Doing Good has never been Easier

According to the Giving USA Foundation Americans donated nearly $300 billion to charity last year. Why is giving more in vogue these days than ever? “It's now easier to get a philanthropic bang for your buck thanks to humanitarian-minded credit cards, grocery stores, Web sites and other ways that fit snugly into your daily grind,” explains Christine Dell'Amore’s recent article “How to Be Routinely Charitable” in the Washington Post.

The Web, in particular, plays a role in “doing good.” Here are just a few options literally at your fingertips. 

GoodSearch, a Yahoo-powered search engine, donates 50% of its revenue to the more than 45,000 charities and schools chosen by site users. While GoodSearch has attracted celebrity philanthropists, its users are mostly regular folks who want to do good, co-founder Ken Ramberg says. You can see how much money your charity has raised this month with the site's "Who do you GoodSearch for?" feature.

Go on a cyber shopping trip at iGive, which donates to charity up to 26% of each purchase from such popular stores as Macy's and Best Buy. Founder and chief executive Robert Grosshandler says the site has sparked a "virtuous circle" of people spreading the gospel of daily donating.

Sign up for a credit card through Working Assets and the company will give 10 cents to a nonprofit group (choose from over 50 groups) for each purchase made with the card. "People join because we make it easy to make a difference," co-founder & chief executive Laura Scher says.

So what are you waiting for? It’s never been easier to do good.

From 2007 Convio Client Summit: Big CRMs "Open" For Business

Leave it to platforms like Facebook and Drupal to help the current crop of nonprofit CRM providers to get a bit more "open". Both Convio and Kintera have announced open platform initiatives in the past week. The buzz at this week's Convio Client Summit was positive form both vendors and organizations. The tools are light right now, but Convio provides cookbooks for developers to build on some existing applications with Facebook, Google Maps, etc. The promise is there, now it's up to the crafty developers to go out and make it happen for the organizations.

Convio will offer database connectors, extensions to other platforms, and APIs to post constituent data, as an example. I suspect more nonprofits will hire developers and firms to help build or configure these tools to extend into other platforms. It should be interesting to see how developers share their apps with other partners and how the truly creative nonprofits will extend their Convio data to other social network and media platforms.

It remains to be seen what Blackbaud will do now that these two major players have "opened" the marketplace for organizations. And for now, these are not completely "open-source" platforms. But, the days of closed, proprietary systems are now officially over. Welcome to the new tools. Bravo for the new efforts.

Convio's Announcement

Kintera's Announcement

Nonprofit Tech Blog's post about Convio and Kintera APIs

Beth's Blog discusses Convio Open

Greetings from Austin and the 2007 Convio Client Summit!

Today and tomorrow, the onLine blogging team is at the Convio Client Summit in Austin, meeting online fundraisers from around the country and discussing the latest trends. We'll have some commentary here next week, but please stop by the Changing Our World booth (table three) in the exhibits hall and say hello. We'd love to hear more about your program, talk about best practices, and show you some of what we've got. Ask for Jenn, Garth, or Ed.

Is Giving the New "Bling"?

"When rising consumption of luxuries produces declining enjoyment of vast wealth, giving it away might be the best revenge," says George F. Will in his recent Washington Post column, "A Lexus in Every Garage." "Positional goods and services are inherently minority enjoyments. These are enjoyments—"elite" education, "exclusive" vacations or properties—available only to persons with sufficient wealth to pursue the satisfaction of "positional competition."

However, the bridge between the "haves" and "have nots" is shrinking. What used to be considered luxury items only for the minority—Gucci, Armani, Tiffany, and Lexus to name a few—are now finding their way into the hands of a large majority. The previously unattainable is now attainable; there were 9.5 million millionaires worldwide at the end of 2006.

So, what is this reality doing to the value of goods, or at least the perceived value of owning such goods? Luxury items have usually been indicators of "position."  But with luxury goods losing their luster because a majority of people can now afford them, giving might just become the new "bling."  Instead of purchasing certain clothes, wristwatches, handbags, or automobiles to set themselves a part from others this holiday season, wealthy people might perceive greater relative value in giving their money away.

The lesson for nonprofits: The luxury item of choice just might be your nonprofit's cause. 9.5 million is a lot of potential donors, seeking causes to support with great sophistication. Because more than 65% of donors will go online to research causes before making a donation, your web site should be a clear, accurate reflection of your organization's mission and needs. Consumption this season could face some stiff competition from philanthropy.

In Case of Emergency, Use Twitter?

Micro-blogging escapes me, I admit it. Blogging, yes, of course. Social networking? Do it. But, micro-blogging on places like Twitter always seemed to granular to be taken seriously as a nonprofit communication device. It falls somewhere between blogging and an SMS or chat. Do you really care what people are doing right this instant (I'm building a report in Excel! I'm going to lunch with a client!)

However, Beth's Blog posted a YouTube video called "Use Twitter in Emergencies." The video is part of a series called "21st Century Disaster Tips You Won't Hear from Officials" and comes from David Stephenson of Stephenson Strategies, a homeland security firm. Stephenson has a whole YouTube channel called Homeland Security 2.0. The synth intro music and graphics aside, he provides some excellent tips using wikis, flash drives, and Twitter to distribute emergency contact information.

Can nonprofits use micro-blogging in a disaster? Absolutely. Nonprofits should use their website, blogs, social networking groups, anything to get the message to constituents and donors. Every channel is an opportunity for success.

And just when I thought Twitter was hopeless. I'm going to go post this on Twitter.

 

"Connected Consumers" Survey Released

Avenue A/Razorfish just released a survey on "connected consumers" -- a look at the mainstream adoption of Web 2.0 functionality. While I'll let you get the survey results at their Digital Design Blog, I highly recommend the AdWeek story about the survey.

Where else will you see this gem of a quote:

"It's a mixed bag," said Garrick Schmitt, vp, user experience at Avenue A/Razorfish. "Maybe the tag cloud is the mullet of the Internet. We're not quite at a tipping point for mass adoption of these things."

I wonder if tag clouds offer the same "business in the front and party in the back" attitude as the mullet?!