For 50 days—from December 13, 2007 to January 31, 2008—thousands of individuals competed for donors, donations, and matching awards from the Case Foundation for their favorite charitable causes as part of the Foundation’s first-ever Giving Challenge.

Conceived as a way to test the awesome potential of online fundraising, to move people from saying they care about a cause to demonstrating they care about it, and to help people from all backgrounds realize their potential to be philanthropists, the experimental Giving Challenge comprised two events. America’s Giving Challenge in PARADE Magazine and on PARADE.com raised $1,193,024 from 46,044 donors for 2,482 causes. The Causes Giving Challenge on Facebook raised a total of $571,686 from 25,795 unique donors for 3,936 causes. And in both challenges, causes with the highest numbers of unique donors received awards from the Case Foundation.

But the financial figures alone don't capture the full impact of the Challenge. The competition increased participating causes' visibility among a larger network of supporters and in the mainstream press. What's more, the open design of the Challenge enabled any inpidual supporting any organization to enter the contest, leveling the playing field between large, established institutions and smaller or all-volunteer efforts.

And lastly, the partnerships with PARADE Magazine, Causes on Facebook, Global Giving, and Network for Good encouraged people with no technical skills to become cause champions, and helped donors who had never given online find a new way to support issues they cared about.

How did this relatively unprecedented Challenge achieve such remarkable results? Four key elements contributed to its success:

• Its competitive structure – seen as energizing for both donors and volunteers.
• The limited timeframe of the Challenge.
• The leaderboard that enabled participants to see how they were doing against their competitors in real time.
• The incentive to receive award funds from the Case Foundation in addition to the amount raised from donors.

By combining these factors, the Challenge created an immediate, urgent way for a large number of causes to turn lightly connected people interested in their cause into donors. Further, it rewarded donors who used a wide array of tools and channels online and in person to broaden their networks of friends to raise more money.

Of course, every project has its lessons learned, and the Challenge is no exception. The following are the key changes recommended for future Challenges:

• Restrict participation to organizations with budgets under $1 million annually.
• Give more lead time for individuals and causes to prepare for the Challenge and shorten the length of the Challenge to avoid fatigue (ex. thirty days).
• Streamline the event with one name and one platform.
• Improve the donation software by offering easier access for nonprofits to donor information, payment options in addition to credit cards, and customizable widgets to aid inpidual fundraisers.
• Provide additional technical online assistance perhaps in the form of a wiki or Twitter account.

With these recommendations in mind, this assessment and reflection report hopes to inform not only future iterations of the Case Foundation's Giving Challenge (such as the one slated for 2009), but also serve as a guide for other funders seeking to replicate the Challenge or to create similar initiatives. 

Heather Box is going crazy. She’s jumping and shouting, her hands are shaking, her inbox is exploding. There are only a few minutes left, then just a minute, and finally, it’s over, with Heather whooping and shouting for joy. Her organization—The League of Young Voters Education Fund—had just won the $1,000 daily prize as part of Causes Giving Challenge.

"The Challenge inspired us to jumpstart our Facebook presence. The intensity of the Challenge, and because it was a high profile activity, powered our first successful foray into social networking and fundraising." – Heather Box, The League of Young Voters Education Fund

Launched December 13, 2007, and ending on January 31, 2008, the 50-day Giving Challenge was actually two events: America’s Giving Challenge (AGC) in conjunction with PARADE Magazine; and Causes Giving Challenge(CGC) which occurred on Facebook, the online social networking website. The Case Foundation matched both Challenges with a total contribution of $750,000.

NOTE: For the purposes of this report, the overall effort is referred to as the Challenge, inpiduals who spearheaded fundraising efforts are cause champions, and causes that received awards from the Case Foundation for their successful efforts are award recipients. (Please see the glossary for additional definitions. Defined words are noted in bold on first mention.)

Here's how each event worked:

• America’s Giving Challenge on PARADE.com raised $1,193,024 from 46,044 donors for 2,482 causes. Four national and four global charities were awarded $50,000 each by the Case Foundation for recruiting the largest number of donors throughout the Challenge. An additional one hundred charities received $1,000 for attracting the most overall unique donations for their cause over the course of the event.
• Causes Giving Challenge on Facebook raised a total of $571,686 from 25,795 unique donors for 3,936 causes. The Case Foundation awarded $50,000 to the organization associated to the cause with the most unique donors; $25,000 to the second- and third- place causes; and $10,000 to the next ten causes. In addition, throughout the Challenge, the cause with the largest number of donors recruited each day received $1,000 from the Case Foundation.
• The minimum donation for both Challenges was $10.

The purpose of this assessment is to describe the key elements of the Challenge and recommend improvements for any future Giving Challenges. This paper is based on a review of all relevant documentation and data, as well as 27 interviews with a mix of cause champions (successful and not) during the Challenge.

Additional interviews were conducted with the staff of the Case Foundation and its partner organizations, which include: PARADE Magazine; Global Giving and Network for Good (who processed donations and certified the tax-exempt status of the individual causes); and Causes on Facebook (which also hosted causes and processed donations).

Two separate surveys were implemented—one for all cause champions, and another for the donors to IDEA League, Students Helping Honduras, and Love Without Boundaries. Each are included as case studies. The complete list of award recipients, interview protocol and names of the interviewees, survey instruments, and complete survey results are in the Appendix.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that report co-author Beth Kanter participated in America’s Giving Challenge as a volunteer for The Sharing Foundation, which was an award recipient.

Each cause had at least one champion responsible for starting and overseeing fundraising efforts. These champions were not, of course, the only people to work on their causes' efforts, but understanding their characteristics, their base level of technological knowledge, and the issue areas their causes represent provides a context for understanding the Challenge.

The following tables describe the issue areas represented in the Challenge. Key characteristics of champions are based on data from the survey conducted with the cause champions.

Types of Causes

The Challenge represented a broad array of issue areas. Note that at 20 percent, the International/Human Rights/Relief/AID area represents the largest issue area—a percentage that doesn't correspond to data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics, in which these issues rank less than two percent of the total number of nonprofits. 

One likely reason for these causes' dominance in the Challenge is the global nature of their work; by necessity, these groups are largely already working online, and thus more inclined to participate in an online challenge.

Table 1: Types of Causes

Type	Overall	CGC	AGC
International/Human Rights/Relief/AID	20%	26%	10%
Eradication/Cure of Disease	13%	12%	14%
Community/Civic Engagement	11%	11%	9 %
Education/Literacy	11%	10%	11%
Animal Rights	6%	5%	7%
Environmental	6%	6%	7%
Religious	4%	4%	3%
The Arts/Cultural Institutions	3%	2%	4%
Fighting Crime, Abuse, and Neglect	3%	2%	3%
Other	24%	19%	33%

 

A scan of the “other” categories included the following types of organizations:

• Local and Regional Economic Development
• Hyper Local or Neighborhood Services
• Healthcare
• Education
• Capacity Building, Leadership, and Professional Development for Nonprofit Staff
• Human Services
• Hunger Relief
• Youth Issues
• Peace

Award recipients fell into two categories: causes that generated the largest number of unique donors over the course of the entire contest; or, like Heather Box and the League of Young Voters, those that generated the most unique donors in a single day and won a daily prize.

That said, many more causes that did not receive Challenge awards were still able to raise significant amounts of money from individual donors throughout the Challenge. Many went viral as well, which for this report we are defining as campaigns that had 150 or more unique donors (“Dunbar's number” 2009).

Overall, the following traits characterized successful efforts and their champions:

They were immersed in the Challenge. Some of the most successful champions were the few that spent almost every waking hour, especially in the final week of the challenge, encouraging donors to give to their cause or managing scores of volunteers who were canvassing friends, family, and neighbors for donations. These champions were not solitary cheerleaders for their causes. Their passion and dedication to winning the Challenge inspired others to step forward and work many hours on behalf of their cause.

