Peter Dietz of Social Actions is launching a blog series on the topic of ‘embedded philanthropy’.
From the RED campaign to CREDO cellular phone service, embedded philanthropy has emerged as an innovative and scalable form of corporate social responsibility. Social Actions is convening the “Embedded Philanthropy Blog Series, Sponsored by Telecom for Charity” in order to draw attention to the practice of embedding donations to nonprofits in the sale of commercial goods and services. офис столовеSocial Actions has invited leading philanthropy bloggers to respond to the statement, “Embedded philanthropy is transforming business as usual for the public good.” Between May 19th and May 31st, a number of bloggers will post their responses to this statement.
According to philanthropy blogger Lucy Bernholz, the term embedded philanthropy refers to “the (apparently) increasingly common practice of building a philanthropic gift into another, unrelated, financial transaction.”
Crowdfunding, inspired by crowdsourcing,
describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who
network and pool their money together, usually via the Internet, in
order to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowdfunding
occurs for any variety of purposes, from disaster relief to citizen
journalism to artists seeking support from fans, to political campaigns.
Crowdfunding can replace the need for specialized
grant applications or other more formal and traditional fundraising
techniques with that of a more casual, yet powerful, approach based on
crowd participation. Examples of the basis of Crowdfunding can be seen in Cooperatives
(co-ops) around the world. However, the Internet can provide new
streamlined approaches to quickly imitating the co-op model for
low-level and/or sudden needs (ie. disaster relief, travel expenses,
legal fees and so on.). It is this reason that a term be used to
encompass the act of informally generating and distributing funds,
usually online, by groups of people for specific social, personal,
entertainment or other purposes.
Great coverage from Philly.com of stories from national nonprofits using social networks for fundraising:
Living Beyond Breast Cancer has won supporters for one of its
biggest fund-raisers with e-mail blasts, brochures, and personal calls
to big donors.
But that’s so yesterday.
For the first time, the nonprofit based in Haverford is posting to
its new Facebook page information on this year’s Yoga Unites event,
which takes place Sunday. It also is tweeting on Twitter as @YU4LBBC
and uploading video to YouTube.
Of course, Living Beyond also blogs, and it shares photos on Flickr,
including one of women saluting the sun on the steps of the Art Museum,
where the annual Yoga Unites takes place.
As a result, the number of teams signed up for the event has nearly tripled, the group reports.
That’s the bottom-line promise of “social giving,” which uses online
networks to raise awareness and, ultimately, money. Organizations with
a cause are “friend-raising” on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and
elsewhere to bolster that old-as-money objective: fund-raising.
M+R and NTEN have released the next installment of their rolling eNonprofit Benchmark series.
Ever wonder how your email list stacks up against other nonprofits?
M+R Strategic Services and NTEN are excited to announce that we’re releasing a new eNonprofit Benchmarks Study for 2009. We’ve analyzed online messaging, fundraising, and advocacy data from 32 leading nonprofit organizations to provide you with reliable new data, answering questions like:
How is the financial crisis affecting online fundraising?
How do my targeted emails, appeals to non-donors, phone call alerts, and more compare to those of other nonprofits?
For state-based or local groups, what’s a good email response rate?
A new research report has been released addressing the role of that internet plays in fundraising for larger gifts. The Wired Wealthy: Using the Internet to Connect with your Middle and Major donors is a joint study by Convio, Edge Research, and SeaChange Strategies into the online behaviors and preferences of major and middle donors. It shows that there is significant room for improvement in the way nonprofits meet their online needs.
This study suggests that an “Internet communications gap” exists between higher dollar donors and charities. In short, most causes are not making the best possible use of their Web and email efforts to connect with this critically important audience.
