Those of you who’ve seen those contests where your non-profit will get money if it can get friends online will be pleased to note that the Case Foundation has opened up a new contest called the Giving Challenge. They’re giving away $750,000! The contest works like this:
The people who attract the most friends from their social networks to donate to their cause will get $50,000 to give to charity. The top 100 charities attracting the most online donations will each receive $1,000.
This takes the recent contests from Tactical Philanthropy and the $50,000 Challenge Grant from Microsoft to new heights. They also partnered with GlobalGiving and Causes to work it even deeper into the charity-based social networks. The contest opens 12/13/2007 3 PM EST (that’s about 45 minutes from now). Prepare to spam, blog, call, friend, chat your way to a win!
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Hi,
I wanted to let you know about the Nonprofit December Giving Carnival. Deadline to submit your post is Dec. 20th.
Here is the link,
http://christopherscottblog.typepad.com/blog/2007/11/december-giving.html
Let me know if you have any questions.
Christopher S.
http://www.ChristopherScottblog.com
We are looking for anyone related to donor gifts or non profit marketing
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Our mugs.Also a free website to take enable us to dropship an ecomug to your donors as a gift.
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Hi Allen,
Have you looked at the fine print of the challenge?
To process any donation, GlobalGiving gets a 10% cut of all monies raised.
It’s here:
http://givingchallenge.globalgiving.com/cb/ag/help.html#4.4
Obviously, there’s always a cost to process credit card donations, but 10% is practically double what other processors cost that aggregate, such as Network for Good. (They charge 4.75%). Even firstgiving charges only 7.35%.
For small non profits (raising
(for some reason my response got cut off… was it because of the less than sign?)
Hi Allen,
Have you looked at the fine print of the challenge?
To process any donation, GlobalGiving gets a 10% cut of all monies raised.
It’s here:
http://givingchallenge.globalgiving.com/cb/ag/help.html#4.4
Obviously, there’s always a cost to process credit card donations, but 10% is practically double what other processors cost that aggregate, such as Network for Good. (They charge 4.75%). Even firstgiving charges only 7.35 percent.
For small non profits (raising less than $15,000), it’s probably wise to go through an aggregate. But if you raise more than that, it’s much cheaper to get your own merchant account, because you’ll end up spending much less in fees, typically about 3-5%* of your total online donations.
*This includes per transactions fees. For example, with DonorPerfect, we charge 2.99% but also charge a .45 / transaction. Even I will admit that on an average donation of $70, this translates into a fee of $2.55 (or 3.6%), but this is less than HALF of what it would cost you at $7.00!!!
What do you think? Are you OK that only 90% of your donation is reaching the intended non-profit?
Agreed — there’s always a cost/benefit ratio that’s involved here. However, it’s a more complicated cost/benefit calculation than the one you propose.
At least in my case, I want to make sure that Beth Kanter’s nonprofit, the Sharing Foundation, has a shot at winning the huge pot of money of $50k. I only need to donate $10 but I’m putting her org that much closer to winning the contest. Her organization is already ahead. So in a sense, if she wins, there’s a much larger matching fund that will exceed the money she raises by roughly 20 to 1. That would mean my $10 donation less the 10% would really be around $180 to her organization.
I think it’s fair though to raise that question. I think 10% is high but not if you’re really going to be in the running for winning the $50k at the end. Other than that, no, I don’t think it’s a good proposition for your average donor.
That said, my org, socialmarkets, charges NOTHING for all donations — due to Google Checkout for Non-Profit’s generous waiving of all fees until 2009. We’re launching the socialmarkets beta next month complete with a full-blown marketing campaign so watch out for that.
I’m glad that you do see my side of the story. I also see yours, but the problem is that it still is a big ‘if’. What happens when/if Beth’s non-profit doesn’t win? Should all non-profits hope that they will be matched or given $50,000 at a time?
I think it’s great that you are launching socialmarkets. It’s probably taken a lot of your time and demanded your attention. I hope that you charge enough to cover the value you are creating.
Processing on-line donations is not an easy proposition. Believe it or not, we lose money offering on-line donations- and we’ve been at it for over 3 years.
I think it’s great that Google is waiving fees until 2009- but to be upfront, it sounds like one of the credit card offers I receive on a monthly basis- in the end, the credit card companies will get their money.
What I do know is that Visa/Mastercard/Amex/Paypal ALL charge fees, and the more they process, the more they have to charge/recover in absolute dollars.
There is no free lunch. Why would any nonprofit expect to receive free electricity or phone service? Why doesn’t the postal service offer free snail-mail to non profits?
I appreciate you responding and do hope that your venture is successful. You have a great blog that is reaching a lot of people- please keep up the great work.
-Jon Biedermann
DonorPerfect Fundraising Software
“I think it’s great that Google is waiving fees until 2009- but to be upfront, it sounds like one of the credit card offers I receive on a monthly basis- in the end, the credit card companies will get their money.”
So very true, Joe. After 2009, Google Checkout for Non-Profits is going to assess a 2% fee assessed on every transaction with a $0.25 surcharge. That doesn’t look so bad from here. There’s no doubt that taking credit cards online is somewhat of a hit on your bottom line but without them we couldn’t really have an online economy.
As for what happens if the Sharing Foundation lost the challenge (unlikely as they are in the lead right now but let’s say it lost), the Sharing Foundation has already amassed over $15,000 in donations in the contest so I think it’s a win there. Granted, $1500 is going to be sucked up into the contest fees but clearly you have to pay to play if you want to win it all. Also, I’m pretty sure that Sharing Foundation picked up tons of new donors because of the many online appeals to donate so there are additional benefits to being part of the contest that SHOULD make it worthwhile to your average non-profit.
Thank you though for your comments about the blog — I can only try, no?