Today, I have ten tips to share that I think would help any organization to succeed in their Global Open Challenge, as gleaned from my own Kabissa success story, conversations I’ve had with GlobalGiving staff as well as my observations of organizations I know and love that have failed in the past and/or are on track to failing again in the April 2011 Global Open Challenge.
1. Expect to devote alot of time to GlobalGiving during the month of the Challenge. You will be spending 2-3 hours a day on this.
2. Listen to the advice GlobalGiving gives you as you enter the challenge. Read GlobalGiving’s excellent self-help materials and participate in any conference calls or chats that they offer. Write to the GG team to ask questions – they are responsive and helpful!
3. Look at what the organizations nearer the top of the leaderboard are doing differently than you. Consider donating $10 to some successful projects you like to see how they are engaging their supporters, then contact them to ask for advice. Take their advice and copy the things they are doing well.
4. Submit projects that are discrete and achievable within a reasonable time frame, and sensibly fit into your organization’s mission and strategy. Explain the goals and timeline for the project clearly, as well as what will happen after the project ends to sustain any new infrastructure or services. For larger projects (say with a budget over $5,000) attach a project document, proposed budget and timeline.
5. Promise measurable results, then share them with your GlobalGiving donors! Your GlobalGiving donors want to be your partners, not a cash machine. Allow them to expect to be able to join in on the celebration of your success, and take pride of ownership.
6. Write your proposal in a simple story format that ordinary people will understand and enjoy reading, with a few compelling pictures of people that will benefit. You do not need to awe your supporters with amazing videos if you don’t already have it ready to share.
7. Use your existing support base – don’t expect many new people to appear from nowhere to start donating, no matter how worthy you think your project is. Create a list of all the people you think will support you. If you can’t come up with a list of a 100-200 people or don’t think you can reach your goal of 50 donors, then perhaps you should consider waiting to join the open challenge until you do.
8. Focus on numbers, not dollars. Every day of the challenge, devote an hour or two to contacting each and every friend and potential supporter on your list directly, at least 10 or 20 people a day, using the method that suits them best – phone, email, facebook, etc – and ask them to donate $10. Some may donate more, some may not donate at all – but all will appreciate your personal outreach and will think positively of your organization.
9. Send personal thank you emails as you receive donations, not in a big batch at the end. The automated thank you system in GlobalGiving is a key opportunity not just for thanking your donors but to request that they invite one or two other friends to also donate or at least help spread the word via Facebook etc. Add a personal note to your template as you send the messages, and call or email your big donors or your close friends directly to thank them personally.
10. Above all, stay positive! If you feel frustrated, disappointed, resentful, confused, or impatient that your friends and supporters are not donating to your project and you think they should, don’t show it to the people who love you (on Facebook or in a mass email for example). This will do nothing to support your cause and will only alienate you. You might follow up on one of your personal emails to learn something by asking why one person is not responding to your request.
I hope it helps! If you have advice or stories to share from your own contact (as donor or project) with the Global Open Challenge, feel free to add them in the comments!
I forgot one.
11. Donate $10 to your own project as soon as it’s approved. There’s nothing sadder than a project without any donations, even if it’s only been up for 5 minutes.
Wonderful advice! Thanks so much for writing this. I’ve posted it to the private Facebook group for the April challenge in the hopes that any project leaders that can benefit from this will read it. And as you said, please contact GlobalGiving if you have questions. We want to be your partner – not your cash machine. That’s really the best summary of all of this. No one involved – GlobalGiving, the projects/organizations, or the donors – want to be a cash machine for anyone. We all want to help each other become BETTER.
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Thanks for using at More than Me’s photo! We are a project on GlobalGiving and have raised almost $20,000 in less than a year through the site!
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/liberia-scholarships/
The tip that worked best for us was number 8! We had one of the higher amounts of donors in #s (though were definitely not the highest amount in $$) but the power was in people donating $10-50 each! We asked our friends, ex-boyfriends, moms, distant cousins, etc for donations personally by sending them emails, calling people, posting Facebook messages, etc. You will be surprised at who donates!
