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B Corporations: What do they mean for nonprofits?

Lindsay Oberst — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:01:42 +0000

B Corps use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.

A company either makes money or does good, right? Think again

Target audience: Social enterprises, nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, businesses, educators.

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

Anew type of corporation has come along that makes money and does good for society and the environment. They’re called B Corporations, for benefit corporations.

Nonprofits can smile about these dual-focused companies because they make great like-minded partners, and they may help fund and support their social good goals.

A new sector of the economy

B Corporations first appeared four years ago. Today, more than 400 companies across 50 industries and several countries have achieved certification by B Lab, the nonprofit that recognizes for-profit companies as being ethical, socially aware and eco-conscious.

Basically, B Corps have to do more than report to their shareholders; they have to consider the people around them and the world they work in. Being able to stand out in the social enterprise sector is a benefit for them.

I first learned about B Corps at a meeting in Atlanta and thought they sounded like a great idea for the increasing numbers of consumers seeking good companies. Of course, people at nonprofits are often seeking out companies behaving ethically as well.

Companies know that people want to be green. B Corps cut past the marketing hype and greenwashing as companies that are truly committed to policies that promote the social good.

One thing for nonprofits to consider about B Corps

Some nonprofit leaders have come out against B Corps. They say that nonprofits might now get as much money because people will choose to back B Corps rather than nonprofits.

Others argue that B Corps will in turn fund nonprofits as well as social benefit initiatives. Jordan Chazin, a B Lab Ratings Associate, says, “Many B Corps are incorporated as C or S Corps or LLCs and are technically designated as for-profit ventures, but elect to give up to 100 percent of their profits to charity.”

A few examples of B Corporations

Freeworld Media, a B Corp, is a digital marketing group that helps companies raise awareness with social and emerging media. Sean Wood, founder and CEO, described his company becoming a B Corp in a statement earlier this year: “We are proud to be a leader in the use of social media to foster corporate social responsibility. What matters to your customers matters to your business.”

Many companies that serve mainly nonprofit customers are deciding to become B Corps, including PhilanTech, Care2 and PICnet.

“Nonprofits need tools and services to support the pursuit of their missions,’ ” says Dahna Goldstein, founder of PhilanTech. “With B Corporations, nonprofits can be confident that their service providers are also committed to social and environmental responsibility.”

Nonprofits that want more information about the relationship between nonprofits and B Corps should visit bcorpsfornonprofits.com.

As a nonprofit, what do you think about B Corporations?

• 4 ways nonprofits can learn from social entrepreneurs (Socialbrite)

• The Hoop Fund makes its debut (Socialbrite)

• Catchafire: Connecting nonprofits & professionals (Socialbrite)

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Tips on how to mobilize your supporters

JD Lasica — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:50:54 +0000

George Weiner, CTO of DoSomething, during our panel

When you moderate a panel at BlogWorld Expo, ironically, sometimes you’re the last person to blog about it.

Such is the case with the Oct. 16 “Mobilizing your social network” panel with this all-star lineup: Andres Glusman of Meetup.com, Justin Perkins of Care2, George Weiner of DoSomething and Giselle Diaz Campagna of Free Speech TV. There were some valuable resources mentioned, so I’ll try to assemble them here into a neat package.

• JD Lasica (that’s me) offered a one-stop shop for resources on how nonprofits and cause organizations can use social tools: http://bit.ly/mobilize — a landing page that aggregates resources on social networking tutorials, handouts, top fund-raising tools and much more. This includes the short presentation I gave during the panel on steps to mobilize your supporters. Also, download this free flyer on 12 steps to mobilize your cause: bit.ly/12steps-flyer

• Andres Glusman of Meetup.com (8 million members) offered a powerful presentation that went beyond showing off the organization’s cool Meetup Everywhere feature — a way for you to mobilize your constituency. “Recognize people who are active on your behalf,” Andres urged the crowd. “Create a regular routine that can be annual, quarterly or monthly. Build a routine that people can set their watch to, to build up momentum around an organization.”

See Meetup Everywhere on Tumblr for best practices and examples.

A Mashable meetup in Greece.

• Justin Perkins offered this frogloop article about cutting-edge integrated social media strategies and multi-channel social network campaigns. (By the way, Care2 is up to 14 million members now and still growing like gangbusters.)

• Justin cited the campaign Care2 did for climate change advocates 1Sky. They recruited an email list of 10,000 people, used data mining to determine which Facebook and Twitter users would be most the most active and created a funnel that let to five or six precinct captains who canvased door to door and organizing house meetings on behalf of a campaign. I may have gotten a detail or two wrong but the overall point was that organizations should take steps to move from online action to offline activity.