“We entered 12 days before the end of the contest and my life in those 12 days was spent on this contest. I was online 24/7.” – Heidi Dormody, Engineers without Borders, USA

“We spent 24 hours a day towards the end. Every waking moment. A lot of volunteers work full time, so they worked on the campaign after hours.” – Linda Shiller and Mary Parente, 11th Hour Rescue

The survey results highlight the average number of hours that champions spent working on the Challenge and the increased number of hours for those champions who generated more donors.

Table 7: Hours Spent on the Challenge by Champions

Length of Time per Week	All Champions	causes w/ 50 or less donors	causes w/ 51-100 donors	causes w/101-150 donors	causes w/ more than 150 donors
Fewer than 5 hours	68%	80%	40%	33%	37%
5-9 hours	20%	15%	45%	53%	20%
10-19 hours	7%	3%	12%	13%	22%
20-34 hours	4%	1%	3%	0%	18%
35 plus hours	1%	1%	0%	2%	0%

Efforts went “viral.” As previously mentioned, for this assessment we defined efforts that were successful or “viral” as those with more than 150 donors. These causes had volunteers who solicited donors independently of the cause champion, and all award recipients experienced this viral effect. To put it another way, the most successful efforts were social networks with individual activists self-organizing activities online and off to support their causes, without necessarily the knowledge or direct control of the champion or cause organization.

By large margins (between 61-74%), cause champions reported reaching out for donations and outreach assistance to known supporters, friends, family, colleagues and co-workers first. In other words, they activated the viral effect by connecting to the people they knew personally—whether those people were familiar with their cause or not.

Several highly connected individuals leveraged a large number of donations by themselves. For example, one volunteer for IDEA League singlehandedly brought in more than 600 donors. This example represents how a viral effect can be achieved by connecting primarily through existing relationships.

Table 8 & 9: Viral Effect

Causes Giving Challenge

	Donation Solicitation	Spread the Word
Known supporters of cause	55%	57%
Friends and family	68%	65%
Coworkers, classmates	53%	60%
Online media	27%	40%
Offline media	4%	11%

	Donation Solicitation	Spread the Word
Known supporters of cause	78%	70%
Friends and family	84%	72%
Coworkers, classmates	73%	65%
Online media	40%	46%
Offline media	8%	15%

“We had 40 volunteers who did the work of 4,000 volunteers. They emailed their address book of friends. They asked their friends to ask their friends to donate. It is fascinating. The last day of the contest you've never seen 40 people more on edge. We were shocked by the numbers. By the end of the day, we got 700 donations in one day. Took years off our lives!” – Linda Shiller and Mary Parente, 11th Hour Rescue

“Other people put it on Facebook, on blogs, my father started calling people. My secretary asked anyone walking in to the building. That 6-degree of separation part was right on. I would hear from someone who knew someone who knew someone who had emailed everyone they know. it spread like wildfire.” – Peggy Padden, Fanconi Anemia Foundation

Smaller organizations and all-volunteer efforts tended to be successful. Eleven of the sixteen champions were for causes with annual organizational budgets less than $1 million. Seventy percent of participating organizations had ten or fewer employees, and 50% had annual operating budgets of less than $500,000, according to the survey responses.

Many of the smaller organizations confessed to initially feeling they wouldn’t be successful against larger organizations, and were surprised and delighted to find that they could be—and often were—more successful than many larger competitors.

Indeed, larger organizations with slower-moving hierarchies and professional development staffs were less successful in this fast-paced effort. One cause champion who was interviewed said, “I work for a large nonprofit. When I first heard about the Challenge, I suggested to my boss that we get involved. However, there was too much inertia between development and marketing departments.”

Table 10: Annual Operating Budgets of Participating Cause Organizations

Budget	Overall	CGC	AGC
Less than $100K	25%	23%	27%
$100K - $500K	28%	25%	29%
$501K - $1M	11%	9%	14%
$1.01M - $10M	23%	25%	20%
More than $10M	6%	5%	6%
Don’t know	8%	13%	4%

Table 11: Full-time Staff at Cause Organizations

No. of Staff	Overall	CGC	AGC
0	24%	20%	29%
1-5	35%	37%	33%
6-10	10%	9%	10%
11-20	11%	13%	8%
21-50	2%	2%	2%
More than 50	16%	16%	18%
Don’t know	3%	4%	2%

 

Differences Among Cause Champions

Just as important as the common characteristics of successful efforts were the issues and structures that turned out not to affect whether causes and their champions were successful. These included:

Previous social media and social networking experience. As noted previously, the survey results indicated that all of the cause champions were comfortable using e-mail and online forums, but the Causes on Facebook users were more savvy when it came to using microblogging tools such as Twitter and online social networks such as, well, Facebook.

Novice users turned to more experienced social networking and social media users in their networks for advice and technical support. Some found tech-savvy friends within their networks who blogged about the contest, or could send a text message for their cause. Others learned through immersion, quickly picking up new tools and techniques out of necessity, and were able to turn around and assist others.

Reverend Margaret Klapperich, the cause champion for the Order of Christ Sophia, said, “My tech savvyness stayed the same, but my tech strategy changed. I got smarter about what we were doing and [learned] how to do it better, smarter and faster.”

"I don't use any of those social media tools. No Facebook, no social networking, no widgets. I use e-mail ... But I learned as we went along." – Stephen Hollister, IDEA League

Table 12: Comfort Using Communication Tools Before the Challenge (ranked from 0-5 with 5 being most comfortable)

Task/Tool	Overall	CGC	AGC
Sending e-mail	4.9	4.9	4.9
Instant messaging	4.4	4.5	4.1
Sending text messages	4.3	4.4	4.1
Social networks	4.1	4.3	3.6
Commenting on blogs	4.0	4.2	3.8
Posting to listservs	4.0	4.2	3.7
Discussion boards	4.0	4.1	3.7
Maintaining a blog	3.8	3.9	3.4
Using widgets	3.3	3.4	2.9
Microblogging (Twitter)	3.0	3.2	2.3
Virtual reality spaces	2.6	2.6	2.3

No fundraising expertise needed. Most of the cause champions were not professional fundraisers, although most champions who worked for the nonprofit or were on the board of their organization were development professionals or had experience with grassroots fundraising. Some award recipients were experts or were very experienced using Web 2.0 tools for activism before the competition, but had not used these tools for online fundraising.

The personal connection of volunteer champions to their causes (e.g. I have a family member who is afflicted with a disease, I live in a community affected by this issue, etc.) came through in their appeals and attracted donors. These champions knew intuitively that their appeals had to be personal, authentic, and without the patina of professionalism.

Often the cause champions who were inexperienced fundraisers were surprised that asking people to give was easier than they thought. Interviewees often mentioned the low $10 dollar donation amount as a particularly helpful component in garnering their courage to ask their friends to donate (Andresen 2007). Conversely, cause champions found that impersonal group emails were completely ineffective.

“The more I worked with [Causes on Facebook], the more I realized that 90% of the people who gave were personally asked by me or one of our volunteers. E-mail blasts and canned messaging does not work. What works is short quick messages asking for the $10. It has to be personalized to the person you are asking based on your past connection.” – Heather Box, League of Young Voters Education Fund

No size fits all. There was no one right way to be successful in the Challenge. Some very successful efforts, such as Education for 900 Rural Girls in Burkina Faso, were conducted almost entirely by e-mail. However, most campaigns had a mixture of technology tools coupled with off-line activities for outreach.

Some of the college-student led efforts used conventional techniques with a millennial twist. Several held “collectathons” where students brought their laptops and cell phones and sent text messages to everyone in their mobile address books, Instant Message Buddy Lists and Facebook friends. Others used their laptops to solicit donations from students waiting in line for basketball tickets.

