Big News: $2M+ Raised for Nonprofits in CrowdRise Holiday Challenge

Folks, I just got an update from Ed Norton, one of the co-founders of CrowdRise, about the #GivingTower Holiday Challenge I’m sponsoring with MacAndrews & Forbes, Fred & Joanne Wilson, and Isaac S. Gindi. This year I’m giving $50k to support nonprofits.

A total of $250k is being given away in prize money, but an impressive $2 million+ has already been raised by the nonprofits participating. Last year, at this point in the Challenge, the total raised was: $609,835. That’s $1,561,954 more raised right now than was raised at this same time last year. This is the real deal.

Each time a donation’s made, a brick is added to the #GivingTower. What does this mean?

There are 16,757 bricks in the Tower.
It’s over 2,514 ft tall.
It’s taller than 2 Bank of America Towers stacked on top of each other.
In 208 more feet, the Giving Tower will be taller than the Burj Khalifa, Dubai.

It’s inspiring to see the organizations putting in lots of effort and taking the lead. They’re orgs that aren’t household names, but instead charities like the Cure JM Foundation – which works on an extremely rare disease affecting children, and small but mighty animal reserves.

The Bonus Challenge winners so far are…

Bonus Challenge #1: Cure JM Foundation

Bonus Challenge #2: Wildlife SOS

And there was a Surprise Bonus Challenge: Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation

Bonus Challenge # 3 is happening now. Every org that gets 10 donations will be entered to win $10k. You’ve got til December 16th to get the donations. And there’s still time to sign your org up to participate in the Challenge.

December 11, 2014

Tis the Season to Give Back

Folks, I believe that it’s really important to give back to our communities. One way to do that is to participate in CrowdRise’s #GivingTuesday Holiday Challenge for nonprofits. I’m giving $50K to go toward the winner of the Challenge, and together, with the other donors, there will be $250K in prize money.

CrowdRise has been working hard to make this Challenge and #GivingTuesday bigger then past years. One way they’re doing that is by creating a Giving Tower. It’s going to be a hologram tower. Each time someone donates, a brick is added to the tower. You can actually download an app and point it at a dollar bill to see how the tower’s growing. Here’s a little more about it:

The Giving Tower Holiday Challenge is a great way for organizations to rally their supporters, raise money for their cause, drive engagement, get lots of exposure and, most importantly, raise money for their cause (note intentional repetition). The Challenge is friendly fundraising competition launched by craigconnects, Fred and Joanne Wilson, and MacAndrews & Forbes. It’s designed to help you raise awareness and lots of money for your year end fundraising.

Here’s more about the Challenge this year:

The Challenge starts on November 25th and there are going to be huge grand prizes, plus lots of Bonus Challenges. The campaign is always amazing and last year, charities rallied to raise over $2.3m for their causes.

There will be $250,000 in prizes this year. The organization that raises the most will receive a $100,000 donation to their cause. Second place will win $50,000, third $25,000, fourth $10,000 and fifth place will receive a $5,000 donation to their cause.

There will also be multiple opportunities along the way to get extra cash donations in the form of Bonus Challenges. Folks, we’re talking an extra $60,000 in Bonus Challenges.

The good folks over at CrowdRise are hosting a webinar on November 20th at 3pm ET to walk you through everything about the Challenge, please Click Here to register.

So far, there’s more than 500 charities signed up, and plenty of time for you to sign up, too.

The Toolkit will tell you everything else you need to know that I may have forgotten.

Use the hashtag #GivingTower to continue the conversation.

Looking forward to getting this Challenge started, more to come…

November 21, 2014

5 women bloggers you really need to follow

Hey, I don’t think women are noted frequently enough for their accomplishments. Women dominate social media and have a huge impact in the blogosphere, but aren’t always recognized.

My team and I compiled a list of women bloggers who are the real deal. You should follow these folks on Twitter, and check out their blogs. These women are on top of of the latest tech news, nonprofit strategies, and social media trends.

5 Women Bloggers to Follow:

Xeni Jardin is an editor and blogger for Boing Boing, a web zine they describe as being “devoted to the weird, wonderful and wicked things to be found in technology and culture.” Independent for nearly 25 years, they publish a daily mix of short articles, long features, and video productions.

Follow @xeni
//

Beth Kanter is the author of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits. Beth has over 30 years working in the nonprofit sector in technology, training, capacity building, evaluation, fundraising, and marketing.