• Justin also pointed to this article on how to bring social network avatars to life and an essay on how slacktivism is a misnomer.

• Giselle Diaz Campagna offered to work with nonprofits interested in having their stories told through video on the freespeech.org site and DirecTV Channel 348 and Dish Network Channel 9415. Don’t step away from controversy, she advised. “We loved it when Glenn Beck did a piece on us,” she said.

• George Weiner gave a passionate presentation that showed how social media and video could be used as part of an educational campaign to curtail violence against teen girls and young women. One out of three teens will be abused online. If your nonprofit has any programs for young people, you should collaborate with DoSomething.

• Several of the audience members were with political organizations rather than nonprofits, such as two representatives of evoiceamerica, which makes it easy to email your elected reps.

• Justin also pointed to this resource of 17 nonprofit benchmark studies.

Other highlights from BlogWorld’s nonprofit track

I was darting in and out of sessions during BlogWorld — juggling interviews I was giving, interviews I was conducting and networking in the hallway — but managed to capture a few other highlights:

• Learned more about mobile fundraising service Mobilecause from its CEO, Douglas Plank.

70% of all US households donated to a nonprofit last year, totaling $227 billion.

• According to Douglas: 70% of all US households donated to a nonprofit last year, totaling $227 billion given by individuals. 7% of the US gross domestic product comes through the nonprofit sector. 8% of Americans work in the nonprofit sector.

• Mark Horvath of InvisiblePeople.tv led a great discussion-in-the-round. Snippets: He recommends YouTube for video hosting because of its nonprofit program, while others said nonprofits should use Vimeo because the site supports Creative Commons licenses and lets you actually download the damn video. (In either case, read their Terms of Use.)

• Horvath said YouTube turned over some of its front page programming to the subject of homelessness one day this year, and fully one quarter of the views came from mobile devices.

• One participant recounted the funny story of trying to live-stream the CTO of the federal government from his Washington, DC offices. “Live streaming from a government office? One of the most difficult things in the world to accomplish.”

• Quote of the conference came from Mark Horvath, talking about importance of audio in any video. “I was once told by an audio guy, ‘Without us you’re just surveillance.’ I will go with audio over video.” Excellent!

• This got rise from crowd: “I just went to live-streaming panel and they started 20 minutes late because they were having big problems live-streaming the event.”

• Jessica Kirkwood clued me in to Spredfast, an enterprise social media management system (with “semi-open APIs”) that’s worth a look, even for nonprofits. Prices start around $40 a month.

• Learned about UnitedStatesArtists.org, whose mission is to “illuminate the value of artists to society.”

• Judy Chang showed off the PayPal mobile app, which lets you take PayPal with you wherever you go.

• I did interviews with the wonderful Mera Szendro Bok of New Media Rights and Karen Bantuveris of VolunteerSpot and hope to get those up soon.

• Thanks to Chris Noble, Marijane Miller, Jim Turner and WhatGives? for their amazing work in pulling the nonprofit track together.

A message to Twitter

I’ve noticed that the shelf life of tweets has become shorter and shorter in recent months. All the dozens of valuable tweets using the #bwe10mob hashtag we created — only 11 days ago!! — have already disappeared from Twitter search (but not Google search).

That’s not only disappointing. It’s socially irresponsible.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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8 online petition tools: How to make a difference

juliekatz — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:10:06 +0000

Sizing up your options & strategies for being effective with your online petition drive

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, educators, foundations, businesses, individuals. This is part of Creating Media, our ongoing series designed to help nonprofits and other organizations learn how to use and make media.

By Julie Katz
Socialbrite staff

Political and social activists have a lot of choices these days when launching a petition campaign. But not all petition sites are created equal.

What options do you have to wage an effective petition effort? Here’s a breakdown of what you need, where to go, what to do and how to make an impact. (You can add Change.org and Causes to the list below — we covered them in our roundup of fundraising sites.)

First, you need a cause. Make sure your cause is clear and concise. Have some background information available to buttress your case, including links and citations. Supplement it with media: a video, photo or story that personalizes the issue.

Here are the major petition sites that you can choose from:

The Petition Site

1Care2’s first-rate The Petition Site offers a simple online form letter that makes it easy to sign and send off. Making a petition takes three easy steps on this site: Start the petition page, add your information and create a “petition promo” (how it will appear on the site). Viewers will find the petition statement or letter directly next to the form they will be signing on the petition’s page.