8. Focus on numbers, not dollars. Every day of the challenge, devote an hour or two to contacting each and every friend and potential supporter on your list directly, at least 10 or 20 people a day, using the method that suits them best – phone, email, facebook, etc – and ask them to donate $10. Some may donate more, some may not donate at all – but all will appreciate your personal outreach and will think positively of your organization.
Thanks Tobias! I appreciate that you take the time to tell us at GlobalGiving what you think! I’ve submitted more than a few “new feature” tickets into our jira system based on what you’ve shared. And we try to practice what we preach. If we think we can do better by listening to our partners, perhaps every organization can do better by listening their their donors and involving them in the work itself.
Marc
P.S. – sorry we haven’t build all of the new features yet, but some of them are bound to see the light of day.
Thanks for the replies.
@kevin I’m glad these tips are helpful – they certainly have been nagging at me for some time now. I’d be glad to add more tips to the list if others suggest them here, and would also love to hear stories from folks who have used the tips with success or who have other learning experiences to share.
@marc I’m psyched that my feature requests were useful – I’ll keep them coming. I’d love to see that issue tracker some day.
@stephanie It’s great to meet you and learn about your More than Me project in Liberia. If you want another “niche network” to spread your message, you are welcome to join Kabissa, add More Than Me to the Kabissa organization directory and join the Connect group where you can post your stories to the blog.
I once did a consultancy in Liberia with the Press Union of Liberia, in 1999, but sadly the resource center for journalists I helped set up was destroyed soon after in the fighting. I still have a warm place in my heart for the idealistic and courageous people I met and worked with in that country.
I’m glad tip #8 found resonance – I found that it’s really one of the most important tactics for me too. The photos on the GG project page for More than Me are amazing – probably another top reason for your success in your GG Open. Can you tell us more about how they were taken, how you came up with the “thank you global giving” pictures, and your experience?
Good comment for us participating on global giving open challenge ,so we know where we belong and what is not working or working.The information is helpful .
Sure thing Tobias!
Looking into joining Kabissa. Glad to see you have connections to Liberia! We work primarily in West Point in the capital and are an all volunteer organization (no paid staff) that is run by people who passionately believe in educational access for all.
The photos were all taken in West Point or right outside West Point in the schools where our children attend. We know all of the children in our program by name and one day when playing with them with donated paints and paper from a donor in the US we got the idea to paint “thank yous” for all the major donors and partners of our organization who are sending the same children painting the pictures to school. The children helped paint signs and getting them to pose for photos was easy as most of them clamor to be in shots! The photos were mostly taken by Katie, the founder of More than Me, or Macintosh, father of Agnes, the young girl screaming “BELIEVE” in the second photo on our GG page and the girl on the left of the photo you featured in this article.
More than Me is successful on GG I think because of our stories. We are not an organization who sits around telling people poverty statistics and wrapping humans into a number. Instead, we spend our time telling real stories about the girls and families we work with, stories both joyful and sad. The fact that Agnes, the girl on the left above, lives in West Point, one of the most dangerous slums in the world, without safe running water and at risk for too many things to list in a blog comment is true but there is another side to Agnes we prefer to tell. She is wild with energy. It is hard to get other kids to take photos with her because she is always jumping around and moving and other kids always are just starring at her in photos!
She loves to play school and pretend she can read. She has a huge love for books and if you ask her what she wants to do when she gets older she will tell you she wants to write books about the ABC’s. In short, she is a five year old who started kindergarten this year but whose family could not have afforded to send her their without support.
GG is a great place to reach new audiences with your stories. We use the project report update feature monthly and we estimate we make about $75 or more every time we post an update which normally details in photos or videos with text what is happening with one or more of our students. We also tweet and Facebook message with GlobalGiving and have personally connected with the staff so that I could ramble off a list of employee names and roles at the organization. Most of our funding is from online donations as an organization so we use GG as an extension of our outreach arm and were even their project of the month last month which was a huge honor!