And just as there was no one right formula for outreach, there was also no one right answer for when to begin the Challenge. Some cause champions started early to great effect, while others started early and sputtered. Some champions started later and had rousing finishes, and others focused most of their energy on winning a single, daily prize of $1,000.

And some cause champions found that even with a significant web presence and many friends on Facebook, they couldn’t just push a button in the waning moments of the Challenge and succeed. As a champion from a large organization said, “We can’t just win because we’re big. You really have to engage people to get them to want to be a part of it, particularly when it needs another degree of separation to be successful.”

Table 13: The Effectiveness of Various Fundraising Tactics

Tactic	Overall	CGC	AGC
Hosting parties	3.8	3.8	3.9
Asking face-to-face	3.8	3.9	3.6
Sending e-mail	3.6	3.5	3.7
Messaging through Facebook or other social networks	3.4	3.5	3.1
Phone calls	3.3	3.5	3.1
Instant messaging	3.3	3.5	3.0
Posting to listservs	3.1	3.2	3.0
Sending text messages	3.0	3.0	2.8
Commenting on blogs	2.9	3.1	2.6
Door to door	2.8	3.0	2.2
Posting flyers	2.6	2.7	2.4
Messaging through Twitter	2.5	2.5	2.6

Action-reflection-revision-action model. Because the Challenges were announced on the day they opened, there was no significant planning done by any of the champions who were interviewed. But this wasn’t necessarily a barrier to their success. The nature of the fast-paced Challenge combined with the fluid nature of online networking and fundraising was a better match for an ongoing learning process than a static planning process.

In addition, the competitive nature of the Challenge encouraged cause champions to watch and learn from one another. This represents best practices in deploying social networking and social media strategies for online fundraising and activism that have been well-documented recently (Schultze 2008).

“We bombarded family and friends with e-mail. We got more organized as time went on. We have a lot of the same Facebook friends, a lot overlapped, five or six e-mails went to the same person initially. We jumped into the deep end and tried to learn how to swim.” – Josh Lee, Fighting Poverty With Nourish International

The following elements were critically important to the success of the overall effort and should be included in any future Challenge efforts:

• The Competition. The competitive nature of the Challenge invoked a fundamental human desire to win and succeed. Many of the interviewees mentioned the competitive aspect of the Challenge as catalytic and energizing, both for their volunteers and donors. As Erin Kelly of Students Helping Honduras said, “At first, I thought competitions were a horrible idea because you had to beat another nonprofit. But, we got $30K in flat donations that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Without the incentive of the competition, we wouldn't have raised the money.” Julie Katz, the cause champion for EVERYBODY WINS! South Florida, said, “Some people who have the best intentions don’t have the motivation to give, but the Challenge gave an extra push.”
   
• The Time Limit. The deadline of the Challenge made it immediate and urgent for cause champions. Most of the interviewees felt that the time was adequate for this effort. Some, in fact, said it was more than adequate and that the entire challenge could be shortened to 30 days because the effort is so intensive and exhausting. The impending deadline was an important factor in converting friends to contributors.
   
• The Leveling Effect. The Giving Challenge, perhaps more than any other philanthropic effort we’ve seen, had a terrific leveling effect enabling the smallest organizations, often without any staff at all, to be more successful than larger, staffed organizations. There were no out-of-pocket expenses for participating in the Challenge, allowing a greater number of smaller organizations to participate. In addition, the simplicity of the effort—the cause with the most donors wins—plus the network effect and the lack of technical skills needed in fundraising or social media to successfully compete made this a wide-open contest for unusual suspects. Friends asking friends for donations was critically important to successful efforts, which meant that the cause did not have to be well-known at the beginning of the effort to be successful, although it was important that the cause was easily understandable when it was introduced to new supporters.
   
• The Leaderboard. Perhaps the only thing better than winning is watching your cause win in real-time. Clicking on the refresh button became a reflexive habit of many of the award recipients and their volunteers. They noted that the leaderboards were instrumental in spurring them on and giving them a context for how well, or how poorly, they were doing.

“At first they thought it was just another one of my crazy ideas and that we couldn’t win, and then when we were number five we were so excited and kept checking the website to see where we were in comparison to the other charities. I was like, ‘Wow, this really could happen!’” – Peggy Padden, Fanconi Anemia Foundation

• The Match. The awards given by the Case Foundation, coupled with the simplicity of the contest, were attractive to the cause champions. One thousand dollars for daily winners and $50,000 for the overall winners—plus what they raised from their own individual donors—were significant amounts for the contestants, particularly the smaller organizations. The Challenge even opened up other avenues for matching initiatives. For instance, Greenpeace reported that as a result of the Challenge, a donor offered to match individual donations made during the Challenge.
   
• Online, On Land, and on Many Channels. A mix of activities was evident in all of the successful efforts that included Internet, mobile phone-based activities, and in-person solicitations. Online activities began with e-mail (the most popular form of outreach, but only successful when they were personalized), instant messaging, Web-based social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and viral videos like Heather Box’s. Off-line activities included telephone calls, parties to encourage people to give on a laptop, taking a laptop to popular gathering spots on campuses, and soliciting colleagues in offices.

The Challenge drew a very large number of participating organizations and donors, with Causes on Facebook, Network for Good, and Global Giving processing large numbers of donations (81,597 in total). These numbers will undoubtedly increase in future Challenges given the attention the first Challenge received as well as the difficult fundraising economy.

Beyond the funds, other key results included:

• Donor attraction and conversion. Almost all of the cause champions who were interviewed reported that the majority of donors to their causes were new, sometimes in overwhelming numbers of 80-90 percent of the total number of donors. Plus, the Challenge was a great mechanism for converting interested friends to donors. As one cause champion of a youth-oriented cause said, “A lot of our supporters who didn’t consider themselves donors could get in with the minimum donation.”

“About 50% of the people who made donations were chapter members. They were not new to the organization, but they had never donated before. The contest was a real motivator.” – Heidi Dormody, Engineers Without Borders, USA

• Higher visibility. Many cause champions also reported that participating in the Challenge raised their public image considerably by expanding their circle of friends beyond their usual supporters. Fifty-three percent of the survey respondents reported an increase in visibility for their cause—particularly the opportunity to appear in the mainstream media—as a result of participating in the Challenge.

In addition, many champions reported learning to use new technological tools as a result of participating in the Challenge. Seventy-five percent of the survey respondents said they would participate in a future Challenge if given the opportunity.

"Yes, we're thankful we won the money. But the exposure for our organization was priceless. The Challenge encouraged us to reach out beyond our known group supporters—and that's a good thing because it brought us new donors. We raised a lot of awareness about our organization. That provided a lot of value.” – Linda Shiller and Mary Parente, 11th Hour Rescue. Raised $54,000 from 2,448 donors.

“The prize money was enticing, but even though we didn't win we got many benefits. We expanded our donor base, reached out to people who didn't already know about us or who we didn't ask to donate in the past, and learned a lot about online fundraising.” – Seva Mandir, Non Formal Education for Tribal Children in India. Raised $41,412 from 1,488 donors.

• Multi-generational teamwork. The Challenge wasn’t uni-generational but, rather, multi-generational, as Millennials found themselves in the position of coaching their elders in online giving. We estimate that about half of the cause champions for award recipients were Millennials (between the ages of 15-29) and many had their epicenters on college campuses. These young people were comfortable using Facebook and Causes on Facebook, and already had large numbers of friends on their social network sites. “We were calling our grandparents and others who were not familiar with widgets,” said one cause champion. “We had to learn how to explain so they understood and could get past their fears of security.” Another said, “It was great to see grandparents, parents, young adults, and teens all working together to support orphaned children.”
   
• Network effect. Another unforeseen benefit of the Challenge was the network effect between participating causes and their supporters. Cause champions were watching each other’s efforts closely and adopting each other’s successful strategies. Donors learned about causes other than the one they may have known initially, and some organizations found ways to work together to share donors and create one widget for their efforts.
   
