Announcing the GGG Ethics & Transparency Center!  Click here to read about our advocacy for ethics and transparency in donation credit-card payment processing, or click here to jump straight to our voluntary disclosure center.

At GGG, we believe public disclosure should be required for funds passed through what we call a third-party conduit bank account — that is, an account where funds are deposited temporarily from donors’ credit cards, to be disbursed later to the donors’ intended recipients.  We believe disclosure is the only way the public can be assured the funds are actually being disbursed, disbursed within a reasonable amount of time, and disbursed to the donors’ intended recipients.  These ethical requirements can only be satisfied by public disclosure.

In politics, people give money by credit cards all the time, and public disclosure is the law.  The system is rather burdensome for vendors, as we know from experience.  However, the system fulfills a compelling public interest in building public confidence that funds are going to the right place, and as such it is also in ever vendor’s interest.  Not every requirement from political giving applies to nonpolitical giving, so we believe a nonprofit disclosure regime can be more relaxed than the very tightly regulated political field, to encourage more donation volume.  But the basic premises of disclosure are the same, and they’re proven in the political donation processing field to work.

In the absence of a nonprofit public disclosure regime, we are undertaking the project ourselves of publicly disclosing all of our activity.  We’d prefer to have a public form to fill out to prove that money coming in equals money going out less fees that were publicly disclosed in advance.  Without such a public disclosure form, we’re simply publishing redacted versions of our various bank statements with the account numbers removed.  So far we’ve redacted through April 2011; please keep checking back for more updates.

Comments?  We’d love to hear what you think!

Tickets are useful for more than events.  The toolkit offered by the Grassroots Giving Group includes a robust ticketing system. The obvious use for such a system is to handle tickets to your events. In addition to providing an easy sales system, the ticketing function also sends email tickets, tracks the number sold against the number available, and allows for various price points for tickets.

However, with a little creativity, the ticket system can be used for more than just an event. The tickets can be named anything you like and the price point can be set as you please. This permits you to collect donations for a variety of purposes. For example, if you are trying to raise money to send your 15 members tennis team to the regional championship, you could have people buy sponsorships for each of your 15 athletes. Or, if you are creating a program book to help raise funds for your community theater, you could use the ticketing system to create an easy way for people to buy quarter-page, half-page, and full-page ads. Your imagination and willingness to make the pitch are the limit to the possibilities.

Another way to use the ticketing system is to support distributed events. An easy way to do this is by distributing a DVD on your issues to volunteers who agree to host a house-party. Then have them use the ticketing system to invite friends and family to come view the DVD. After the viewing, you can have every party call into a conference line where an expert on your topic can answer a few questions. After that, the host of the party makes the ask and allows people at the party to write a check or use the fundraising page to make a credit card gift. This method can be highly effective at not only raising money, but getting a message out into a community.

The tools that are provided in our system are very flexible and designed to be used creatively in order to make it possible for them to fit a variety of organizations and a wide variety of strategies. We have been thinking about the best way to use these tools for some time and we have made a careful survey of existing best practices. However, we’re firm believers that our clients and future clients will continue to develop creative and successful ways of using our tools and our ideas to advance the missions of their organizations. We look forward to watching what happens.

I just got back from speaking to an audience of state charity officers gathered at Columbia Law School for a discussion on the Charleston Principles.  I was scheduled to speak for an hour, but they kept me for over three hours!

We had an engaging conversation about who’s a solicitor, anymore.  The Charleston Principles (read them here) are a document intended for internal discussion among state charity regulators.  They were first drafted in 1999 and adopted in 2001, and my main points to the regulators were that the Principles were a very good idea but were outdated, and that the ethical demands of today’s technology can’t be answered by placing the square peg of what I called social fundraising vendors into the round hole of paid solicitor registration.  Not only is that incorrect because social fundraising vendors like GGG, FirstGiving.com and others do not engage in solicitation, but registration requirements designed for paid solicitors don’t cover the half of the issues that need to be addressed when regulating social fundraising vendors.

And you bet social fundraising vendors need regulation!  I don’t enjoy having to run a business in a totally unregulated “Wild West” in which there is little to no ethical oversight of anybody.  GGG has taken ethical leadership by engaging in the kind of voluntary disclosure that we think should be required of all social fundraising vendors, but the statutory and regulatory system we need is simply not the system we have right now.  Creating that system is in the public interest, in the interest of regulators, and in the interest of the regulated community.