The nonprofit marine conservation group Oceana recently posted a petition asking Congress to save bluefish tuna, a fish rapidly facing extinction because of unmonitored overfishing. The petition has received 10,600 signatures toward a goal of 15,000.

Petition Online

2Petition Online offers a slightly more intricate process to posting a petition. First, you can choose to have individuals’ names hidden, which can help gain signatures but lessens impact, in our view. Second, more information such as comments or zip code can be displayed next to the signature. The site’s most impressive feature is the ability to enter tags and targets for search engine optimization and community outreach. However, we don’t like the fact that you can’t see how much support a petition has gathered beforehand.

As a bonus kick, PetitionOnline’s Twitter account offers updates on recent petitions. The site claims it’s collected more than 87 million signatures with tens of thousands of active petitions. Here’s an example of a petition against the slaughter of horses. PetitionOnline is a branch of DesignCommunity, owned by Artifice, Inc.

Go Petition

3Go Petition is an independent site boasting petitions from more than 75 countries and a No. 1 ranking from Google. What makes GoPetition a bit different is its claim of working with non-governmental organizations and government patrons.

GoPetition also offers filtering options such as the ability to filter profanity and duplicate signatures as well as SEO capabilities. Typical petitions call for stopping the killing of Cape Town’s baboons and one that calls on Denmark to repeal a law banning certain breeds of dogs.

Act.ly Twitter Petitions

4And now for something completely different. Act.ly is a Twitter-based petition site that couldn’t be more simple: Type in the target’s Twitter name, type in what you are petitioning them to do, and there you have it! A petition is created and, as anything goes in the world of tweeting, you can start spreading it like wildfire. A page comes up with the direct tweet and the full message. Act.ly will display an area to show whether the target has responded or not.

Here’s an example asking Whirlpool Corp. not to close a refrigerator manufacturing plant in Evansville, Ind., that would put more than 1,100 people out of work. People have created 2,100 petitions on the relatively new site so far.

Online Petition

5Online Petition, another independent petition site, is pretty straightforward: Like the other sites, it lets anyone start, promote and sign petitions. It also helps you learn how to maximize your reach to gather thousands of signatures.

Online Petition offers a way to attach blog posts to your petition so that people can see the progress you’re making. Here’s an example of a petition I just created asking Rollins College to to reconsider its contract with a catering company.

Google Forms

6If you’re going to use mass email or a blog format, you can create a petition form through Google Docs. Simply log into Google Docs, go to Create New and choose the Form option from the drop down menu. After saving, the document can be emailed or you can get the HTML code to embed it in your blog.

WordPress Petition Plug-in

7Download the WordPress Petition Plug-inand a petition form goes straight into your blog post. After a user submits the details, she receives an email to confirm her signature. Once the petition is complete, the creator can export the full details.

iPetitions

8iPetitions, a site run by RemoteIT, an Internet business service, has collected more than 17 million signatures for causes ranging from wildlife to business reform, from political campaigns to religious issues.

We’re not fond of this site. More often than not we’re met with this message: “The petition you tried to access has expired or has been taken down by its sponsor.”

How to be effective with your petition drive

Targets: Make sure to have links to the websites, blogs or profiles connected to the issue you are petitioning for or against.

Presence: Don’t leave your petition waiting to be noticed! Your petition should be unavoidable to be effective. Use social media outlets to their greatest potential. Create a Facebook Page or Group for the petition with links, information and space for people to share their personal stories. Personalization gets more attention than a form letter.

Social bookmarking: Consider e-mail to be the digital age equivalent to being hassled by petitioners with clipboards on street corners. Indiscriminate e-mail blasts are considered spam. Instead, spread the word on Twitter, Facebook and your blogs! Interlink as much as possible to spread the word. You can link the petition site back to Facebook and your blog to give it more heft.

Pros and cons to online petitions

Pros: The major upside is this: Here’s an easy way to get the word out about your cause and perhaps make a difference. Online petitions are particularly useful if you are mobilizing opinion on behalf of a cause while on a deadline. Demonstrating strong public opinion in mass quantities is especially useful if you’re racing the clock to a major vote or decision.

Cons: A few drawbacks come with petitioning online. First, there’s the “good deed syndrome,” sometimes called slacktivism: the notion that by filling out an online petition, a user considers that an “accomplishment” rather than becoming educated and involved. A second drawback is the “click and send effect” among petition gatherers: the notion that quantity beats quality. While the number of signatures is important, the quality of the petition and the input of the people signing it — eg., people taking time to write a message — proves more persuasive than raw numbers.

Last, consider your social capital. Author Clay Shirky writes about social capital in his books “Here Comes Everybody” and “Cognitive Surplus.” Social capital is what we gain from interacting within our community. The “I-do-for-you-and-you-do-for-me” ideology presents a social contract between individuals, and petitions play an important role in our civic space.

Have you ever created an online petition? What has worked — or not worked? Have we missed any sites? Please leave a comment below.

Image at top by greenforall.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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24 tools for fundraising with social media

Fri, 28 May 2010 17:02:30 +0000

How to raise money to support your favorite cause

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, cause supporters, businesses

By Vivian Ramirez and J.D. Lasica
Socialbrite staff

In the old days — before 2005, remember? — we would solicit our friends to raise funds through walk-a-thons, cake raffles and similar homespun events. If you were raising money for a favorite cause, you’d look to your immediate friends, family and co-workers.

Today, social media has changed the game. With the surge of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, you can reach a much wider audience to raise money for your cause. The success of such online efforts varies widely: 30,000 runners in the Flora London Marathon raised $7.3 million through the online fundraising platform Justgiving. On a smaller scale, the Trail of Tails Pet Walk and Festival raised $41,000 for the Jacksonville, Fla., Humane Society using social media tools. And New York dancer Amanda Gravel raised $988 using the widget ChipIn for the campaign against breast cancer.

How did it work for them? Social tools now make it easy to solicit donations using fundraising widgets or badges, social networks like Twitter and Causes (~~part of~~ integrated with Facebook). With Network for Good or PayPal usually handling the transaction, the solicitors can concentrate on sharpening their message and targeting the right recipients. Not all take the same approach: Some let you add advertising to your site, or create personal webpages, as a way to support your cause instead of ponying up dinero.

Depending on the size of your campaign and budget, cause advocates and small nonprofits now have lots of tools to choose from — further down, we’ll tell you about the ones for mid-size and large nonprofits. (See last month’s 10 mobile apps for social good for ideas on how to donate or volunteer using mobile devices.)

Here are 24 tried-and-true tools for online fundraising. Have we used them all? No. But if you’ve used some of these, add your observations. And we know there’s a 25th out there, so tell us your favorites in the comments below.

ChipIn: The easy way to collect money

1ChipIn is the most popular widget used by fundraisers today for distributed fundraising. It’s a simple tool you can place on your website or on a Facebook profile page. It amounts to a donate button that comes with a thermometer that measures the campaign’s progress. If you don’t have a site, you can subscribe to ChipIn and they’ll host your campaign for free. Subscribing to ChipIn is free, but you’ll need to set up a PayPal account to process donations. Every monetary contribution made through ChipIn is charged at a rate beginning at 2.5 percent of the amount donated.

GlobalGiving: Donate to grassroots projects

2GlobalGiving is an online marketplace for philanthropy where anyone can post an idea and get it funded. The nonprofit connects donors with community-based projects that need support in the United States and abroad. You select the projects you want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution and get regular progress updates — so you can see your impact. The organization sustains itself with a 15 percent optional fee you can add so that 100 percent of your donation goes directly to the project.

Change.org: Empowering people to take action

3A social enterprise, Change.org helps to raise awareness about important social causes and to empower people to take action, chiefly through partnerships with leading nonprofits. Actions might range from joining an organization and making a personal pledge to signing an online petition or calling a congressperson’s office about an issue like homelessness or sustainable food. In addition to signing petitions or leaving comments, you can raise funds by creating a page with photos, videos, logos and supporting materials. Change.org’s fundraising pages use donation widgets with progress thermometers that track the amount raised. Basic membership is free; it costs $20 a month for those who want customized pages. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent for every transaction.

ChangingThePresent: Make the world a better place

4ChangingThePresent is a nonprofit that connects you with more than 1,500 meaningful if nontraditional charitable gifts — for instance, “stop global warming for $20″ or “adopt a tiger for $40.” Browse by cause or nonprofit to find a gift for friends or for your own charitable giving. The service also encourages donors to make simple donations of any amount through their home pages. A premium profile costs $100 per year. Donation processing fee: 3 percent of each donation plus 30 cents.

Razoo: Experience the joy of giving

5Razoo is a new way to donate and raise money online. Whether you want to donate money, run a fundraiser for your favorite nonprofit or raise money as a nonprofit, Razoo offers simple, secure tools to achieve your goals. A nonprofit based in Washington, DC, Razoo helps donors find inspiring giving opportunities and helps nonprofits and volunteers with fundraising pages, social media tools and donation processing.

