The covers of the New York Times and the Washington Post are about the race to the White House, but there’s something much more exciting going on right now in the world of philanthropy. Right now, several grassroots fundraisers are battling it out for the top fundraiser spot in America’s Giving Challenge on GlobalGiving. The top fundraisers will get $50,000 from the Case Foundation, which is sponsoring the Challenge.

On GlobalGiving, we have several fundraisers which are trying to get top position. In the last few days, there’s been a major shake up in fundraising efforts, with several long standing leaders dropping down as new fundraisers have mobilized their bases and gotten over 500 donations in the last week. I’m including links to the top six fundraisers who have gotten over 700 donations as of the time of this posting, but the Challenge doesn’t end until tomorrow, January 31, 2008, at 3 pm, so anything can change. Be sure to check out the leaderboard for the most update to date standings! Good luck to all of the fundraisers!

Non Formal Education for Tribal Children in India	Invest in International Development Leaders	Fuel Efficient stove for 300 Hondurans in need with SHH
Route Out of Poverty for Cambodian Children	Education for 900 Rural Girls in Burkina Faso	Computers for children of women trafficked for sex

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Earlier today, Allan Benamer wrote a very interesting blog post, “Who Won the Giving Season…” on his Non-Profit Tech Blog. In it, he compares year-end web traffic data of four players in the online giving/lending space. We’re one of those four, so i thought I’d just add a little bit of additional data to the mix.

From our perspective the real winners of the giving season are the people who live in struggling communities around the world, whose lives may be a tad better because of the nearly $800,000 of donations that came through the GlobalGiving platform in December. About half of that came through our website, or the special “co-branded” site we created for the Parade/Case Challenge that Allan refers to. The data don’t lie - our traffic went up in December. And in November. Here’s what we know worked in generating traffic at year end:

• Banner Ads. Through the generosity of a number of corporate partners, we had banner ads running on a bunch of websites. We also bought a tiny bit of “sponsorship” on NPR. Those ads kicked in at higher levels right after Thanksgiving, and account for about 30% of the traffic increases.
• The Parade/Case America’s Giving Challenge - which accounted for some of the velocity but not all, and accounted for ~11% of traffic in December. (The real story on this is January…stay tuned)
• Repeat traffic from visitors who know of us through word of mouth (consistently 50+% of traffic throughout the year)
• Our own online marketing strategies - via Care2, StumbleUpon, blog outreach about our gift card, and of course search marketing
• PR - we actively pursued print and radio earned media that resulted in over two dozen traditional media stories that Allan duly noted and linked to
• Our own email marketing efforts (One e-comm/week, each segmented in various ways) and a “tell-a-friend” campaign we ran in early December.

Having said all that, the giving season story for us is always more about conversion rate than traffic. This chart shows the story in stark relief:

For most of the year, unless we are running special campaigns/incentives our conversion rate pretty consistently hovers between .75% and 1%. In December, it was 2.7%. This is due to higher conversion rates for the Parade Challenge, to be sure. People are more highly committed by the time they get to us via Parade.

But it’s more about how philanthropy works - year end, year end, year end. Gifts and tax deductions. People literally tell us in post-checkout surveys that “I remembered reading about you in Nick Kristof’s article in the NY Times in the Spring,” or “I heard an NPR story in the summer.” And this year we launched a physical, biodegradable gift card. It was a hit. We “sold” about 1,800 them. People knew what they were coming to buy.

So, we drove more traffic, we saw higher conversions. More projects get funding. A good giving season all around.

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Mike Kubzansky is a Global Account Manager in Monitor’s National Economic Development and Security (NEDS) practice.  He is currently leading Monitor India’s work on “Market-Based Solutions” to development challenges, a multi-sponsor study to identify the most promising commercially viable approaches in India.

Instead of coming home for the holidays my family - my wife and my two kids, ages 6 and 8 - and I visited western India (Goa, Mumbai, Rajasthan).   Despite the amount of international travel my wife and I do, prior to this trip, my children’s entire experience of life outside the U.S. was two days in Montreal. 

So, India was a real eye-opener for them in terms of seeing a bigger world, understanding that the US is a fairly unique and affluent place, and seeing real poverty and privation for the first time up close.  As it turns out, they loved it, and had a great time.  We even got my six-year-old son into a few Jain temples, despite the lack of interactive computer buttons to be pushed.  Naturally he preferred the auto-rickshaws on the streets of the old city of Udaipur.