The regulators were pleasantly surprised to find themselves being addressed by a business owner who favors regulation.  What I said to them was — as they and I both knew, and everyone should be aware — somewhere under the bright yellow sun sits the Hamburglar with his fingers in the cookie jar.  Vendors like us work by having donated funds pass through a third-party bank account before being forwarded to recipient organizations in aggregate.  Is that bank account segregated from the vendor’s operating funds?  Does the vendor engage in the kind of public disclosure that ensures through public scrutiny that the right things are happening with that money?  Or does the vendor commingle those funds with their operating bank account as PipeVine did in the 2003 San Francisco United Way scandal, treating donors’ money as zero-interest loans to them without anyone else’s knowledge?  That’s just one piece of the issues that must be addressed through well-thought-out regulation of this new sector.

The discussion itself was confidential with the regulators, but I am making publicly available the written materials I provided to them.  Here they are:

• This is the outline of my talk.
• This is the PowerPoint presentation that accompanies (and refers back to) the outline.

Please leave comments!  Let’s get a discussion going here.

Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter present many exciting opportunities for growth, as well as some pitfalls. Some organizations, leaping before they look, start with an elaborate “Grand Opening” but then watch with bewilderment as a great silence descends on their best efforts. Others, looking carefully before they leap, simply decide that they can’t afford a system of communication with their constituents that could consume an infinite amount of time and effort. But these pitfalls are avoidable with a strategic understanding of what’s going on.

The truth is, social networking requires nothing more — and nothing less — than the many forms of communication non-profits already use. With planning, these valuable tools can be powerful aids in maintaining solid relationships with current constituents and growing the base of supporters for any non-profit organization.

Facebook and Twitter are commonly used social networking tools with a lot of potential, but they are very different systems. We’ll take a look at these differences in a future article. For now, we’ll stick to the broadest strokes and let you adjust your use as experience suggests. Let’s start with some common situations where Facebook and Twitter come in handy.

Announcements & Events

One of the most natural ways to use online social networking tools is to make quick announcements and reminders about upcoming events. There are a thousand examples, but these, perhaps, suggest the idea:

• Rally at the capitol building on Tuesday. Be there by Noon!
• Only 10 tickets for our Gala are left. Buy them soon before we sell out.
• Don’t forget: registration for our classes closes tomorrow.

Announcements can include breaking news about your organization.  Post the news on your website, then post the announcement on Facebook and Twitter. This is an excellent way to drive traffic to your Website. Don’t forget to include a good picture on the website whenever possible, as Facebook will allow graphics to join with the link. Don’t provide the whole story when making these announcements. Just post a sentence or two to pique people’s interest and drive the traffic to your website, where you have plenty of room to say more. Examples:

• Our third clinic in Haiti is now open: <link>
• Our Executive Director testifies before the House Subcommittee on Healthcare: <link>
• Charitable gift annuity rates change soon. It’s a good time to consider this way of giving: <link>

How to Send Website Addresses on Twitter

To make announcements for your group on Twitter, you’ll want to use a URL-shortening service (like tinyurl.com). This will give you a shorter URL that points to the same place. For example, the direct URL of this article is http://www.grassrootsgivinggroup.com/blog/?p=28 — which is rather long and unwieldy, but with Twitter’s limit of 140 characters per announcement (characters, not words!) the website address alone would take up a lot of our space! We went to tinyurl.com and typed in this address, and it created http://tinyurl.com/27k2h38 for us. Google’s http://goo.gl created an even shorter one, http://goo.gl/fkr7A. Try copying this into your browser right now. When you put this short address in your browser’s address bar, it redirects you to the original, longer address — so you can post the short address in a space-limited tweet and direct people to your website. Even if you don’t need a URL shortening service to fit your tweet in the space limit, it’s considered good manners on Twitter.

Planning in Advance

You can probably think of a hundred ways to use these tools to promote your own organization. But as the “Grand Opening” organization found out, this just isn’t enough. Social networking requires tending and keeping an open flow of information, if your organization is to reap the very real benefits of being “top of mind” among your supporters.

This is where advance planning comes in handy. Make sure that your social network updates are included as a step whenever you update your website and add new content. Make sure you’ve scheduled your updates for events. Now, you need more content to keep the momentum going when you don’t have as much to announce.