Causes: Empowering anyone to impact the world

6Causes is a wonderful way to gain attention for a cause. Co-founded by Sean Parker, an early member of Facebook’s executive team, Causes allows fundraisers to solicit donations from their own contacts and recruit volunteers who want to participate on behalf of a cause. People who use the site as a way to socialize can also participate in fundraising ideas by posting Cause profiles on their Facebook page. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent through Network for Good; ~~only Facebook members~~ anyone can donate.

givezooks!: Support a cause in minutes

7givezooks!, an online fundraising platform, lets individuals, nonprofits, foundations and companies create an account and start raising funds for a cause. It’s new givezooks!eventslets nonprofits create and publish events online, create, send and track email invitations and reminders, promote causes through Facebook and Twitter, sell tickets and manage RSVPs. Transaction fee for events: 2.5 percent per ticket purchased or donation received (up to a maximum of $19.95/per ticket). For online campaigns for nonprofits, monthly subscription fees start at $129/month with no transaction fee.

FirstGiving: Tools to benefit charitable causes

8FirstGiving is a U.S. subsidiary of U.K.-based JustGiving. The site provides easy-to-use tools to benefit charities. Subscribers are able to fundraise through their own Web pages on the site. The basic platform of is free. For those who want to customize their pages and to link them back to their own sites, the annual fee is $300. Donation processing fee: 5 percent plus 2 percent for credit card processing.

SixDegrees: Spread a ripple of good

9SixDegrees.org, an affiliate of Network for Good, enables social networking with a social conscience. Through the site, you can support your favorite charities by donating or creating fundraising badges — as well as check out the favorite causes of other people, including celebrities. Through tools such as donation widgets, which can be posted in places around the Web, people are encouraged to give to causes easily. The badges provided by SixDegrees can be customized by adding photos, videos and other narratives. Progress is tracked at the top of the badge, though the badges do not have thermometers. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent with no setup costs.

RT2Give: Retweet a worthy cause, give $10

10RT2Give is Twitpay‘s fundraising solution for nonprofits that handles secure processing of donations over social networks such as Twitter. Last month on World Malaria Day, three organizations teamed up for a week and used RT2Give to raise money for disease-preventing bed nets. (Each $10 donation was matched by the Case Foundation up to $25,000.) Twitter itself used the TwitPay platform for donations to its Hope140 campaign to #EndMalaria. The site can use some copy editing: It says “pay with bank account,” but then asks for your credit card number. Expect to see a lot more of these campaigns on Twitter (note: Twitter-based Tipjoy bit the dust last year).

JustGive: Removing barriers to charitable giving

11By setting up a fundraising page on JustGive, nonprofits can solicit donations and set up a Donate Now button that they can use on their own sites. Donation processing fee: 3 percent with no set-up costs or monthly fees.

Crowdrise: Using social networks to raise funds

12Crowdrise is a new service that gives cause supporters an easy way to crowd-source fundraising. Whether you’re running a marathon, volunteering or have causes that you care deeply about, create your own fundraising pages, choose from over a million charities to raise money for and then share them on social networks. Crowdrise provides incentives to users by awarding bonus points toward prizes.

YourCause: Fundraising through personal Web pages

13 The mission of YourCause is to empower individuals to change our world — leveraging your own voices, networks and spheres of influence to improve the lives of others. The dedicated and accomplished YourCause team is committed to supporting and facilitating the efforts of a caring member community and the causes they champion so passionately.

Better The World: Raise money for causes by surfing

14Better The World is a platform that lets you raise money for your cause simply by surfing the Web — and downloading a sidebar that will be used to display relevant ads on the pages you visit. Charities spanning the whole world have partnered with the company to give users everywhere many options to choose from.

Pifworld: Play it forward

15The letters PIF in Pifworld stand for “play it forward.” Playing it forward is donating online to a charity project and inviting friends to do the same. The Amsterdam-based site launched in March 2009 and currently has over 45 charity projects on the platform. By mobilizing communities, together we can create positive change and eventually help wildlife, save a rainforest or build a school.

PincGiving: A platform for online fundraising

16PincGiving helps corporations and charities with their philanthropic goals. Donate to the charity of your choice in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia; enable fundraising on your organization’s website; create a peer to peer fundraising campaign or access millions of dollars in grant money, all in the currency of your choice.

