When Donors become Fundraisers!

The other day, I was talking to Ginny Tocci, a client from the Brain Aneurysm Foundation (BAF). She was relating how BAF uses DonorPages, not only for their own events, but for individual 'activity events', such as when a supporter runs a marathon, and uses DonorPages to raise money for BAF. Two stories stood out:

One BAF donor, a woman related to a victim of brain aneurysm, would occasionally send in small checks, giving what she could. Each donation was perhaps $10-20 each, totaling around $150 for the year. Like many of BAF's supporters, she wanted to do more. So when she heard about DonorPages, and how she could set up her own personal fundraising page, she tried it out. Within a year, this $150 donor became a $5000 a year fundraiser. And since BAF was already using DonorPages for their own events, there really was no extra expense, and very little staff effort required.

The other story was a man who lost a friend to a brain aneurysm. He was running a marathon in honor of his friend, and asked how he could raise money for BAF. Ginny gave him his own DonorPages site, and he reached out to his friends, family and colleagues, who donated over $14,000, supporting his efforts. Most of these donations came online, via his social network fundraising page. And since DonorPages is integrated with DonorPerfect, there was no manual entry of the transactions required. A very important time-saver for Ginny and her small staff at BAF.

Ginny describes DonorPages as a "wonderful tool" that BAF can provide supporters, making it much easier for them to do more and raise more. She intends to more heavily promote the use of DonorPages by individual supporters. The examples given are exceptional ones - not every $150 a year donor will raise $5000 (for a tidy 3,333% revenue increase!). But empowering your supporters with a tool like DonorPages, helping them use the Internet and Web 2.0 technology to do more for your cause, and saving your organization staff time on manual entry and the cost of reaching out to their social network, is a win-win for you and your supporters.