This Day in History: One great tactic is a “This Day in History” file. Every organization has its own history, and sharing this with donors can be both fun and productive. Create a list of important dates in your organization and plan on communicating through your social-network tools on those dates. You can also use this to push a timely message. For example:

• Five years ago today, we began our first parenting class. Tomorrow, our 134th class begins. Please help us keep these important classes going! <link to donation site>
• Six years ago, our founders met at a kitchen table to discuss an different approach to educating children with learning disabilities. Today, thanks to supporters like yourself, we have over 2,000 graduates who have successfully obtained their high school credentials.
• 107 years ago this weekend, Mr. Wexler obtained the first piece of art he would eventually donate to found the museum. Come see “A Blue Child” by VonWitz this weekend – the painting that started it all.
• Today is International Literacy Day. Support literacy in your community. <link>

You get the idea. Milestones, large and small, can be shared and celebrated in this fashion.

Quote Collection: Another resource to develop is a good collection of quotes. Relevant statements by experts, celebrities and the more public facing members of your staff make excellent “filler” when a day or two has gone by without something better coming up.

Ask Your Audience Questions: I strongly recommend asking questions through your social networking tools. This invites participation rather than passive viewing. But it also requires someone to check in periodically and respond to themes as they develop and make sure the conversation remains on track and civil. Someday, somehow, someone will go off on a tangent or decide to “flame” another supporter. This isn’t the end of the world nor is it a reason to avoid social media. Just deal with it responsibly. Remind everyone to be kind to one another and, if someone has really crossed the line, eject them from the conversation. If you can keep a good conversation going, perhaps on Facebook or (if you’re ambitious) on your own blog, you’ll be able to keep your viewers’ attention and even acquire new viewers as the conversation picks up. The more people participate, the more people get involved, and the more people give money.

Staff Introductions: You can also use Facebook to introduce your supporters to members of your staff with whom they might interact, fostering a sense of community and belonging. Take a photo of your merchandise-fulfillment person or receptionist, and tell a little something about what they do. Examples:

• Cheri, our Merchandise Manager, oversaw the shipping over over 7,500 pounds of merchandise ordered by our supporters last year.
• Bob, the receptionist at our office, answers and redirects an average of 230 phone calls every day, greets every visitor, and, perhaps most importantly, brews all the coffee to keep us going every day. He’s been with our organization for 5 years this Thursday.

Notes from Your Day: Lastly, keep things current and lively by sharing snippets from the experiences you have as a staff person about which your supporters might be curious. Did a beneficiary of your work express gratitude in a particularly moving fashion? Have you learned a new fact that lends increased importance to what you do? Small bits of information that encapsulate a snapshot of the larger picture are perfect for sharing in this medium.

How Often to Update?

So, how often should you communicate via social-networking tools? There is no hard and fast rule. If the times are particularly exciting and things are developing at a breathless pace, you might choose to have several updates every day. If, on the other hand, the times are more normal, you might consider somewhere between four and ten updates every week. To keep your momentum going, don’t let more than three days go by without something worthwhile finding its way to your supporters on a regular basis, even if news is lean. Using some of the tactics above to fill those lean times, this doesn’t have to be very hard to do.

Social networking tools provide a great deal of opportunity for communication and relationship-building for non-profits. Using them effectively requires just a little planning and some imagination.

Do you have more tips? Share them in the comments section below!

We’re very excited to announce our new pilot project, ItsBetterToGive.net!

ItsBetterToGive.net is a new social fundraising website, where you can create your own personal fundraising page and ask your friends to join you in giving. It’s a great way to support your favorite charities all year round.

Our fundraising website comes with some very powerful, very unique features. On ItsBetterToGive.net, you can create a page not only for one charity, but to support multiple organizations in just one click. So instead of asking your friends to join you in supporting one particular cause, you can share all your charity choices with your friends, and ask them to join you.

You can create unlimited fundraising pages. Also try our “Plan an Event” feature, which works like a fundraising page that handles ticket sales for events. You can define multiple ticket levels and choose whether to sell an unlimited or a limited number of tickets in each level. It’s an ideal solution for nonprofit supporters to get their friends to any kind of event from galas to speeches to house parties.

Try the powerful “Spread the Word” tool as well. You can “spread the word” about your page, or anyone else’s page that you want to support. E-mail addresses you enter are NEVER collected for any purpose, unless the person actually gives money to an organization. (If we did that, nobody would use the feature.) You’re not signing anyone up for anything by using the “spread the word” feature, but you’ll get all the professional tools that are available just for your own confidential list. You can see all your e-mail appeals in a list, thank those who have contributed, and “nudge” those who haven’t, either with a group or an individual message. It’s a great way for all of us to engage our friends in fundraising. At Grassroots Giving Group we believe that our society would be better off if we all had more conversations about giving, and that’s what we’re trying to facilitate at the private, interpersonal level.