• National-local coordination. And lastly, some organizations, like Engineers without Borders, discovered that the Challenge was a great way to coordinate a fundraising effort between the national organization and local chapters. As part of their strategy, the national organization issued a challenge to their chapters. The three chapters that brought in the most donors would receive a matching grants of $3-5,000. According to the staff at Engineers Without Borders, most chapters had previously raised modest amounts, so the additional matching incentive was a strong motivation.

The data and survey revealed several areas that could use further refinement and resources in future challenges. To start, the effort's fragmented nature confused many cause champions. Between the different names for the Challenge on PARADE and Causes on Facebook and the multiple donation software entities, the leadership was unclear for participating organizations and champions.

In addition, although nearly 60 percent of the survey respondents believed the rules were clear, the interviewees believed they need to be clarified further for future efforts. For instance, some reported not knowing there were both daily and overall prizes. Others were fuzzy on whether people overseas could participate. And still more didn’t know whether a staff person at an organization could sign up as a champion or if it had to be an outside person.

There was also confusion between international and domestic causes. Those on Global Giving were described as “Global Causes” and those on Network for Good were referred to as “Domestic Causes,” when in reality both platforms supported both kinds of organizations.

Some donors had technical difficulties and concerns about donating online. We felt it was important to note this difficulty since it arose so often in the implementation and subsequent reporting about the Challenge by the cause champions; however, we are not recommending changing the Challenge to address this issue.

Instead, we suggest providing assistance to people who may not have given online before and want to try, with the understanding that there will always be a slice of the population who are not ready for or comfortable with donating online. They should be considered outside of the scope of the target audience for this effort.

Only 38 percent of survey respondents believed there was adequate technical support available during the Challenge. Champions on America’s Giving Challenge reported spending a significant amount of time providing technical assistance to donors with varying degrees of success.

Materials provided by the partners – Network for Good and Global Giving - were cited as 'somewhat adequate,' and interviewees mentioned that it would have been beneficial to have a live person to help concerned or confused donors. It will be important to address the need for scaling assistance efforts as future Challenges grow in size and scope.

Causes Giving Challenge had a few issues as well. The need to create a new, unique cause on Facebook just for the Challenge confused champions and donors. While technically this helped start all cause champions on the same level playing field, it then proved difficult for groups to point their existing “friends” to the new cause.

As one survey respondent noted, “Even my potential cause supporters already on Facebook had to overcome the barrier of installing a new Facebook app, with the usual warnings about sharing info with that app. This was a huge deterrent.” Another wrote, “Convincing people who were already part of a Facebook group or cause to join another Facebook cause just for this Challenge [was a problem]. Now we've got four different groups and causes on Facebook - not very efficient.”

Similarly, some misunderstandings also occurred, because of lack of access to technology or credit cards. A survey respondent illustrated this issue: “Many of our donors signed up with new accounts on Facebook specifically to participate, and many were new refugees and not computer-literate. Our volunteers assisted them in creating accounts and often took their donations in cash, reusing volunteers' credit cards to process the donations.”

According to the Challenge rules, a unique donation is defined as one single donation per individual, and duplicate donations from the same individual to a single charity only counts once. The mechanism for recording an individual donation was via credit card number. Thus, according to the Challenge rules, all of the donations collected by volunteers in this example, but made on the same credit card, were considered as only one unique donation.

Beyond the initial donation, post-contest follow-up with donors was challenging because of structural barriers, including the lag time it took Global Giving to provide contact information for donors, and the fact that the Causes on Facebook software does not provide donor contact information to the cause organizations.

And with only a few exceptions, almost no fundraising momentum was created beyond the Challenge (although 28% of survey respondents reported that the Challenge will have an impact on how they raise funds in the future). As Rick Gentry of Greenpeace noted, “The donations came to a grinding halt at the end of the challenge.”

Several factors might play a role in this donor drop-off. One, the intensive campaign itself was likely the compelling draw for many new donors, so once it ended, few donors found reason to return. Two, many award recipients were often not professional fundraisers and unaccustomed to cultivating donors beyond the initial event. And three (and perhaps most importantly), some donors may have had a stronger attachment to the person who asked them to give than to the cause itself.

Based on lessons learned from the first Challenge, we recommend the following changes for future Challenges:

Only small organizations need apply. We encourage the Foundation to restrict participation in the next Challenge to organizations with budgets in the previous fiscal year of less than $1 million. It would be possible to have categories for cause champions delineated by organizational budget; however, we believe that the impact of the Challenge grants will be far greater on smaller organizations than on larger ones.

In addition, the excitement and creativity generated by volunteers for smaller organizations was palpable and infectious during and after the Challenge. Larger organizations will benefit from watching future Challenges and learning new ways to connect to existing and potential donors using online social networking sites and techniques.

More lead time, less Challenge time. Given the fast pace of development and implementation during this first effort, it is not surprising that many groups wish they had more planning time prior to the Challenge. With more advance notice about the Challenge through traditional media and the blogosphere, cause champions will have more time to prepare their strategy. Fewer than half of the survey respondents believed the length of time was right. This was echoed by those who said that a month would have been sufficient for such an intense effort.

Champions who were interviewed and surveyed were split on whether the end of the year was a good time for the Challenge. Larger organizations were more likely to feel it could interfere with their planned fundraising activities at that time of year.

Streamline the contest. The Challenge structure needs to be simplified and streamlined in the future, at least publicly for the cause champions, to one contest with one name. In addition, future donation software should ideally:

• Provide access to donation data to see who has donated to a campaign and how they can adjust their efforts in real-time. Specifically, the data should include contact information and allow the champion to send a personal thank you e-mail shortly after a gift is made. The latter is especially important for the Challenge, because this first effort revealed that donors were also fundraisers for causes. Recognizing and rewarding the efforts of donors will increase the potential viral effect of the Challenge.
• Allow for a variety of payment methods beyond credit cards, including online check donations and PayPal-type services.
• Enable the customization of widgets and pitches. For efforts to go viral, it is critically important that fundraising requests come from known people. Therefore, the widgets need to allow for requests to be personalized by each individual who passes it along to their network, instead of information coming from the champion.
• Support multi-channel campaigns that are independent of social networks for donations. The Challenge should encourage champions and volunteer fundraisers to paint on a broad canvas by encouraging the use of a large number of fundraising and social networking tools, not any one particular tool or site.

Provide additional help. The technical assistance needed by some potential champions and donors was significant and required enormous amounts of time by cause champions. It may be helpful to develop a wiki to house various resources and “how-tos” and for participants to share questions and answers. It might also be worth exploring setting up a Twitter account to answer technical support questions in real-time.

With these recommendations in mind, this assessment and reflection report hopes to inform not only future iterations of the Case Foundation's Giving Challenge (such as the one slated for 2009), but also serve as a guide for other funders seeking to replicate the Challenge.

As such, the report doesn't end here. Rather, it's the starting point for continued innovation and experimentation across the board, as the nonprofit sector seeks to empower more people to hone their tech skills, connect with others, and take action on causes they care about.

Award recipient: Nonprofit organizations that received prizes (both from daily and overall Challenges).

Causes: Causes (with a capital C) refers to the Facebook application and company – Causes on Facebook.

cause: cause (with a lower case c) generally refers to: a) a cause on Causes on Facebook that is created in order to fundraise, or b) a general term synonymous with a nonprofit organization’s issue area.

Cause champion (champion): Individuals who spearheaded fundraising efforts on behalf of an organization.

Challenge: The experimental Giving Challenge was two events. America’s Giving Challenge in PARADE magazine and on PARADE.com and the Causes Giving Challenge on Facebook. The causes with the highest numbers of unique donors received awards from the Case Foundation. For the purpose of this report, the overall effort is referred to as the Challenge.

Prize: The combined $750,000 of award money given by the Case Foundation to nonprofit award recipients are referred to as prizes.