Follow @kanter
//

Shelly Kramer blogs about internet marketing, social media, and tech at V3, a full service integrated marketing, digital communications and social media agency.

Follow @ShellyKramer
//

Kara Swisher is co-CEO of Revere Digital, co-executive editor and blogger for Re/code, and co-executive producer of The Code Conference. Re/code is an independent tech news, reviews and analysis site. Because everything in tech and media is constantly being rethought, refreshed, and renewed, Re/code’s aim is to reimagine tech journalism.

Follow @karaswisher
//

Amy Vernon is the author of Dear Amy. Amy is among the top 15 contributors of all time on Digg.com (and the highest-ranked female ever), and is recognized for her knowledge of writing, community, and social media.

Follow @AmyVernon
//

Who would you add to this list? What women bloggers do you have bookmarked on your reading list?//

April 29, 2014

Infographic Reveals Latest Data on Cracking the Crowdfunding Code

It’s the third anniversary of craigconnects, and we’ve really tried to bring good people together to raise money for their nonprofits. We did a lot of support through crowdfunding, and to celebrate, the craigconnects team and I created an infographic, Cracking the Crowdfunding Code, to show you just how effective and accessible crowdfunding is. Crowdfunding raised more than five billion dollars worldwide in 2013, and peer-to-peer nonprofit fundraising for charities is seeing explosive growth.

A few things that we discovered after researching crowdfundings impact on charities and interviewing prominent crowdfunding platforms such as Causes, Causevox, FirstGiving, Razoo, StayClassy, etc:

Over 28% of donors on crowdfunding platforms are repeat donors.

Fundraisers who use a video raise 2x more than those without videos.

More than $19M online donations were processed on #GivingTuesday in 2013.

Over $9,000 on average is raised on nonprofit campaign crowdfunding pages.

Other infographic findings detail various crowdfunding results such as the average online donation to campaigns, more data on the success of the crowdfunding initiative #GivingTuesday, and best practices of nonprofits that have raised a significant amount of money with this newer fundraising tool.

Folks, I’ve worked on four crowdfunding campaigns myself in the past three years, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. The campaigns included two that raised funds for vets and milfam organizations, another for Hurricane Sandy relief, and the Holiday Challenge that was open to all nonprofits. I’ve teamed up with prominent crowdfunding platforms to promote the campaigns and have donated prize money for the orgs that raise the most in order to stimulate competition and success. The campaigns I’ve worked on have raised an estimated total of $2.6 million.

I began the craigconnects initiative in March 2011 to organize my efforts to help support nonprofits working in my areas of focus. Crowdfunding’s a natural fit for craigconnects’ efforts to promote the use of tech for the public good because it involves grassroots efforts and involvement. I’m not much for top-down stuff. I only understand bottom-up stuff.

Please check out the infographic, and share it if you think it’s helpful.

March 19, 2014

Unbelievable: Over $2 Million Dollars Raised for Nonprofits

Hey there, the CrowdRise #HolidayChallenge just ended on Thursday, and you won’t believe how much the organizations raised collectively in small donations for their nonprofits: $2,394,827, more than double last year’s total for the Vets Challenge.

Yup, that’s right, over two million dollars. Plus, I gave $75k, in grand and weekly bonus prizes and that money was distributed between several nonprofits who are really getting the job done.

A much-deserved congratulations to all of the nonprofits who really had their boots on the ground doing good work. Especially the top three winners:

Cure JM Foundation came in first place, winning the Holiday Challenge. The total amount that they raised and won was nearly $400,000 to help advance Juvenile Myositis (JM) research, a rare and life-threatening autoimmune condition affecting mostly children.
US Friends of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust won 2nd place ($40k prize) by raising $133,576 to support care for orphaned elephants in Africa.
Hope and Opportunity Through Literacy won 3rd place ($20k prize) by raising $111,114 to support education and health programs for the poor living in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, Portugal, and the United States.

These nonprofits couldn’t have raised over $2 million dollars without your help, so a big thank you and congratulations to everyone who participated, and to all the good folks over there at CrowdRise, Huffington Post, and the other philanthropists who are really making a difference.

Thank you again for making this happen, folks. A nerd’s gotta do what a nerd’s gotta do.

January 11, 2014