Note from Beth: Micro-lending and crowdfunding platforms are  part of the sharing economy.   While they don't completely solve the issue of wealth distribution and equity, here's an inspiring story about a micro lending platform called Milaap which is the Hindi word for connecting.     They celebrate four years today and are sharing some tips for building a community a crowd funding campaign. 5 Ways to Build and Activate a Community for Your Crowdfunding Campaign guest post by Sourabh Sharma I … [Read more...]

Note from Beth: Over the last year, I've been facilitating a peer learning network of community foundations, grantees of the Knight Foundation, that are hosting Giving Days throughout the year.    Participants are learning and sharing best practices.   Several community foundations will be  part of Give Local America, a campaign that encourages and supports local philanthropy and the 100th anniversary of community foundations in the US and the vital role they play.   The campaign is organized … [Read more...]

Note from Beth: I’m working with the Knight Foundation to facilitate a peer learning exchange that will help their community foundation partners learn and spread best practices  in planning and implementing Giving Days.   This learning approach has two ways to capture knowledge.  The first is The Giving Day Play books which a collective archive of formally documented processes, examples, check lists, and case studies planning and hosting giving days.   The second is a peer learning group of … [Read more...]

  Note from Beth: Last year, 30% of the $5 billion crowdfunded went to social causes according the "Cracking the Crowd Funding Code".  Nonprofit's use of crowdfunding is growing at an exponential rate with many nonprofits jumping on the crowfunding bandwagon attracted by the potential of finding new supporters.   Robert Wu offers a great set of best practices in this guest post below.   As crowdfunding practices mature and become an valuable part of the nonprofit fundraising toolkit, there … [Read more...]

I'm at the AFP Conference where I will be on a plenary session about "Social Media for Social Change" moderated by Social Media 4 Nonprofit leaders Darian Rodriguez and Ritu Sharma, along with Carolyn Miles, Save the Children and Ben Rattray, Change.Org.  I'll be talking about the role of hyper-connected donors based on my experience and some recent research that shows how valuable these champions are for crowdfunding and social fundraising. I love serendipity!   Since last summer, I've been … [Read more...]