Unique cause: Each champion had to create a new, standalone cause for the Causes Giving Challenge. For reporting purposes, they could not use an existing cause.

Unique donor: Each individual that donates to one cause is considered a unique donor for that cause. An individual may donate to multiple causes, and is considered as one unique donor per each cause.

Unique donation: A unique donation is defined as one single donation per individual. This means that duplicate donations from the same individual to a single charity badge/widget will only count once towards helping a fundraiser get a prize.

Viral: This paper defines viral campaigns as those that had 150 or more unique donors. This follows the method known as the “Dunbar Number,” which asserts that 150 is the number of relationships that one human can successfully maintain.

"Dunbar's number." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 8 Apr 2009, 08:34 UTC. 5 May 2009.

Andresen, Katya and Bill Strathmann. “People to People Fundraising: Crafting the Marketing Strategy to Make It Happen.” People to People Fundraising: Social Networking and Web 2.0 forCharities. Ed. by Ted Hart, James Greenfield, and Sheeraz Haji. Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007.

Kanter, Beth. “Pros and Cons of Facebook Activism.” Beth's Blog,19 Feb 2008.

Schultze, Dan. A DigiActive Introduction to Facebook Activism. DigiActive: 2008.

Zuckerman, Ethan. “Pros and Cons of Facebook Activism.” My Heart's in Accra (blog), 8 Feb 2008.

Background

The International Dravet Syndrome Epilepsy Action League, or IDEA League, is a nonprofit organization run entirely by volunteers. The League was founded in October 2005 by parents of children with a severe form of epilepsy known as Dravet Syndrome. This rare disease is a catastrophic disorder that involves violent and unexpected seizures without warning. The League is dedicated to the early diagnosis, appropriate treatment, and cure of the disease.

Motivation and Benefits

Stephen Hollister is a volunteer with the IDEA League who works by day as a grantwriter. And like many of the other volunteers for the League, he has a daughter with Dravet Syndrome.

In January 2008, he read about America’s Giving Challenge in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. It seemed like a great opportunity for the League, except for a few problems. Between his full-time job, his commitment to the League, and caring for his daughter, Stephen didn’t know if he had the time to commit to the Challenge.

In addition, he knew how to raise money from foundations and to write a compelling story, but he had no experience asking individuals to give to a cause. And lastly, there were only eighteen days left in the competition.

Given these obstacles, Stephen did what so many people who believe passionately in their causes did during the Challenge; he closed his eyes, took a leap of faith, and jumped in.

Convincing His Group

“I went home after reading the article at work,” Stephen says. “I created the badge after I put my daughter to bed.” He then posted the opportunity on the family forum on the League’s website. It was met with equal amounts enthusiasm and skepticism. How do we know this is legitimate? How do you know they are what they say they are? How can I ask my friends and family to give to this when I don't know what it is?

Stephen patiently answered all of their questions and concerns. “I pointed these people to the Case Foundation and Network For Good websites and PARADE Magazine,” he recalls. “I posted the Chronicle article. I listed the partners and convinced people that these were legit. I invited them to check for themselves and also sent a Guidestar link.”

Finally, he called the founder and executive director of the IDEA League, Joan Skluzacek (who also has a child with the disease), and advocated for the League to participate. “ Because we have a relationship, she trusted me,” Stephen says. “She posted an endorsement the next day and it helped a lot.” Ultimately, Stephen’s information and enthusiasm won out, and the League agreed to participate in the Challenge.

Discovering the Power of E-mail

Like many other cause champions, the Challenge was Stephen’s first foray into using online tools beyond e-mail. In his words, “I don't use any of those tools. I use email. No Facebook, no social networking. This was my first foray into web 2.0. I learned what widgets were all about.” And as the donor survey data indicates, many of his donors were also new to these tools, with only 3% having made an online donation prior to the Challenge through an online social networking site.

Stephen began by writing and sending an e-mail that included his daughter Serena’s picture and story to family and friends. Then he realized that it would be strange for other parents to send out a message that included a photo of his daughter. So, he removed his daughter’s photo and encouraged his contacts to use their own photos to make the story more personal. This was the first step to other League members “owning” their involvement in the Challenge.

In fact, volunteers' ability and willingness to customize the fundraising appeal and use it was reflected in the donor survey data. Ninety-five percent of donors to the IDEA League’s Challenge effort said that they contributed to support a family member, friend, or colleague based on the personalization of the e-mail.

“That’s it,” Stephen thought, “I’ve done what I can.” But he soon learned that he had just begun. One e-mail turned into two, three, a dozen, and more. According to Stephen, “I spent hours and hours on this. I didn't track the time.”

There were five or six core volunteers and another twenty or so who helped to raise funds. Stephen soon became the cheerleader-in-chief and chief technology officer for their effort. He encouraged people to send out their own e-mails, thanked his donors and volunteers often, encouraged others to do the same, and recruited more volunteers to participate.

Learning the Power of Personal Asks

And then it happened, that magical moment when Stephen realized that something extraordinary was happening. Technically, according to the donor survey, what happened was that the majority of donors were asked by a friend, colleague, or family to donate, but a much smaller percentage were asked by Stephen to give.

In reality, Stephen says, “I began to get e-mails from people I didn't know. These people were forwarded the story.” And soon they were off and running with a viral fundraising effort.

Stephen soon learned that having a personal connection with donors was very important. For example, ninety-five percent of the donors mentioned on the survey that they gave to support a friend or family member. Even if Stephen shared his e-mails as models with volunteers, each volunteer had to tap into their own personal networks where they were already known, loved, and respected to make their case for giving and share the personal toll of this disease on their children and families.

As Stephen recalled, “If I walked up to strangers who didn't know the disease or me, they would decline. If a friend called them and asked them, that person would be more likely to give to that person. I couldn't have won this contest if we didn't have the personal connections and expanding circles.”

Leveraging Different Media for Greater Results

As the effort unfolded, Stephen became more creative, encouraging people to send out reminder e-mails, asking others to post on their blogs, and creating e-mail signatures that linked to the badge. He also encouraged people to think creatively and expansively about the different social networks that they could tap to raise funds, and ways to personalize the pitch in their emails.

Near the end of the campaign, IDEA League created a phone tree to solicit donations. They divided up names of potential donors and had volunteers call them and recruit additional volunteer fundraisers. Stephen was in charge of calling fifty potential donors in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Volunteer Response

Individual volunteers across the country were extraordinarily willing to spend their time and energy on the Challenge. “The competition became their lives,” Stephen says. “A lot of people worked the phones. It was amazing. They talked about it at church, posting questions, posting encouragements. They spent hours and hours on this.”

A pediatrician in Texas with a child with Dravet Syndrome took a copy of the fundraising appeal with her to a local restaurant and asked people there to donate. A school principal inserted a flyer about the Challenge in every child’s folder. One superstar volunteer managed to get her daughter’s photo and the logo for the Challenge on a commercial fishing boat. She alone ultimately brought in six hundred donations.

And they all watched, carefully and continuously as their success began to show up on the leaderboard. One volunteer posted on the League’s online forum, “My husband never touches the computer. And, now when we get home I have to race him to the computer because he wants to check the leader board!”

Overcoming Obstacles

But there were challenges too. Out of necessity, Stephen became the chief technical supporter for the network. “I gave them the code for creating the badge on the web site,” he recalls. “Got people to put the badges on their web sites, got people who were involved with Facebook to put the badges on Facebook, too.”

Stephen created screen shots and made up instructions that he circulated among his volunteers—for example, how to avoid a pop up blocker. “We had a lot of people who were not technically savvy,” Stephen says. “They didn't know what browser they were using. That was the least enjoyable part for me.” That said, his efforts paid off as eighty-two percent of his donors said the process of making an online donation to the cause during the Giving Challenge was simple.

