The second America’s Giving Challenge built on the lessons learned from the 2007-2008 Giving Challenge and came at a time when the economy was at a significant low, social media adoption by individuals and nonprofits was growing stronger and more and more online charitable contests and challenges were starting to sprout. The Challenge raised more than $2.1 million for nonprofits from 105,000 donations in just 30 days.
Check out additional information on America’s Giving Challenge (2007).
We once again asked Beth Kanter and Allison Fine to review and assess the Challenge, paying close attention to lessons that could guide future challenge organizers and participants. In addition to closely analyzing data and conducting interviews with participants, Allison and Beth conducted “living” case studies, which were published on our blog and cultivated a public discussion to inform their conclusions. This report is easy to digest, featuring topline results, key findings and Conversational Case Studies highlighting winners.
America's Giving Challenge
America’s Giving Challenge presented by the Case Foundation, Causes on Facebook and PARADE Magazine encouraged people to rally their online networks to make giving back easier and a part of their daily lives. The innovative initiative brought attention to new online tools and networks, showing how to use them to deepen civic engagement, democratize philanthropy and engage masses of small donors and advocates.
Efforts by the Case Foundation and its partners over two separate Giving Challenges brought together hundreds of thousands of people, encouraged nearly 200,000 people to donate and raised nearly $4 million for thousands of causes. In addition to the dollars raised from the public, the Case Foundation and its partners awarded more than $1 million to the causes that recruited the most donors and were most successful in using online and offline strategies to mobilize support.
The Case Foundation launched America’s Giving Challenge in 2007 as a national online competition that enabled passionate individuals and nonprofit organizations to easily tap into their online and offline personal networks to increase awareness, attract new donors and encourage people to get and stay involved with causes they care about. In 2009, the Foundation launched the second America’s Giving Challenge, which incorporated learnings from, and built upon, the first initiative.
Both Challenges were effective in helping the nonprofit sector become more skilled in its use of social media and inspiring other corporations and foundations to launch similar online contests.