Online Fundraising: How the Social Web is Changing the Industry

This is a follow-up post for the presentation Lisa Thomas-Tench gave this evening at Net Tuesday. Lisa has worked with community and capacity building organizations around the world and traveled to Africa last year to build schools and work in the communities.

The main thing that Lisa wanted to make sure came across during her presentation was that online supportive international projects are subject to the same challenges as standard, off-line charitable donations. Many people don’t realize this, and tend to assume that because it’s online, it’s going to be easier.

There is an absolute explosion of social networking for social causes type sites out there now, so it’s more important than ever to do your research to find out exactly where it is your money is going.

Like our mantra in social networking, make sure the organization you’re donating to is transparent. It’s vital to make sure that the right people are getting the right funds so that your donation has the right impact. You want to know how much of the organization’s donations (on or offline) are going to marketing, salaries, administration and other expenses, and how much are going to the actual projects and the people running or participating in those projects.

Be aware when you’re looking for a project to support, that you find one that supports local capacity building and has strong, two-way communication. Some projects can do both capacity building and two-way communication if they’re done well.   (image sources: Lisa Thomas-Tench)

Alberto Masetti-Zannini argues that participation mechanisms are key: “NGOs have struggled for a long time to build effective participation mechanisms in the developing world. Relevant and correct information from the bottom of the development pyramid is necessary to make knowledgeable decisions about their work.”

But, Alberto is optimistic: “Indeed, Web 2.0 tools are beginning to change this situation, by generating and disseminating local content and knowledge in an open, shared structure. But are NGOs adopting these new technologies in their knowledge management practices?”

Lisa has a few tips to share with people interested in how best to spend their online fundraising dollars:

• Keep it small by using sites like Dreambank
• Keep it personal. Micro loans from sites like Kiva keep your donation personal, and goes directly to the people you’re trying to help.
• Research and take your time before you donate. All of the projects need to have the backing of an actual charity. You can’t just throw up a project and get people to give you money. Look at sites like Give Meaning to help you find worthy projects.

There are several ways that social networking and Web 2.0 tools are helping to spread awareness, raise funds, and share knowledge.

• William Kamkwamba has a windmill blog here. My first thought was “what’s a windmill blog??”, but was soon completely impressed by the “About” page:

Starting at 14, rather than accept his fate, William started borrowing books from a small community lending library located at his former primary school. He borrowed a 5th grade American textbook called Using Energy, which depicted a wind turbine on its cover. He decided to build a windmill to power his family’s home and obviate the need for kerosene, which provided only smoky, flickering, distant and expensive light after dark. First he built a prototype, then his initial 5-meter windmill out of a broken bicycle, tractor fan blade, old shock absorber, and blue gum trees. He was able to power four light bulbs and two radios, and charge neighbors’ mobile phones. He then rebuilt a 12 meter windmill to better catch the wind above the trees, and added a car battery for storage, as well as homemade light switches and circuit breakers.

You can help William’s education and engineering projects with a secure donation via PayPal. Through a generous donor’s matching grant, contributions of $100 or more will be doubled! Payments appear as Griot Digital, LLC

• There are several sites dedicated to sharing knowledge, including: Knowledge Management for Development, Web2ForDev, and Development through Dialogue.  
• Share information via SMS and online tools with sites like TradeNet.biz. The goal of TradeNet.biz is to create a platform where farmers and traders across the world can share market information via mobile networks and the web.
• Crowdsource crisis information – who better to tell you what’s going on during a crisis than somene involved?

  Ushahidi, which means ”testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis.The new Ushahidi Engine is being created to use the lessons learned from Kenya to create a platform that allows anyone around the world to set up their own way to gather reports by mobile phone, email and the web – and map them. It is being built so that it can grow with the changing environment of the web, and to work with other websites and online tools.

Are there any tools you’ve used in the past that we’ve missed?