Universal Giving: Donate or volunteer for global causes

17Universal Giving is a marketplace that allows people to give and volunteer with top-performing projects all over the world. The organization passes along 100 percent of the donations you make to the nonprofit of your choice.

SocialVibe: Partnering with brands to support charity

18SocialVibe is a micro-fundraising social media utility that connects nonprofits and individuals with brands, empowering them to engage with sponsors and share branded content with their social graph to benefit their causes. SocialVibe has raised over $700,000 for more than 40 nonprofits by getting corporate partners to engage in a more interactive means of advertising. Users of the site don’t have to donate money at all as corporate sponsors do all the donating. Individuals are simply encouraged to donate ad space on their social network sites by adding the SocialVibe widget to their MySpace, Facebook or other networking pages or blogs.

Giving Impact: Empowering supporters through sharing

19Giving Impact, a Web-based service from Minds on Design, describes itself as “an online fundraising platform for nonprofits that empowers supporters through sharing and offers organizations flexibility to run multiple campaigns with a custom donation experience at an affordable price.” Like any new venture, proceed with caution, but we wish them well. Giving Impact charges a monthly fee of $30 with a $1 transaction fee for donations ~~under~~ above $20; donations are handled through PayPal.

Tools for larger fundraising efforts

Nonprofits looking to launch much wider campaigns that entail more sophisticated outreach and monitoring may want to look into higher-end fundraising packages. Depending on your needs, these solutions may provide better support for long-running or large-scale campaigns. In general, these services may cost from a few hundred dollars a month to thousands of dollars or more for a campaign. This is not a comprehensive list of fundraising solutions but rather a few that struck a chord with us:

Artez: Turn supporters into fundraisers

20Artez Interactive provides a suite of online fundraising tools that let you tailor a campaign to your nonprofit’s specific needs. Supporters can easily make donations and purchase tickets to an event. Artez also make it easy for you to extend your event or cause’s brand into the realm of social media, and it provides customers with a rich set of reporting tools.

Convio: Converting fans into lasting donors

21Convio provides marketing, fundraising, advocacy and donor database tools to nonprofits. Its TeamRaiser for Special Events module allows users to translate their mission into online or integrated marketing programs that can acquire, engage and convert individuals into becoming lasting supporters. Users are able to set up individual and team fundraising pages with measurement and reporting capabilities. Constituent360, an online constituent database, is included as part of TeamRaiser.

Care2: Access to a huge community of social activists

22Care2 doubles as both an online community with more than 12 million people who actively involve themselves in both social and environmental causes and as a platform for activism and fundraising. By bringing together nonprofits, individuals and socially responsible businesses, it is able to help nonprofits and companies find new supporters for their causes and in the process help them grow targeted email lists of supporters, activists and potential donors. About 500 large and mid-size nonprofits have used Care2’s social networking strategies, which include its click-to-donate races, email strategies, online petitions, healthy living solutions, eco-shopping and e-cards. Campaign fees start at about $5,000.

Donor Perfect: Helping cultivate donor relationships and achieving terrific fundraising results

23Donor Perfect comes in packages for small and growing nonprofits and packages for mid-size and large nonprofits. Depending on the size of your organization, Donor Perfect offers an online software solution to encourage giving among your supporters. Smaller packages are priced at $39 and $119 per month and the premier package costs $199 per month.

Kintera: Supporting your organization’s walkathon and other “team” fundraising events.

24Kintera’s Friends Asking Friends is being used by larger nonprofits such as Amnesty International USA. Since it allows the creation of sophisticated and customized distributed campaigns for fundraisers with multiple pages, it has become a convenient tool for many large-scale campaigns. With the use of this software, administration can be centralized no matter how many the supporters and volunteers there are or how many pages had been set up for the charity’s purposes. Setup fee for Friends Asking Friends is $1,400, plus a percentage of each donation solicited.

Final thoughts

Determining which tool is best for your organization requires planning and research. Look around and know what other organizations are using and how it works for them. If you’re planning to purchase software, compare prices and see if the price is worth the potential payoff. Consider whether your staff is equipped with the technical skill to run the software. If not, are you willing to spend a bit more for technical support?

If you’re an individual supporting a cause or a small nonprofit, you should try out some of the free online tools. Go ahead, start supporting your cause!

Do you use other tools for online fundraising? What has worked for you? Tell us #25!

• Behind the success of 10 top Causes (Socialbrite)

• 10 mobile apps for social good (Socialbrite)

• A directory of top cause organizations (Socialbrite)

• Social bookmarks of fundraising tools and cause platforms (compiled by JD Lasica on Delicious)

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