Our company has licensed the technology of the proven political fundraising website ActBlue.com for all non-political donation processing, and since 2009 we’ve built up a knowledge base of best practices and community involvement. We’re not here to do politics, of course, but to raise money for charity. Still, the origins of our product in the crucible of politics prove its effectiveness. Those who are familiar with ActBlue.com will see a familiar interface, updated specifically for charitable organizations.

ItsBetterToGive.net is not just one website, but a family of many fundraising sites that donors and fundraisers may prefer. We’re very excited to announce that MyJewishGiving.com, MyLGBTGiving.com, and SouthieGiving.com are all part of our umbrella. We also offer, as a low-cost service to nonprofits, the ability to have a fundraising website all your own in partnership with ItsBetterToGive.net. The Jewish farming fellowship Adamah and the MCCP Foundation, which fundraises for children’s medical care in Virginia, have both availed themselves of this opportunity. Please contact us to learn more.

Right now, ItsBetterToGive.net is just a pilot project. Soon we hope to list all or most charitable causes in the United States, but right now we’ve just listed a selection of a few hundred as a pilot. We invite you to join us, and we welcome your feedback! If you’d like to request a listing for a favorite cause that you don’t see listed, you’ll find an option to make such a request on the site.

We hope that you, too, will take advantage of the exciting new opportunity that ItsBetterToGive.net offers. See you online!

It’s easy to create your own personal fundraising webpage! On ItsBetterToGive.net or any of our partner websites, you can become an online fundraiser for the charities you’re supporting, in just a few easy steps.

First, using the bar at the side of the website, log in or sign up. When you’ve created your account, click “Create a Fundraising Page” in the bar at the left.

Next, you’ll create your custom fundraising page. Fill out the form with the indicated fields. You’ll need a title for your page, your name, and a message welcoming friends to your page and encouraging them to donate to your favorite causes. Then click the button at the bottom “Create your fundraising page” to save your work.

Here is your page!

Next, add causes to your page that you care about. Do this by clicking on the “Causes” tab you see at the top of your page. Use the search bar to quickly find charities of your choice.

When you’ve found the cause you want, click the “Add” button to add the cause to your fundraising page.

Continue to search for and add causes until you have finished listing all causes you wish to promote.

When you’ve finished, go back to your page using the View Page tab at the top of the screen, and you will be able to scroll down and see all the causes listed!

If you get lost exploring the site, you can find your page again at any time by clicking on My Home, then My Pages, and then the title of the page you are currently working on.

A key truth about fundraising has always been the high cost and low success rate of traditional methods of donor acquisition. But charities have little choice –- they have to grow their donor base or watch it shrink as donors lose interest, move, have their life circumstance change, or pass away. So, organizations rely on purchasing direct mail lists that they believe will contain some percentage of potential donors. They then design, print and mail appeals to the entire list.

The vast majority of those printed and mailed appeals end up in the trash. Financially, acquisition appeals frequently don’t even break even. The hope is that a new donor will continue to support the organization, making their acquisition worth the high initial cost. Sadly, for charities that are simply doing what they must, this practice subjects them to criticism over the percentage of their budget that goes to fundraising, particularly when the acquisition mailing is singled out as a failed fundraiser by individuals who do not understand the strategies involved.

Well, there is a better way. Our technology allows a charity to transform existing donors into a continuing stream of new donors. Because current donors use the platform to appeal to their friends and family, they are far more likely to be targeting individuals who will become loyal donors than any given name on a direct mail list. Even better, because they are asking their friends and family, odds are that the appeal will at least get read, and those who receive the appeal are far more likely to give. We know that people give more, and they give more often, when they’re asked to give by someone they know and trust.

Social fundraising allows a charity to grow their donor base without the expense of printing and mailing. It allows charities to reach out to a nearly infinite universe of potential donors at a single price point, making donor acquisition affordable for charities on a routine basis. This permits unlimited growth for a charity through an ever-expanding network of enthusiastic advocates who not only are donors but who have become that rarest of treasures in the world of fundraising: peer-to-peer fundraisers.

People new to social fundraising will frequently say something like, “Hey, that’s a totally new idea!” And it’s true that leveraging social networks online is a new idea for many charities. But the simple idea of how that money gets raised is as old as the charitable gala.

Let’s face it: fundraisers have always tried to exploit social networks. That’s what happens when board members are asked to sell tickets to a gala to their friends, co-workers, and family. The dream situation for a Major Gifts Officer is to approach a high donor with their best friend, their mother and the man who saved their life, all in tow as peer fundraisers. Because of the immense investment in staff time and effort required to make such efforts work, their application has been very limited. But with new enabling technology that’s no longer the case.