Donors giving from overseas were also problematic as the donation forms didn’t allow for foreign zip codes. They ultimately figured out how to make this work with the help of Network for Good, and then shared the solution with other potential donors overseas. The League has archived all of their technical support materials and solutions for use next time.

The fact that Dravet Syndrome is not well-known was a challenge as well. This necessitated a significant amount of time spent educating potential donors on the disease. Again, though, this investment proved valuable: Sixty-one percent of the donors said they learned something about the Cause during the Challenge.

Was It Worth It?

In the end, everyone was exhausted – and exhilarated. Stephen and the other volunteers knew it was all worth it. They raised $62,746 from 2,634 donors, plus the $50,000 grant funds. And more money kept trickling in by snail mail ultimately totaling about $75,000 from individual donors.

Just as important as the money, however, according to the survey, was the fact that about fifty-seven percent of the donors were new donors – which meant that many probably learned about Dravet Syndrome for the first time.

Indeed, the goodwill and awareness generated by the Challenge for the IDEA League seem likely to continue in the future. Sixty-six percent of the donors report they are likely to make a donation to the Cause again in the future, and an almost equal percentage say they are likely to tell others about the Cause.

Donor Profile

Demographics

Age Range
16-17	0%
18-21	0%
22-24	2%
25-29	3%
30-34	10%
35-39	17%
40-44	21%
45-49	17%
50-54	11%
55-59	3%
60-64	6%
65 or older	9%
Prefer not to answer	0%

 

Gender
Female	77%
Male	21%
Prefer not to answer	2%

 

Income Range
Under $25,000	3%
$25,000 - $49,000	10%
$50,000 - $74,999	21%
$75,000 - $99,000	16%
$100,000 or more	25%
Prefer not to answer	24%

 

Charitable Giving Behavior 

• 69% had made an online donation prior to making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Challenge.
• 86% had made an online donation through the website of a specific charity or organization.
• 3% had made an online donation through a social networking site.
• 4% had made an online donation through a charity badge, widget, or SixDegrees.org.
• 5% had made an online donation through other method.
• 88% frequently or sometimes donate to causes/organizations.

Relationship to the Champion and to the Cause     

• 52% were aware of the Cause before they were asked to make a donation.
• 43% were had donated to the Cause prior to the Giving Challenge.
• 31% had volunteered time to the Cause prior to the Giving Challenge.
• 44% were asked by a friend to donate to the Cause, although only half of donors were asked by the Champion.

Q: By what means were you contacted and asked to donate to the Giving Challenge?

E-mail	68%
Event	1%
Flyer	1%
Phone call	14%
Message via social network	10%
Text message	0%
Instant message	1%
Blog/Web page	6%
Other	26%
Don’t recall	1%

 

Q: Which of the following best describes your relationship to the person who asked you to make a donation?

Friend	44%
Family member	21%
Work colleague	12%
Classmate	1%
Casual	7%
Don’t know	5%
Don’t recall	1%

 

Q: Was the person who asked you to make a donation to the Cause the person who was ultimately competing the Giving Challenge?

Yes	54%
No	21%
Unsure	24%

 

Motivations and Barriers

Why they donated

• 95% said to support my friend, family member or colleague in the Challenge.
• 76% said the work of the Cause.
• 50% said I have a personal connection to the Cause.
• 60% said the ease of making an online donation.
• 47% said the amount requested was minimal.
• 25% said knew many others were donating.

Barriers 

• 82% agree the process of making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Challenge was simple.
• 6% agree they had technical difficulties when making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Cause.
• 66% agree it is easier to make donations online than it tis o make donations offline.
• 18% agree that they had concerns about the security of online donations.

Giving Challenge Impact

• 66% are likely to make a donation to the Cause in the future.
• 35% are likely to volunteer their time with the Cause in the future.
• 62% are likely to tell others about the Cause in the future.
• 61% learned something about the Cause during the Challenge.
• 80% feel their donation during the Challenge had an impact.
• 59% prefer to donate online rather than through another method.
• 6% joined an online social network as a result of the Challenge.

 

Background

In 2003, Amy Eldridge and five friends founded Love Without Boundaries. They were all adoptive parents who wanted to do more to support children living in Chinese orphanages. They weren’t interested in building an organization; they just wanted to help kids.

Five years later, they are supporting more than 1,500 children in 100 orphanages across China. The organization has an annual operating budget of $2.1 million but no office, administrative staff, or significant overhead costs. Their volunteer network has expanded to about 100 volunteers.

Amy continues to work sixty to seventy hours a week for the organization as a volunteer. She says, “As the organization has grown, I'm doing more administration. We have coordinators for each of the programs—like a school in an orphanage. My role is administration, fundraising, and promotion. I'm a volunteer executive director.”

The organization uses a network model with a flow chart, job descriptions, and one annual meeting. By necessity they are dependent on online communications technologies to make their organization work. As Amy puts it, “Our foundation is a virtual organization and like an online community. We love anything that can improve our system.”

For example, the organization has a website with three separate blogs that link to it. They use Skype to talk to their contacts in China. They sell crafts and auction art online as fundraising events and accept donations online. They follow and participate in dozens of Yahoo! Groups dedicated to adoptive parents.

Starting the Challenge

Even though they considered themselves somewhat tech savvy, Love Without Boundaries did not have a social networking presence before the contest. As a result, this new territory was fraught with technical and emotional challenges for Amy.

She told the Care2 blog, Frogloop, that “I am the mom to seven kids, five of them teens, and I don’t think they were very excited about mom joining Facebook in the beginning, since it was always pretty exclusive to students in the past. But once they realized what a great tool it was to spread the word of our foundation, they really got behind it.”

Solving Technical Problems

Still, even with their Facebook page up, Love Without Boundaries didn’t jump into the Challenge. But then the mother of invention struck in an unexpected way. During the height of the holiday giving season, the Love Without Boundaries' website was hacked, making it impossible to receive donations directly through their site. One of the volunteers in China reminded Amy that actively participating in the Challenge would be a great way to get donations while their site was down.

So, a little bit late, a lot daunted, and quite a bit desperate, Amy and her volunteer colleagues jumped into the Challenge with willpower, energy, time, and social connections as their only currency.

It was not a smooth beginning. “We didn't think we could win,” Amy says. “I was looking at some of the big charities on there and thought it was impossible for us.” They were confused about the need to set up a new Cause on Facebook just for the contest, and ended up putting up a big sign on their old Cause reminding people not to donate for the Challenge there. Plus, they didn’t realize initially that there were daily prizes as well as final rewards.

Harnessing Human Power

Beyond the technical challenges, there were human ones to overcome as well. And perhaps no challenge was greater for Amy’s group than the one of connecting older donors to newer tools.

“One of our key challenges was the fact that many of our key donors are older and less likely to even know about social networking sites like Facebook,” she explains. “The high school and college-aged kids of these parents were a great help in spreading the word, however, and helping us with the technology. The contest was a real bridge builder between the generations! It was great to see grandparents, parents, young adults, and teens all working together to support orphaned children.”

Love Without Boundaries won a daily prize, and it helped their confidence grow. Amy and a small team of eight other volunteers began to spend all day, every day working on the Challenge. Then they added college students since, as Amy put it, “they were the ones with the 800 friends.” Ultimately more than one hundred volunteers worked on the Challenge for Love Without Boundaries.

Using Social Media to Get Out the Word

The Love Without Boundaries team wrote about the Challenge on their own blog, and asked their volunteers and contacts to do the same on their personal blogs. They watched the word spread through the blogosphere using Google Alerts. Yahoo! groups for adoptive parents became particularly fertile ground for sharing the word about the Challenge and raising donors.

They also sent e-mails to their list of 8,000 supporters with specific instructions for donating and addressing the privacy concerns that older donors had. And they asked their supporters for their participation and help – particularly the help of their teenage children who were so fluent with social networking sites.

