Many successful nonprofit organizations are notorious for implementing unconventional and creative marketing tactics for fundraising efforts. Unfortunately, due to shrinking budgets and limited resources, it seems like fundraising has never been so challenging. Social Media has been a successful tool for some nonprofits to help generate funds but a new more directed approach that use strategies such as “crowd sourcing” offer even better portals for engaging ongoing awareness and pooling resources into fund raising forces that to generate dollars. Enter Crowdrise, an innovative website that uses crowd-sourcing for charitable purposes.
With Crowdrise nonprofits are able to use the site to raise money in new ways by turning their grassroots supporters into grassroots fundraisers. The site is designed to complement the nonprofit’s existing website and fundraising campaigns. Crowdrise has a few main objectives:
(1) Give nonprofits an extremely easy platform to create compelling, viral fundraising campaigns that raise new money for their organization.
(2) Become a single resource to turn donors, supporters, and volunteers into fundraisers by asking them to create their own free fundraising pages on Crowdrise.
(3)Offer nonprofit organizations new promotions to incent donors and fundraisers to raise more money with a greater sense of urgency.
(4) Make volunteering and fundraising fun!
Crowdrise is super simple to set up. The site jokes, “if you don’t understand how it works just ask a high school student!” To get started you will need to create your own charitable profile page. Next, begin your fundraising campaign by either choosing from over a million charities already set up on the site or joining someone else’s project team and help them fundraise for their charity. Of course, the most important part of the process is asking for donations. Crowdrise’s share button allows users to effortlessly share their fundraising campaign through email, Facebook and Twitter.
Check out this short video to get a real sense of the power your nonprofit can harness by using Crowdrise.
How to Create a Crowdrise Fundraiser from Crowdrise on Vimeo.
While Crowdrise is free to use the site does deduct 5% off donations and has a transaction fee of $1.00 for all donations under $25.00 and $2.50 for all donations over $25.00. For example, if your organization received a $100 donation: $5.00 (5%) would automatically get deducted and $2.50 would be subtracted as a transaction fee. The end result would be your nonprofit securing a $92.50 donation.
The Launch Pad’s RevITup™ Business Care Nonprofit Managed IT Service Series offers a broad range of discounted, fixed-fee technology services designed to help nonprofit organizations meet their technology needs within their budget. Through our GreenBack™ Community Outreach Program, gently used PCs and other equipment will be recycled back into the community and made available to nonprofit organizations throughout the Bay area. To learn more about our GreenBack™ Community Outreach Program and the services that we provide to nonprofit organizations, contact Megan Meisner, mmeisner@launchpadonline.com or 813 920 0788 x210.