Our technology allows anyone to become a peer fundraiser. It takes (most) of the fear out of fundraising and makes it seem a natural and even fun extension of supporting a particular charity. And when the individual peer fundraiser can create a custom webpage that not only supports a single charity, but also allows them to select a slate of specific charities or programmatic areas that are particularly important to their support, it allows that elusive transmission of personalized enthusiasm from a donor to a potential donor. The peer fundraiser also immediately receives positive feedback, making success an addictive cycle that allows for ever-greater fundraising goals.

The term community gets tossed around pretty casually these days. On the Internet, people identify with the websites and communication tools that they use to stay in touch with the people, causes, and events that they personally care about.

Increasingly, people are looking for ways to connect with others in a meaningful fashion through social media. The days are numbered of simply accumulating long friend lists and posting banal updates. For people who need to sift through the noise, the trend is toward meaningful connections that translate into meaningful relationships among people.

The more interactive you allow your communication to become, the more dynamic it seems. And constant updates and activity encourage individuals to devote time to your communications and to return on a regular basis — to see who has responded to their comment, to learn what others think, and to continue to be an advocate for your mission. This, however, requires some effort. Setting up a Twitter feed or a Facebook page is premature if you don’t have a clear plan for how you will use it and who will be responsible for ensuring the frequent updates required to keep these tools fresh and engaging. An online forum seems like a great idea, but it requires work to foster good conversation, moderate effectively, and keep things on a productive track.

It can be a little intimidating to open yourself to public comments — everyone fears the inappropriate advertisement or the random person who leaves inflammatory diatribes. But online communication tools have become quite sophisticated and there is no reason to allow fear to silence your supporters. Many organizations have dealt with these issues and the tools; good policies and procedures are out there for you to borrow and use.

It is one thing for a person to feel that they are a donor to your organization. It is another entirely more powerful thing to have a person feel as if they are a part of your organization. It is so much easier than ever before to foster that sense of connection and community through online tools and social network media. All it takes is a little work, some courage, and a willingness to listen to others. Engaging supporters, building community, and taking the time to foster connections will pay off in advancing both the message of your organization and your fundraising.

One of the ways in which raising funds through new media and social networks is different from traditional fundraising techniques is the level of connection that can be fostered between the donor and the change their generosity produces in the world. With some forethought and creativity, any organization can assist their donors see more clearly than ever before how their donation has contributed to the mission of the organization. The cost of such a plan is small – especially when compared to the potential pay-off.

Let’s look at a traditional way of soliciting entry-level gifts from donors: direct mail. In a direct mail campaign, a letter must be designed to have broad, non-specific appeal to as large a group of donors as possible. Segmentation based on donor interest is possible, but is very expensive and so must be limited to the broadest possible groupings. Letters are sent and the die is cast. Updates to the information in the letters would involve doubling the cost of the campaign. Donors respond (or don’t) – reminders are, like updates, expensive. Those donors who do respond are sent a thank you letter with, perhaps, some additional information. The cost of keeping the donor informed as things progress is prohibitive and so, generally, such contact is limited to quarterly newsletters and the like – and future solicitation letters.

In a social network fundraising system, however, a volunteer fundraiser selects a particular programmatic area that speaks to their concerns and values. Such program divisions are limited only by the imagination and mission of the organization. Keeping them modest and tangible helps donors understand how they can band with others to make a real difference. It is one thing to say that your organization wants to provide curricular enrichment for at-risk youth in under-performing schools. It is another to say that a donation of just $1,000 will allow you to provide one class of at-risk students with music education for two weeks. A single donor may not be able to give $1,000, but almost everyone can imagine that together with their friends and loved ones, they can raise that amount.

Once the fundraiser has identified a particular interest and selected a fundraising goal, they can make their own donation but equally important, they can share their passion for your cause with everyone they know, encouraging everyone to make their own contribution. In addition, they have identified their particular interest to your organization. It now becomes easy and cost-effective for you to send an e-mail to this volunteer fundraiser updating them on your efforts. You can let them know how fundraising is going, how close you are to your overall goal. You can send them links to pictures of the students with the musical instruments they made possible, for example. And, of course, you can encourage them to remind their friends and relatives that donations are still being accepted. All of this can be accomplished at relatively little cost.

Perhaps equally importantly, the next time your organization has a similar effort underway, you already have a proven network of volunteer, peer funraisers ready to go.

Connecting donors to the change in the world isn’t just about helping donors understand the importance of their generosity, it is also about helping those donors be as generous as possible.