· personal fundraising ·
A HUGE THANKYOU to everybody who has donated to help fund my Sydney Leadership program course fees so far (the backstory is here).
For those of you who are interested in the stats, some donations have been made via the ChipIn widget on this website, others have been made via direct bank deposit. The majority were made by people I know either in real life or online, but there were some that were made by people who I'd never come across before. About half of the donations were in response to a direct ask, and the other half were made without me contacting them directly. I asked most donors if they'd like to be publicly thanked and most said no or they didn't mind either way, so I've decided to keep all my donors anonymous in the interests of privacy (I'd feel terrible if they were hassled by other people for donations!). The amounts that were donated varied greatly.
So did I reach my fundraising target? I'm very happy (and relieved) to announce that I surpassed my end-of-February fundraising target of $1,000. It's only the 26th today, and I've managed to raise a total of $1,295 so far. How generous are my friends, colleagues and blog readers? I'm a lucky gal :)
But I'm not there yet ... I still have $14,105 in total to raise by the end of the year ... so if you'd like to donate but haven't done so yet, please click on the ChipIn widget on the right :)
Before embarking on this personal fundraising adventure, I was really curious about how successful personal fundraising would be ... after all, my donors wouldn't get a tax deduction. I'm not comfortable asking for money and I don't have any direct fundraising experience (I'm all theory in this area!), so I'm really surprised that my efforts have been successful so far (wow, the theory works!). I based my fundraising on two sources of inspiration:
- Beth Kanter's use of social media to raise money for non-profits. She has demonstrated a couple of times that using your network can greatly increase donations. See her latest post on winning America's giving challenge
- Laurel Papworth's prediction that personal fundraising would increase now that widgets are available and really easy to set up and use. I can't find a post on her blog about this so it must have been a general conversation I had with her that has stuck in my mind.
I hadn't come across any personal fundraising online before I started my own attempt. However, once I'd started, Tiara contacted me about her fundraising effort for her training to become a KaosPilot (a 3-year social entrepreneurship program that combines business, creativity, design, and social awareness). She's putting in a stellar effort with a Facebook group and blog. Actually her efforts make mine very amateur in comparison :)
Anyway, back to the Sydney Leadership program ... you'll read more about my thoughts on leadership soon. The first contact days of the program were about 10 days ago but I'm still digesting what I've learned :) Stay tuned.
Tuesday February 26, 2008
Categories: Fundraising
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