Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog | How to raise $2,657 in 90 minutes

How to raise $2,657 in 90 minutes

Disclaimer: These results are not typical. This story is the fundraising equivalent of the bikini-clad woman in the Slimfast ad - a special success story.

That said, uber-networked bloggerista and social networking guru Beth Kanter did it. And in the process, she showed us how we might do it, too. Read the story here.

Okay, so you may not have hundreds of Twittering friends at the ready or even know what the heck is a Gnomedexer, but there are some lessons here.

The messenger is everything. If you want to raise money, get people who like you to ask their friends and family for funds on your behalf. When Beth reached out to her community - in person and online - people responded.

Well-networked messengers are gold. When those fans of yours have extensive online networks, they can touch an amazing number of people.

The simpler and easier the ask, the bigger the conversion. Asking people to make a $10 with a few clicks is not a big request, and so it’s hard to say no to it.

People are total conformists. Once people see their peers doing something, they’ll follow. Beth got a bunch of technically inclined people to reach out to their networks in public, and that’s peer pressure on steroids. Social norms, meet social networks.

Tangibility is key. Beth didn’t raise money for “girl’s education in Cambodia.” She asked people to help a specific young woman with her college education. That makes a big difference.

Transparency is essential. A ticker with real-time results measured against a tangible goal makes people feel trusting - and compelled toa ct.

Thank-yous are appreciated. Beth is great at thanking people, recognizing them and celebrating what their donations accomplished. That kind of gratitude is the happy ending to a fabulous fundraising campaign.

Thanks Beth for the inspiration. And for all you do for Cambodia, a place very close to my heart.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/26 at 09:09 PM

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Comments

And thanks for the synthesis and analysis .... brilliant.

Posted by Beth Kanter on 08/26 at 09:59 PM

There is a young lady who just this past week accomplished almost this same feat.

http://www.flowerdust.com

Your post is very relevant and a great point.

Thanks!

Posted by Mark B on 08/27 at 12:35 AM

Mark,

The url is http://www.flowerdust.net and she raised $2,500 in a couple of days - launching with a matching grant of $400. I’m not sure if she had an online component or if that was just from the blog.

Last year was able to raise $1,200 in 24 hours from the blog and twitter - and then in a few days $2,200.

Katya - one point I’d like to add is that my might campaign had a significant offline component - and one very old skool method - we passed the hat or passed a fez to be more specific. And, I had basically spent the 25 minutes before that telling them stories about why the charity was important to me - someone asked me if I ever was a baptist minister in a past life.

All this to say that there is a similarity between grassroots, church-related fundraising - and Mark’s pointer up there really brought that home for me.

Posted by Beth Kanter on 08/27 at 06:31 AM

Yeah I messed the link up.. darn.

Yeah she used twitter and her blog only. She raised 1800 of it in 18 hours, 800 in 15 minutes..

Anne uses her blog a lot for compassion international.

Posted by Mark B on 08/27 at 03:50 PM

I was actually there at the Gnomedex conference to see Beth do her thing. I also had a chance to talk with her for a while at the speaker’s dinner. Sure, you can do great things through Social Media, but if you don’t have the passion and purpose that a Beth Kanter does, you won’t get the results. I was amazed at learning about her life journey…it is inspiring and amazing. Kudos Beth!!!

Posted by Troy Malone on 08/29 at 02:45 PM

thanks for the link. my readers are uberlously generous. in the last six months, almost 100k has been donated. they rock!

Posted by anne jackson on 08/30 at 11:30 AM

It’s not about what you know but who you know…. If you know the right people you can easily do this as well using just the messenger and social media.

Posted by ideas to make money on 08/31 at 12:34 PM

I like the comment about passion and purpose being key. Seems like this is more evidence that people are likley to give base on a positive experience, not statements of need alone. For example, we’ve known for some time that the United States consumes much of the world’s food, wasting more in a year than poor nations ever receive. Yet the statistic doesn’t move people to action. In this case experiencing a passionate (and credible) advocate has moved some people to get involved a little bit.

Posted by Bill Peatman on 09/02 at 02:20 PM