Their on-land efforts were equally important to their online activities. Sororities at Ohio State and Rutgers University went door-to-door in dormitories to raise friends and funds for the Challenge. Nurses set up a laptop at a hospital and asked people to donate. A manager at a McDonald’s did the same. In Amy’s words, “The old-fashioned approach to fundraising really made a difference for us.”

As was common for successful champions, Amy became her cause’s chief cheerleader and technology-problem-solver, providing advice and making the effort bite-size for volunteers and donors. She sent out encouraging messages, answered technology questions, and posted examples of strategies that were working particularly well.

Amy also counseled anyone who would listen that “the best thing to do is to just find one person—and [have them] ask one person. If you have 3,000 people in your cause, your numbers will escalate.”

The frantic pace of the Challenge didn’t lend itself to careful planning. Instead their efforts had a war-room quality. Every day Amy and her lead volunteers had to figure out what was and wasn’t working, and what new strategy they could try. They tracked how they were doing and constantly monitored the leaderboard.

Was It Worth It?

Winning the Challenge had many positive implications beyond the financial rewards for Love Without Boundaries. According to the donor survey, thirty-four percent were new donors to the cause, which means that they successfully broke out of their pre-existing donor silo. They more than doubled their e-mail list, whichcontinued to grow past 7,200 names after the Challenge ended.

Love Without Boundaries also connected in meaningful ways during and beyond the Challenge with a large community of adoption agencies. They learned techniques and strategies by watching other groups during the Challenge that will be useful for the next Challenge or online fundraising event.

In addition, they assigned one volunteer to be their ongoing Facebook coordinator, responsible for keeping their Facebook profile up to date. This volunteer spends an hour a day reading the blogs and Yahoo groups and adding any stories or information to their Facebook page.

Amy is still stunned by her cause’s success during the Challenge. In her words, “I still wonder how in the world we did it – it was a total God-send.”

Donor Profile

Demographics

Age Range
16-17	1%
18-21	3%
22-24	2%
25-29	2%
30-34	8%
35-39	17%
40-44	27%
45-49	18%
50-54	12%
55-59	4%
60-64	2%
65 or older	3%
Prefer not to answer	0%

Gender
Female	86%
Male	12%
Prefer not to answer	2%

Income Range
Under $25,000	30%
$25,000 - $49,000	7%
$50,000 - $74,999	15%
$75,000 - $99,000	19%
$100,000 or more	33%
Prefer not to answer	23%

Charitable Giving Behavior

• 90% frequently or sometimes donate to causes/organizations.
• 78% had made an online prior to making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Challenge.
• 91% had made an online donation through the website of a specific charity or organization.
• 10% had made an online donation through a social networking site.
• 4% had made an online donation through a charity badge, widget, or SixDegrees.org.
• 4% had made an online donation through other method.

Relationship to the Champion and to the Cause   

• 90% were aware of the Cause prior to the Giving Challenge.
• 66% had donated to the Cause prior to the Giving Challenge.
• 15% had volunteered their time with the Cause prior to the Giving Challenge.

Q: By what means were you contacted and asked to donate to the Giving Challenge?

E-mail	59%
Event	0%
Flyer	0%
Phone call	3%
Message via social network	38%
Text message	0%
Instant message	0%
Blog/Web page	29%
Other	10%
Don’t recall	3%

Q: Which of the following best describes your relationship to the person who asked your to make a donation? 

Friend	30%
Family member	14%
Work colleague	4%
Classmate	12%
Casual	10%
Don’t know	29%
Don’t recall	1%

Q: Was the person who asked you to make a donation to the Cause the person who was ultimately competing the Giving Challenge? 

Yes	24%
No	38%
Not Sure	39%

 

Motivations and Barriers

Why they donated

• 41% said to support my friend, family member, or colleague in the Challenge.
• 97% said the work of the Cause.
• 69% said I have a personal connection to the Cause.
• 67% said the ease of making an online donation.
• 50% said the amount requested was minimal.
• 29% said knew many others were donating.

Barriers

• 88% agree the process of making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Challenge was simple.
• 7% agree they had technical difficulties when making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Cause.
• 83% agree it is easier to make donations online than it is to make donations offline.
• 18% agree that they had concerns about the security of online donations.

Giving Challenge Impact

• 91% are likely to make a donation to the Cause in the future.
• 38% are likely to volunteer their time with the Cause in the future.
• 89% are likely to tell others about the Cause in the future.
• 45% learned something about the Cause during the Challenge.
• 95% feel their donation during the Challenge had an impact.
• 79% prefer to donate online rather than through another method.
• 58% joined an online social network as a result of the Challenge.

Background

Students Helping Honduras is a fledgling nonprofit with the goal of mobilizing students to empower orphaned and at-risk children in Honduras to reach their full potential. College students Shin Fujiyama and his younger sister Cosmo had volunteered in the city of El Progreso in Honduras in 2005, and personally witnessed hundreds of children without adequate housing, health care, or access to education.

Upon returning to their universities, Shin and Cosmo began to advocate for change in the community —in particular, to benefit the children of the overcrowded Copprome Orphanage and the families of the area's largest squatter community, Siete de Abril. In February 2006, Students Helping Honduras (SHH) became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with chapters on college campuses across the country to raise money to build an education center and several other projects to assist at-risk children in Honduras.

One such chapter was Mary Washington College in Virginia, where SHH member and international studies major Erin Kelly received an e-mail message from a high school friend about the America's Giving Challenge. With less than two weeks left in the challenge, her friend asked her to donate to a charity on Global Giving as part of the competition. Her charity could win $50,000, her friend said, if she got the most unique donors.

Erin immediately visited her friend’s fundraising page and realized she could enter for SHH. “We had missed half the competition by that point,” says Erin, “but we decided to give it a try.” So, on January 23, with less than ten days to go in the contest, Erin set up a badge to raise money with a specific goal: to raise enough money to buy 300 fuel efficient stoves for Honduran families in need.

Although she is a self-described member of the Facebook generation and very comfortable with using the Internet, Erin “wouldn’t call myself a geek because I had no idea what a widget was or how it worked.” Though she had been involved in offline fundraising efforts, the contest was Erin’s first online fundraising project with SHH. She found that over the course of two very intensive weeks that her social media skills improved significantly.

Finding the Motivation

Erin says her motivation to enter the contest was initially because of the prize money: “The top prize of $50,000 was a huge carrot.” As Erin rallied the student group to compete in the contest, they realized there were many additional benefits beyond the dollars.

“When you participate in a competition like this, you have an opportunity to really animate your group around a goal,” Erin says. “Also, it was a fantastic excuse to ask people to donate to the organization. Normally, we’re sort of shy about asking people to donate but there was so much at stake, how we could not ask everyone we knew?”

An Excuse to Ask for Money

Erin observed that every student volunteer in their group went all out to solicit their friends, families, and strangers. “One of our most devoted volunteers, Bobby, was amazing,” she says. “Armed with a deadline and a goal, he was ready to ask anyone and everyone he knew to donate $10, even his ex-girlfriend!” Erin recalls that Bobby signed up to talk about the contest and organization at several Rotary Clubs as well. Forty-nine percent of the donors to this Cause were friends, another 31% were family, and the remaining few were casual acquaintances.

Erin describes the contest as a “good conversation starter.” She says, “I called everyone I knew, I sent IM messages to my junior friends, and sent text messages to everyone in my address book. I was inspired by Bobby and called up my ex-boyfriend and asked him to ask his parents to ask their students to help. But it wasn’t just me and Bobby who went all out; our entire group of student volunteers in every student club did this. That’s what made a difference.”

Just Do It: Planning and Implementation

Erin notes that when they entered the contest, the cause with the most donors had 400 donors. And because they entered the contest late in the game, they didn’t do any systematic planning. Instead, they decided to jump in, watch closely, and adjust their techniques and strategies as they went along.

