Also faring well in the contest are people who are raising money for a specific project. Suzanne Plopper, for instance, is trying to raise $72,000 to help send 900 girls to school in Burkina Faso over the next three years. Ms. Plopper is the treasurer of Friends of Burkina Faso, a nonprofit group that also serves as a network of former Peace Corps volunteers. The group has won two other online fund-raising contests, but she said the Giving Challenge has been “a scramble.” She and her colleagues, she said, “bombard our members with why-aren’t-you-doing-anything? e-mails from time to time.” As of Tuesday, 754 people had donated $21,309 to Ms. Plopper’s cause, putting it in second place among the organizations working internationally in the Parade version of the contest.
Friends of Burkina Faso in second place in Internet Fund Raising Contest
Charities Vie for Prizes in Online Giving Experiment
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: January 31, 2008
Fledgling charities, like a year-old group that rescues abandoned dogs in Georgia, are among the leading contenders for prizes in an experimental online fund-raising contest sponsored by the Case Foundation. Meanwhile, more established nonprofit groups have struggled to attract support.
“We’re feeling good about what we’re seeing, though we can’t draw any conclusions at this point,” said Rich D’Amato, a spokesman for the foundation, which will award $750,000 through a contest known as America’s Giving Challenge.
The foundation hopes to demonstrate the power of grass-roots philanthropy propelled by ordinary people using the Internet. “Our goal was to inform and educate as many people as we could about online giving tools,” Mr. D’Amato said.
The contest is being conducted in partnership with two media outlets. Animal rescue operations have dominated the contest as conducted through Parade magazine, while tiny nonprofits grappling with international issues have been the most successful contenders in the game as played on Facebook, the online social networking site.
“I didn’t even know how Facebook worked,” said Amy Eldridge, the executive director of the Love Without Boundaries Foundation, a charity working to provide medical care, foster homes and other assistance to orphans in China. “I thought I would definitely be at a disadvantage compared to the college kids doing the contest, but it hasn’t worked out that way.”
Love Without Boundaries, which raised just $1.2 million in 2006, has attracted the most donors in 10 different 24-hour periods, winning $1,000 each time.
It separately has raised more than $34,000 through the contest, and with 1,168 unique donors as of Tuesday, it was hoping to win the $50,000 grand prize. (The Parade portion of the contest ends Thursday and the Facebook competition ends Friday.) Ms. Eldridge was nervous, though, because a group called Tibetan Freedom Movement was planning a keg party to attract new donors. “I can’t compete with a keg party,” she said in a voice mail message on Tuesday night.
Sure enough, by Wednesday afternoon the Tibetan group had edged into first place with 1,556 donors to Love Without Boundaries’ 1,552.
Charities are eager to tap online social networks and virtual worlds, which they see as useful new tools for raising money and inspiring activism. No charity has scored a home run yet; the most popular cause on Facebook has raised less than 2 cents per member, but that has not discouraged nonprofits.
“Everyone is still trying to work out how you organize these things and how you move these people offline into our traditional work,” said Brian Glasscock, a 16-year-old volunteer who is responsible for online organizing at Amnesty International.
Amnesty established a presence on Facebook in May and has raised about $15,000 from 200,000 Facebook members. They were the first people Amnesty contacted when it decided to participate in America’s Giving Challenge, and they were asked to work to get five friends to donate at least $10. If they succeeded, they would get a copy of the CD “Instant Karma.” But no one has claimed the prize yet, and Amnesty had garnered just $540 by Wednesday afternoon.
“No one has been able to get one friend interested to donate,” Mr. Glasscock said. “The interesting thing about this competition is it seems like groups with established presences on Facebook, like Amnesty or Save Darfur, are doing poorly compared to smaller groups that don’t have a presence.”
Amnesty’s experience is in contrast with that of Saving Georgia Dogs, which has raised more than $10,000 and is one of the top 10 organizations doing work in the United States that are participating in the contest through Parade.
“I’ve asked for support from neighbors, friends, family members and people in the rescue world, which is a small, close-knit community,” said Suzy Bailey, who founded the organization with Suzy Schulman, a doctor in Illinois whom she met online.
Ms. Bailey and Dr. Schulman are old pros at such contests, having recently won $10,000 in one sponsored by Six Degrees, a charity founded by the actor Kevin Bacon. “It has nearly killed us to do this one so soon after that,” Dr. Schulman said. “We’re just four people scattered around the country, and it’s a lot of work getting people to go through the process.”
Also faring well in the contest are people who are raising money for a specific project. Suzanne Plopper, for instance, is trying to raise $72,000 to help send 900 girls to school in Burkina Faso over the next three years.
Ms. Plopper is the treasurer of Friends of Burkina Faso, a nonprofit group that also serves as a network of former Peace Corps volunteers. The group has won two other online fund-raising contests, but she said the Giving Challenge has been “a scramble.” She and her colleagues, she said, “bombard our members with why-aren’t-you-doing-anything? e-mails from time to time.”
As of Tuesday, 754 people had donated $21,309 to Ms. Plopper’s cause, putting it in second place among the organizations working internationally in the Parade version of the contest.
Three notches up from Ms. Plopper on the Parade leader board for international causes is Scott Beale, who is raising money for Atlas Service Corps, which works to bring nonprofit leaders from the developing world to volunteer in the United States.
Mr. Beale said rallying donors for the contest was somewhat akin to rallying voters for an election. “Since the minimum donation is $10,” he said, “it’s really time that’s an issue.”
Similarly, he said it was critical to maintain a position on the leader board. “Just like in an election, people are much more likely to vote for you if they see you’re within 50 votes of winning,” Mr. Beale said.
For good measure, he sent out a mass e-mail on Wednesday that bumped Atlas into second place among groups working internationally.