Google is demonstrating an increased interest in the multi-billion dollar nonprofit sector with the announcement of a special suite online donation processing tools for nonprofits. Google Checkout for Non-Profits gives access to Google Checkout e-commerce system, and builds in specific tools for creating and publishing online donation buttons, plus a set of API functions for integrating data with internal donor-management systems. Google is offering this whole system for free (0% commission + $0 transaction fee) until the end of 2008. (more…)
MobileActive has released the third in their guidebook series on using mobile phones for civic engagement. This report, by writer and internet strategist Michael Stein, focuses on the use of mobile phones in fundraising campaigns. Looking at examples and learnings from a wide range of organizations around the world, and in particular at the first large-scale emergence of mobile fundraising in Southeast Asia after the Tsunami of 2005, the guide offers valuable advice and strategic pointers for organizations looking to integrate mobile media into their fundraising campaigns.
The guide can be downloaded here (free registration required).
Techsoup has published one of the first overviews of an emerging category of online fundraising tools: charity badges.
Charity badges — also known as fundraising widgets — are small graphic modules (similar in appearance to online banner ads) designed to help individuals and nonprofits raise funds online. Charity badges solicit donations for a specific cause or organization and can be posted to Web sites, blogs, and social networking pages.
The article describes the basic function and purpose of charity badges and profiles two of the leading providers, as well as offering a case study and strategic advice to using charity badges in fundraising campaigns.
There is another new player in the charity badges marketplace, following the lead of ChipIn and Network for Good.
CareBadges recently opened the doors on its new service, offering customized badges that people can place their own personal websites. blogs, MySpace accounts, etc.
CareBadges is just getting started (top fundraisers so far is $100), but promises some enhanced features such as adding your own slideshow to your personal carebadge.
Anyone who is looking for good ideas about how to get their nonprofit up to speed with the new generation of interactive web tools (loosely defined as Web 2.0 or social media) should keep an eye on this site: The 59 Smartest Organizations Online.
The site features a live, dynamically-updated ‘popularity’ poll where anyone can nominate and vote for the organizatios they think are doing the best job of effectively using new user-driven web tools - such as blogs, photo streams, comment boards ranking/voting and whatever else is new and cool in the social media world.
The list contains many of the familiar names you’d expect: Greenpeace, Oxfam, MoveOn, Sierra Club; and also quite a few smaller unknowns who are doing truly innovative work to explore new web technologies. (check out Kiva, Modest Needs, PledgeBank and Witness for some refreshingly new ideas).
Much of the exploration into Web 2.0 for nonprofits is being done on non-commercial open-source platforms like Plone and Drupal, and by some of the edge-players in the online services marketplace, but increasingly the big players are also coming on board.
Peter Dietz of Social Actions is launching a blog series on the topic of ‘embedded philanthropy’. 
Interesting excerpt from The Crowdfunding Wiki:
Great coverage from Philly.com of stories from national nonprofits using social networks for fundraising:
M+R and NTEN have released the next installment of their rolling eNonprofit Benchmark series.
A new research report has been released addressing the role of that internet plays in fundraising for larger gifts. The Wired Wealthy: Using the Internet to Connect with your Middle and Major donors is a joint study by Convio, Edge Research, and SeaChange Strategies into the online behaviors and preferences of major and middle donors. It shows that there is significant room for improvement in the way nonprofits meet their online needs.
Google is demonstrating an increased interest in the multi-billion dollar nonprofit sector with the announcement of a special suite online donation processing tools for nonprofits. Google Checkout for Non-Profits gives access to Google Checkout e-commerce system, and builds in specific tools for creating and publishing online donation buttons, plus a set of API functions for integrating data with internal donor-management systems. Google is offering this whole system for free (0% commission + $0 transaction fee) until the end of 2008. 
Techsoup has published one of the first overviews of an emerging category of online fundraising tools: charity badges.
There is another new player in the charity badges marketplace, following the lead of ChipIn and Network for Good.
Anyone who is looking for good ideas about how to get their nonprofit up to speed with the new generation of interactive web tools (loosely defined as Web 2.0 or social media) should keep an eye on this site: