I love finding cool stuff – especially cool ways of raising money. This past week I stumbled across GivingGrid and, man, I think it’s cool. When I saw GivingGrid, I literally let out an audible yell. As a professional fundraiser, this is the exact sort of thing I was looking for over the better part of a decade.
It’s a fun, zero-cost way for you to raise money and immediately provide public recognition to donors. An individual donor can put up their picture. A company can put up their logo.
GivingGrid was founded in 2015 with the idea of moving donors to the forefront. “As we looked around at what was already available, we saw a lot of good companies, doing good things, but they all looked the same. They’re all about the cause and a goal, which is important, but the donors and other supporters are more in the background. GivingGrid puts both right up front. The cause is why we’re all here, but the supporters are the ones who make the magic happen. They’re equally important to the campaign’s success, ” says Dan Hoffman, CEO of 2CC and General Manager of GivingGrid.com.
How GivingGrid Works
You start by creating an account at their website, which you can reach here. Then you can start your first fundraiser.
For mine, I decided to set one up for the Norwich Rotary Foundation, where I serve on the board. The foundation is a 501 (c) 3, and that’s one of the options. You can also choose to do one for schools, churches or other religious organizations. It also gives you the option of setting up a GivingGrid for organizations you are a member of, or ones that you are not directly associated with. You also have the option of setting one up for yourself personally.
Types of Campaigns
GivingGrid gives you a couple of options when setting up your campaign. You can opt for a standard campaign, a “wall of love” campaign, or a P2P or Peer to Peer campaign.
The standard campaign is pretty straightforward. You set up one grid, and link to it on your website and your Facebook page, etc. When someone makes a donation their picture shows up in the appropriate square.
The next option is the”Wall of Love“. I think this choice would be perfect for a Memorial Page on your website. It lets you put a special message in your square when you make a donation, and include an individual message.
The final option is the Peer to Peer option. This is a multi-level campaign, where you have multiple people setting up grids. This would work great for larger organizations. You’d need multiple people involved, but the more people you have asking, the better you’re going to do.
Setting up the Campaign
You’ll then get to set your goal. Set your messages, add images or videos, set the color of your squares. Then you write up all the details of your campaign. What are you raising the money for? Who specifically will it go to help? That sort of thing. It also lets you enter offline gifts.
You can even set up thank you gifts if you’d like.
At this point, you’ll need to set up your payment information. If you’re doing it for an organization you belong to, you’ll need to put in your PayPal or WePay information.
It also lets you set start and end dates, and for those nerds like me, you can set up countdown clocks. Because who doesn’t love a good countdown.
Promoting Your GivingGrid Campaign
So, now that you’re all set up, you can look at the options to promote your campaign. GivingGrid makes it really, really easy to publicize it. First of all, they give you the code to easily embed your grid right on your website, and it updates automatically. You can add it as a tab on your Facebook page, and that automatically updates as well.
It also has a great deal of email automation. You get automatic thank you emails to donors. It also lets you set up period updates for your donors on how the campaign is going.
You can even set it up so that your twitter account automatically tweets out a thank you each time someone makes a gift. How cool is that?
And when you finish up, it even gives you an easy checklist to ensure you’ve dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s.
The Catch
I’m, by nature, pretty skeptical. So my first question when I saw that charities would keep 100% of the monies raised is, “where are these guys getting the money to run the site and keep the lights on.”
They ask for donations to support themselves. “We apply a unique method where the donor is given the opportunity to add a small contribution for us, in addition to their donation. Think of it as a small tip. If they think we’re providing a valuable service, they give us a little something. If not, they also have the option to make it zero and give us nothing. Sound fair?”
Again, pretty cool.