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.

How Rally differs from its competitors

I asked Kaitlyn how Rally differs from its main competitors — all of whom do estimable jobs — and she laid out these reasons:

• Customization: Rally allows causes to completely customize their donation pages to align with their brand identity, while Fundly and Give2gether have a set modular template.
• Fan fundraising: Rally empowers your supporters to instantly create their version of your donation page and post their own content about your cause. Give2gether doesn’t accommodate this, and this feature is minimized in Fundly’s user experience.
• Ongoing vs. project-based: Rally is built for causes that want to raise money year round with multiple different campaigns. We make it easy for you to create unlimited donation pages, each with its own design, copy, and donation amounts. Give2gether and Fundly allow you to create only one page. Give2gether also asks you choose an end date for your campaign, and they transfer money into your account only at the end of the campaign.
• Pricing: Rally has its own payment processing network (just like PayPal), so we charge no additional fees on top of the 4 to 4.5 percent transaction fee. Both Fundly and Give2gether charge their own transaction fee, plus an additional credit card or PayPal processing fee on top of that. They both also charge a monthly fee, which Rally doesn’t do.

In this series on Socialbrite

• What social fundraising means for your nonprofit

• Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks

• Fundly: Tap into your supporters’ social networks

• GoodThreads: Custom T-shirts as a fundraising tool

• HelpAttack!: Unleash the charitable power of social media

• Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause

• Mobile: The next frontier of nonprofit fundraising

• 10 tips for a successful fundraising event

The post Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause appeared first on Socialbrite.

Today is my birthday, and in the tradition of other social media strategists working in the nonprofit space like Beth Kanter (I wrote about her last birthday campaign in January) and Geoff Livingston, I’d like to ask your help in making the day special for some enterprising young people in Colombia.

But first a quick word of explanation. This post comes in two parts: this introductory fund-raising appeal, followed by an interview with the founder and CEO of Jolkona Foundation, which is running the campaign and scores of others like it.

Empower young entrepreneurs in Colombia’s slums

This is the first time I’ve ever directly asked my blog readers and followers on Twitter and Facebook to donate to a campaign of mine, though I’ve spotlighted dozens of worthy causes over the years. So, please donate here — looking for nine people to donate an average of $25. Details:

What: Support young people in the slums of Bogotá, Colombia, as they develop their own community internet cafe business, called MegaRed (pictured above). The cafe provides opportunities for young entrepreneurs to create a better future for their families while providing a safe and positive environment for young people at risk of being recruited or attacked by armed groups.

What’s cool & different: Jolkona.org showcases scores of great causes to help out — and you get individualized feedback and progress reports on how your donation made a difference in people’s lives.

How much: We’re asking for $25, or whatever you can afford.

How: Click the Give button on this page. You’ll be able to track their progress in the months ahead.

Thank you! Please retweet or Facebook it if you can.

Jolkona: One-to-one philanthropy

Imet Adnan Mahmud, co-founder and CEO of Jolkona, during Beth Kanter’s book signing party for “The Networked Nonprofit” at TechSoup Global last month — and was immediately impressed by his seriousness and dedication to helping great causes through one-to-one philanthropy.

Jolkona is at the bleeding edge of this phenomenon, which will become an increasingly important part of charitable giving in the years ahead, as young people in particular want transparency, interaction and accountability when supporting a cause.

Adnan says Jolkona is the first nonprofit “to give tangible feedback on your donation.” Kiva, which pioneered the technique, provides entrepreneurs with loans. And while nonprofits like charity:water and Global Giving often give updates on projects, Jolkona is positioning itself as a technology platform that enables one-to-one philanthropy for nonprofits of any size.

Watch, download or embed our interview on Vimeo

The year-old Jolkona — which means “drop of water” in Bengali (Adnan is a native of Bangladesh) — currently showcases 75 projects in 35 countries, including the United States.

Jolkona’s premise is simple but powerful: Support a library in Tibet that needs $50 to buy books, and you’ll get the list of the books purchased through your donation. Help people in Bangladesh and Myanmar get an artificial limb for $200 — $200! — and you’ll receive a before and after photo. In Iraq, you can save a girl from an honor killing for $120: You get the story of the girl you saved, though for security reasons they can’t supply a name or photo. And in the U.S., you can provide field trips to a classroom of disadvantaged children in Seattle.

Says Adnan: “If you ask any nonprofit, Do you want to tell your supporters how their money was used, they’ll all tell you, Yes I do. But they don’t because they’re strapped for resources. Jolkona decided to come in and provide that technical infrastructure.

“Our focus is on youth philanthropy,” he adds. “We’re focused on galvanizing this next generation of givers. We’ve seen the frustration of this generation — that they don’t know where their money is going to. … We want people to feel that their [donation] can make a difference.”

It does, and the Jolkona team has gone out of its way to provide transparency and dispel worries that surfaced after last year’s revelation that Kiva wasn’t being forthright about its donations process.

Jolkona is now accepting nonprofit partners, though there’s a waiting queue. “If you are doing great work and are committed to showing impact, we are your best partners” as a platform solution, Adnan says.

The post Support my birthday campaign on Jolkona! appeared first on Socialbrite.