honor my aunt soon after her passing. Not only did they train, but they spent ample time, energy and money creating T-shirts for their team, each with unique messages dedicated to my aunt, and each remembering her in their own distinct way. As I observed this labor of love, I couldn’t help but think: There must be a better way to do this — and a way that actually benefits the organization.

Thus, GoodThreads was born, and the idea of connecting people to a cause through “shirts that tell stories” became a reality.

GoodThreads provides nonprofits with a technology that seamlessly integrates into the event registration and donation processes, while supporters are given the tools to create customized merchandise — T-shirts, hats, bags, water bottles, etc. — that allows them to tell their personal story and demonstrate their connection to the cause.

Nonprofit organizations that partner with GoodThreads enable their supporters to buy merchandise that can then be customized with their name, the name of a loved one, photos or other images, and personalized messages. GoodThreads also allows the nonprofit to identify what portion of the item’s cost will be donated to its cause.

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Image courtesy of Fundly

Nonprofits can increase funds raised by more than 50%, says Fundly CEO David Boyce

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, fundraising professionals, social media managers, donors.

This article is part of a series focused on social fundraising.

By Tamara Schweitzer
Socialbrite staff

Did you know that individuals donate $300 billion to nonprofits every year? But only 13 percent of that amount is given online. Why is that? According to David Boyce, CEO of the social fundraising platform Fundly, the only reason that number isn’t higher is because nonprofits don’t make it easier for their supporters to give online.

Boyce, who presented at the Social Media for Nonprofit event in New York last month, wants to help nonprofits make fundraising a more social and Web-based experience. Increasingly, charitable giving is moving online – in fact, online giving grew at a rate of 55 percent in 2010.

The problem, Boyce says, is that 90 percent of online donations are what he calls “one-and-done transactions.” Meaning, the supporter goes to the organization’s website, clicks on a form to donate, fills out their credit card information and hits contribute. There’s no shelf life to that action at all, and Boyce believes that’s not the way that most people want to interact when they give money away. “They want to join something and feel like they belong, so it needs to be inclusive and it needs to be social,” Boyce told me when we met at the conference.

What exactly is social fundraising?

Social fundraising is a way to leverage the power of your supporters’ social networks to gain more donations. If a supporter is giving to you, it’s because they care about your cause, and they’re going to want to share that with their friends, too. With social fundraising, you are opening up that individual act of giving to the power of social networks so that every transaction is just a jumping off point for supporters to be able to share their passion and commitment with their online networks.

Boyce says supporting a nonprofit is inherently a social experience. Want proof? According to figures from Fundly, people are 10 times more likely to make a donation when asked by a friend than when asked by an organization, and these gifts tend to be about 50 percent bigger.

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