Ariticle on Today’s Giving…

Libby,

I completely agree with you on online giving. I was shocked when I read some of the statistics you listed on your last post.

As much as I want to research charities and other good  causes, I get so many emails every day that I don’t need any more! I think this topic plays into the building relationships issue we have talked about in class many times. You need to actually find a connection, not email address, to insure more success in finding donors.

Like Libby said, I think that emails every once in a while can be beneficial, but when that is the first contact between a potential donor and the organization, that has disaster written all over it.

Buying contributes to charity

I did my article presentation this week over some websites that give back to charity when you buy through them.  Most of the class thought this was an “ok” idea. It is not a life changing fund-raising tactic, but a lot of people would take advantage of this but, not go out of their way too.  Two of the websites I found were ebaygiving and goodshop.com Some other people have heard about other things such as  Toms Shoes, that for every pair you buy, they send a pair to someone in a third world country. 

I think that one way that this on-line buying could really benefit people is that if a non-profit org. used it as a fundraiser. I think that if they took donations of gifts, or things people would buy off e bay, and then sold them, and they got all the money for the organization that would be great. I can really see someone like FHCC using this, and making a few hundred off of it. 

I belive that one of the reasons it is not working or blowing up right now, is that people have not heard about it.  The general conscience I got from the class was if they had two items in front of them they could buy, and one the profit would go to charity and the other would go to Joe Brown’s pocket of course they would by the one for charity, even if it meant no tax deduction for them. 

I think this is a great idea, and hope that larger corporations start to grab on to this.