“It was at the beginning of the semester,” Erin says. “For the first four days, I worked on the Challenge and went to class. I didn't do much homework or sleeping during that time. When I got exhausted, other students in the club took over for me.”

It became clear very quickly that asking students, who were the majority of their donors, to give required putting the ask in terms they understood—in this case, donating the cost of a pizza. Eighty five percent of donors said they donated because they wanted to support their family member, friend, or colleague, a slightly higher percentage than those who gave because of the work of the cause.

Erin described how a group of volunteers camped outside the dining hall because it was near the ATM. She says, “So many college students don't keep track of their money and so if they weren't sure they had the ten bucks, we told them [to] go check their balance. If they say they had the ten bucks, they donated. We set up computers near the ATM machine. We did everything we could!”

A Committed Volunteer Team

After the first couple of days Erin realized they couldn’t do it alone. So the students organized and recruited volunteers at their sister clubs located on different campuses. As Erin recalls, “We had a core group at each of the chapters devoted almost full-time to organizing and soliciting donors. We had a total of 25 volunteers. These were all college students.”

The volunteer group was in constant communication with one another, trading ideas and sharing what did and didn't work. Says Erin, “Our group would try something – like the Collectathons [described below] – and then we’d write up how to do it and share with the student clubs at other campuses. It was exciting to share the enthusiasm over the phone with other chapters. There was a sense of teamwork and shared experience.”

A Gen Y Twist on Telethons

The first weekend, Erin and the student volunteers organized a “Collect-a-thon.” Erin describes it as similar to a phone-a-thon, but more thorough: “We had 15 students come to the house and bring their cell phones, laptops, and chargers. We asked them to call anyone involved with the club from our University and ask them to donate $10 and tell their friends. When we exhausted that list, we got everyone in the group to call, text, or IM [instant message] their friends with no shame allowed. We told everyone to multi-task, to IM while on the phone.”

Erin says that many of the student volunteers were like her, with contacts on IM lists that included friends from middle school, high school, and connections from back home. In addition, since all the students had Facebook profiles, they sent personalized messages to friends, wrote on their friends' walls, and posted notes tagging people to encourage them to give and to help get the word out about the Challenge as well.

Tapping Personal Networks Really Matters

“We asked our core volunteers to reach out to their networks back home – whether it was their church, their school, or local rotary clubs,” says Erin. “We realized that we all needed to reach out beyond our university networks to win. I contacted my high school social studies teacher and she put a notice in the school newsletter. And, we actually got some donations from that.”

Erin also describes using a more traditional outreach strategy of previous donors to the organization: “The organization sells t-shirts and holds events for fundraisers. So, we had our volunteers pick out the donors they knew and asked them to call them. What was surprising was this was less effective than reaching out to our personal networks because we didn’t have a personal connection to many of the people on the list. “

Building Generational Bridges

Many of the student volunteers asked their parents and grandparents to donate to the campaign – many of whom had never donated online before. Erin noted that they got very good at providing tech support and demystifying the tools for older donors—and she was no exception.

“My grandmother had no idea what a widget was, but she would be willing to donate,” Erin says. “We had to learn how to explain it so they understood and got past their fears of security. My mom was scared of identity theft.” The demographic data from the donor survey reflects the generational bridge, with 28% of donors in the 18-21 age group and 29% over age 50.

The Competitive Aspects Inspired Creative Approaches

Watching their position on the leaderboard go and up down helped engage and motivate everyone. It inspired them to work harder. “On the second to last night, we were in third place,” Erin remembers. “I was exhausted so I decided to get some sleep and woke up and we were in 5th place. We went into crisis mode. The founder was in town and postponed his flight. He stayed so he could rally as many people as possible.”

The last twenty-four hours were critical. The founder of the organization was on campus and working along side student volunteers. He brought along a young woman from Honduras who was the first student to attend college from the orphanage that the organization supports.

Erin recalled, “I haven’t been to Honduras, but this college student was amazing and she had been through so much. When she told her story, it made us all work that much harder to win the contest.” And win they did with a final tally of $28,790 from1,639 donors, most of whom were new to the cause, plus the $50,000 grant as one of the top winners of America’s Giving Challenge.

Was It Worth It?

The answer is a resounding YES! according to Erin. The visibility, the new donors (35% of the donors who responded to the survey said that they were new to the cause), and the prize money were well worth the time, stress, and fundraising asks required to succeed. Sixty-two percent of the donors said that they are likely to make a donation to the cause in the future, and an equal amount are likely to tell others about the cause.

Reflecting on the Challenge, Erin said, “When we tell the story about our organization and what we’re doing to change the world – it is awesome. We’re often told that we have to wait to graduate and get a job before we can do things in the world. Being able to raise this money for a great cause and win the contest is so empowering. There is no question that we’d do this all over again.”

Donor Profile

Demographics

Age Range
16-17
18-21	28%
22-24	17%
25-29	6%
30-34	2%
35-39	4%
40-44	5%
45-49	7%
50-54	12%
55-59	10%
60-64	5%
65 or older	2%
Prefer not to answer

 

Gender
Female	70%
Male	29%
Prefer not to answer	1%

 

Income Range
Under $25,000	9%
$25,000 - $49,000	13%
$50,000 - $74,999	11%
$75,000 - $99,000	12%
$100,000 or more	30%
Prefer not to answer	24%

• 88% frequently or sometimes donate to causes/organizations.
• 72% had made an online prior to making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Challenge.
• 84% had made an online donation through the website of a specific charity or organization.
• 8% had made an online donation through a social networking site.
• 6% had made an online donation through a charity badge, widget, or SixDegrees.org.
• 9% had made an online donation through other method.  

Relationship to the Champion and to the Cause     

• 75% were aware of the Cause prior to the Giving Challenge.
• 59% had donated to the Cause prior to the Giving Challenge.
• 32% had volunteered their time with the Cause prior to the Giving Challenge.

Q: By what means were you contacted and asked to donate to the Giving Challenge?

Email	59%
Event	11%
Flyer	6%
Phone Call	18%
Message via social network	21%
Text Message	2%
Instant Message	6%
Blog/Web Page	3%
Other	26%
Don’t Recall	5%

 

Q: Which of the following best describes your relationship to the person who asked your to make a donation?

Friend	49%
Family Member	31%
Work Colleague	2%
Classmate	8%
Casual	4%
Don’t Know	4%
Don’t Recall	2%

 

Q: Was the person who asked you to make a donation to the Cause the person who was ultimately competing the Giving Challenge?

Yes	51%
No	18%
Not Sure	32%

 

Motivations and Barriers

Why they donated 

• 85% said to support my friend, family member, or colleague in the Challenge.
• 84% said the work of the Cause.
• 56% said I have a personal connection to the Cause.
• 61% said the ease of making an online donation.
• 50% said the amount requested was minimal.
• 22% said knew many others were donating.

Barriers 

• 87% agree the process of making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Challenge was simple.
• 1% agree they had technical difficulties when making an online donation to the Cause during the Giving Cause.
• 73% agree it is easier to make donations online than it is to make donations offline.
• 18% agree that they had concerns about the security of online donations.

Giving Challenge Impact

• 62% are likely to make a donation to the Cause in the future.
• 26% are likely to volunteer their time with the Cause in the future.
• 62% are likely to tell others about the Cause in the future.
• 57% learned something about the Cause during the Challenge.
• 88% feel their donation during the Challenge had an impact.
• 65% prefer to donate online rather than through another method.
• 8% joined an online social network as a result of the Challenge.

 

Research instruments and raw data (PDFs)

• List of award recipients
   
• List of interviewees
   
• Participants:
  • Survey questions
  • Topline summary of survey findings
  • Responses for Causes Giving Challenge participants
  • Responses for America's Giving Challenge participants
• Cause Champions:
  • Survey questions
  • Survey responses
• Case Studies:
  • Donor interview questions and responses
  • Donor survey questions and responses
• Partners: List of interviewees and questions