The Best Thing You Can Do TODAY
This just in! There’s a new basket into which we can put a bunch of our toys.
Right after I posted earlier today on the Top 7 Social Philanthropy Toys for the Holidays it came to my attention that this past week Convio Inc announced the launch of Common Ground Social, a fully customizable all-in-one social fundraising software solution. This post is not intended as an ad or endorsement; however, this may be a tool worth exploring.
As you may know, Convio was founded by Vinay Bhagat in 1999 after he volunteered for a nonprofit pledge drive and determined that the process of managing donors and the donation processes could be improved. Bhagat set out to make managing interactions with donors as efficient and effective as possible. Convio was born. Convio’s new Common Ground Social solution combines the power of social media (the three largest platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) with an online, integrative fundraising solution. Common Ground Social also supports peer-to-peer fundraising and is available to both nonprofits and individual supporters. Registration appears to be simple. By creating and sharing personalized fundraising pages with family, friends and colleagues, folks can spread the nonprofit’s message, with an appeal for support ,with just one click. Individual fundraisers can keep track of the progress of their campaigns with their own dashboard, and can even send thank you notes to their supporters. The system automatically processes the donations and issues receipts. Pricing ranges from $200 to $425/month.
The other thing I forgot in my earlier post is that we always like to take photos of the kids playing with their new toys. And photos of the larger family enjoying the holiday. We shouldn’t forget about doing the same to share the warm feeling that exudes from the good work accomplished by our charity. The Chronicle of Philanthropy just ran this item on a live webstreaming project of Polar Bears International. It’s designed to show the effects of global warming through real-time footage of stressed out bears at the edge of Hudson Bay in Canada — bears who are losing the ice they need to traverse in order to migrate to seal hunting grounds. Not every nonprofit has something going on that lends itself to live webstreaming; if you do, you may want to consider the power of sharing via this medium. Call it your own reality show.
