High Tech Fundraising Yields High Rewards


Sixty Thousand in three weeks?
One Hundred Thousand Dollars in three weeks?
Sounds like the start of a spam email, but stay with me for a minute…

While I was getting my holidays on, bloggers Cambodia4Kids and Phnomenon were cruising their keyboards – raising money for The Sharing Foundation and Menu for Hope, respectively.

By the time January 01 rolled around, the team effort for the annual foodblogger fundraiser had enough raffle bling to approximate the cost of a landcruiser, which will go to the World Food Programme.

And the Sharing Foundation got matching funds from Yahoo, doubling the pot to give one thousand kids school materials.

Quite a difference from from grant writing and door-knocking. I was impressed both by the technical sophistication of these campaigns, and the ease at which one could join in.

At times I’m skeptical that internet efforts will do much to change the real, physical world. In fact, spending lots of time online leaves an ecological and economic footprint.

So it’s great to greet the New Year by seeing two of my favorite weblogs use their tech skills for eminently practical causes. Congrats Beth and Phil for your time and dedication! I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of even more creative efforts to make fundraising, well, fun for a change.

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3 Responses to “High Tech Fundraising Yields High Rewards”

  1. Beth says:

    Thank you Jinja for those wonderfully kind words!!! Is there a blog campaign in your future?

  2. Jinja says:

    Definitely thinkin’ on it – there are plenty of needs in Camboland, that’s for sure. Am going to scope out your posts and ‘widgets’ over the next few days!

    I notice that both you and Phnomenon were working with a coordinated team, which seems to be a sensible strategy.

  3. Beth says:

    We had a team — our board and key volunteers who contacted their contacts. You can do solo – I did that for my first campaign, but it won’t raise quite as much money unless you know a lot of people with alot of money.

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