I first came across @paullyoung in September, 2008 when he implemented a birthday campaign as part of charity:water's September campaign.   Fast forward a couple of years, and Paull is following his passion for clean water around the world and is the director of digital for charity:water. charity:water continues to be an innovator in the area of online fundraising.  Earlier this month, I stumbled upon their brilliant personalized thank you videos.    It got me curious about the overall campaign … [Read more...]

I'm in Austin, Texas to deliver a keynote at the Texas Nonprofit Summit:  Leading the Charge for Change.   (Check out their social media dashboard to get a sense of the discussion).   While flying over Texas, I could see smoke rising and could imagine the devastation taking place down below.    When I landed,  David Neff had posted a link to a fundraising effort on my Facebook that was launched over at Help Attack. You sign up and pledge to donate an amount per tweet to be donated to an … [Read more...]

Four years ago,  charity:water launched its September birthday fundraiser where it asked its supporters and friends to give up their birthdays and ask for donations instead of gifts. Every year, the fundraising campaign involved more people and successfully raised more money using social fundraising tactics and channels.   charity:water has helped over a million people get clean water.   This September they are celebrating their 5th birthday and asking people to give up their birthdays for clean … [Read more...]

Not too long ago Seth Godin announced on his blog that he was going to reinvent the way books were published and read with The Domino Project.   In his words: The notion of the paper book as merely a package for information is slowly becoming obsolete. There must be other reasons on offer, or smart people will go digital, or read something free. The book is still an ideal tool for the hand-to-hand spreading of important ideas, though. The point of the book is to be spread, to act as a manifesto, … [Read more...]

Note from Beth: You'll find some good tips from David and Ehren on how to leverage their platform.    I'd like to emphasize one of their points -  "measure - experiment-measure."      Not every nonprofit is born with the "data driven gene."    One way your organization can begin to create a culture of measurement and learning is to always be piloting with small projects.    Setting up a test of hashtag giving is an example.  You'd test different calls to action on Twitter, using the Hashtag. … [Read more...]