On 10/13/2009 the Huffington Post launched an article titled, “Help The Steins: Mother Who Went Blind To Save Her Children’s Sight Struggles With Medical Debt” which chronicled the struggle of a mother who couldn’t raise the funds necessary to support her child’s unique medical needs. Traditionally, in order to raise funds for a cause it was necessary to provide an address or a bank where contributors could send money. Sprout Builder removes this barrier with the ChipIn component.
Through an initiative called, Huffington Post: Impact, social media fundraising tools are being used to help raise money for important causes. The tools leveraged in the above article include a Sprout widget with a ChipIn component that allows donors to contribute quickly and easily with a few clicks. Here is the fundraising widget that the Huffington Post uses:
The numbers are phenomenal for this campaign. The initial goal was to raise $10,000 and that was achieved before the end of the first day. One nice feature of Sprout Builder is that it’s easy to update widgets in real time, wherever they are embedded, so it was possible to increase the goal on the fly. Donor engagement has also been impressive, with over 730 comments as of the date of this post.
You don’t need to be a huge organization to achieve similar results. This technology is currently available at http://sproutbuilder.com where anyone can create a similar fundraising widget by signing up for Sprout Builder subscription. We have seen a large number of non-profits using Sprout to both raise money and promote their organizations. Some of the non-profits using Sprout include the Red Cross, Youth Noise, National Marrow Donor Program, and more!
What are the most innovative ways you have seen fundraising executed online?
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