Thanks again for the recommendations about joining Kabissa!
I take this opportunity to thank the Global Giving personnel for the good work they are doing. My sincere thanks goes to Marc Maxson the Innovation Consultant. It is a proven fact that his April, 2011 services are not in futility. His efforts to make Civil Society Organizations in Kenya to join Global Giving Online Fundraising is going to bear fruits. The rallies I attended in Kakamega and Bungoma have inspired me to be an advocate of Global Giving Online Fundraising in Western Kenya. I also thank Zipporah Sangiluh and Humprey Buradi for coming along with Marc Maxson to Western Kenya with this wonderful message. May God bless all those who are involved in this programme. Thanks and God bless you. Bishop Raymond Mutama, http://www.globalgiving.com/7764 Project Leader.
@stephanie Looks like you’re doing great things in Liberia – and you definitely know how to show it via GG. Congratulations! I think the stories you tell are very compelling and I am excited for those girls for the opportunities you are giving them. Thanks for explaining the story behind the pictures – that must have been a fun day!
@bishop How do you explain that you haven’t received any donations yet in the April Global Open Challenge? You should take a look at what Stephanie and her team are doing and learn from them! Please join Kabissa, add your organization to the directory and participate in groups for peer learning and info sharing.
We are raising US $ 7,000 to support Vocational Training for 200 Girls in Kenya who have dropped out of school due to poverty, unwanted pregnancies, and sexual and gender based violence among others. Our project is http://www.globalgiving.com/7764. Our donors are requested to donate US $ 10 each as well as informing others to donate to enable us raise US $ 4,000 before the Open Challenge ends. All our donors who will support us raise US $ 4,000 before the Open Challenge ends on 30/4/2011 will be our permanent partners. We shall invite them for celebrating our success in May, 2011 and launch the Project officially. We thank you in advance for your donations. Bishop Raymond Mutama. Project Leader.
Hi Bishop! Your globalgiving project looks great and as you present it, complete with project doc and budget, would probably be appealing to a foundation or church. However for globalgiving donors, who want to be inspired by stories and get to know the projects they support it would be more effective to follow the More than Me example. Do you know any students our journalists who could come and interview your beneficiaries? Perhaps on video or with photos?
Thank you so much for your good wards you have shared with us and after internalizing them for sure they work no donor is a cash machine but are just partners in which in the process we help each other. kabissa please continue sharing with us, we are behind you
Thanks for the comment, Robert!
I appreciate your encouragement. I will keep writing about these topics as time permits.
Please also be sure to sign up at http://kabissa.org and add Care For African Kids to the organization directory – you are very welcome to join our community!
Cheers,
Tobias
VERDE-Uganda wants to provide treated mosquito bed nets to save destitute children, pregnant women, seniors over 80 years living in extremely poor conditions and after war children from mosquito malaria.
At least 4 children are dying every fortnight in our communities of just 19,540 people from malaria as most of them cannot afford to buy protective mosquito nets. Many abortions are also reported in the local health centre and they have all been attributed to mosquito malaria.
Over 10, 000 people are expected to benefit from these mosquito nets and we as well expect a very considerable drop in morbidity, child and maternal mortality from this intervention.
Hi Nelson – thanks for checking in. Your organization looks very interesting and important for your community – how are you getting on with the Global Giving challenge? I see you have added your organization to Global Giving but have not yet added a project.
http://www.globalgiving.org/donate/9856/voluntary-efforts-for-rural-developments-verde-uganda/info/
I’d also welcome VERDE-Uganda on Kabissa, the network I am involved in supporting the information sharing and ICT peer learning needs of organizations working in Africa like yours. See http://www.kabissa.org/about for details.
Warm regards,
Tobias