The most compelling moment for us happened when we were in rural Rajasthan, about 25 km outside Udaipur.  Although we stayed at a high-end luxury hotel, we spent time exploring  so we could see life in a rural Rajasthani village.  Two things struck my kids the most: (1) the poverty of the kids there - some with no shoes and very ragged clothes and (2) the schools. The government school was small and run down - even the UNICEF-supported school was small and very basic. 

My kids go to school in the Washington, DC public schools so they are hardly used to the most luxurious Andover/Exeter conditions, but this clearly struck a nerve, with my daughter in particular.  My daughter, 8 ½, had decided in advance that the best thing to do was to make a donation to an organized, reputable group that was doing good work, rather than give away money on an individual basis. 

After seeing all this, we got out my laptop and searched for projects and organizations in Rajasthan.  My daughter selected a GlobalGiving project which was helping with non-formal education for tribal children, and is contributing some of the savings from her allowance to this (alas, she’s also keeping some to give to Heifer International). 

While this may not solve the immediate problems of the villagers we saw and met while we enjoyed ourselves in our hotel in their village, it was an amazing thing for my daughter to be able to come back - having met the issues face to face - and feel like she was doing something to help.  We felt, in a very small way, that we had, at a minimum, not let the problems go unrecognized.

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Here’s a follow-up to my recent post about Corporate Social Responsibility.

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“Clearly CSR has arrived,” stated the Economist in a recent special report on Corporate Social Responsibility. The report shows that in today’s business world, CSR - now another tool used to add value to the customer experience - is no longer a question of “to do, or not to do,” but rather, “how?”

The most recent corporation to answer this question was Dell. They’ve teamed up with Bill Gates and Bono to introduce a line of (Product) RED consumer computing hardware that will compete directly with Apple’s recently debuted Mac Air.

This partnership creates shared value among the participating organizations:

1. Dell hopes to win new customers and retain old by giving them the warm-and-fuzzy value-add they demand, and

2.The Global Fund/(Product) RED receives funding to further realize their organizational goals

It will be interesting to see whether this strategic offer from Dell is compelling enough to persuade laptop buyers to purchase “socially good” product rather than the technolocially-superior, and aesthetically-pleasing Apple product (excuse my bias - I’ve been a mac fanatic since I got my first PowerBook three years ago). Was it a good marketing move? Will the revenues deliver the value they promise? When it comes to spending $2,000, consumers may choose to spend for the better hardware and save their giving for a separate occasion.

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Jocelyn at the Nonprofit Technology Blog wrote a great post on Wednesday about how to create a successful viral marketing campaign inspired by this Washington Post article. 

To summarize, in Dave Kori (Lake Braddock Secondary School Student) v. Dean Tistadt (Chief Operating Officer for Fairfax County, VA Public Schools), Dave Kori called Dean Tistadt at home to ask why schools had not been closed after last week’s snow storm.  Unfortunately, Dean Tistadt’s wife returned the call with a voicemail, upbrading the student for calling a home number with his complaint.  Dave, a product of iGeneration, posted the controversial message on YouTube and Facebook - initiating a viral storm.

Jocelyn commented that this story was actually an excellent case study about how to leverage the Internet and social networking to achieve advocacy goals. 

6 Key Ingredients for Online Marketing

1. Make sure your campaign is ugent and timely.
2. Make your “ask for support” concrete and easy to do.
3. Speak in your own voice; in other words, be real.
4. Send your appeal to the right audience.
5. Use communications vehicles that can easily go viral.
6. Diversify.

Bonus optional ingredient: Be controversial.

You can find Jocelyn’s further analysis of these steps on her blog, but as I suggested in the title of this post (and commented on her blog), I think there’s a 7th ingredient - albeit more difficult to find.  And that’s the “X Factor”.  Its unidentifiable nature leads to its allusiveness.  Sure, controversy can be the X Factor, but is that the only way?  And in the nonprofit world, is drama or controversy really the way to go? 

How can nonprofits break through all of the din in the online world to create something that goes viral?  Are we doing enough to make a distinction between what we hope resonates online and what actually does make an impact?  I think, in the end, it’s unfortunately an acceptance of powerlessness.  Usually the most successful viral campaigns are the result of genuine grassroots movements - and not artificial or oversaturated marketing (or astroturfing, I suppose).  People are more inclined to spread the word if they feel like they thought it was a good idea first, not if it is constantly in their faces with blinking lights, shouting from a megaphone: “I’m a good idea!  Tell your friends!”

Still, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing we can do.  Lesson learned: create your network to the best of your ability and trust them.  When it comes to making things go viral, let your network be your guide.  You’re going to have to provide them with the ammunition and make things interesting and relevant to their lives.  But when something works, they’ll make it stick.

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My experience with GlobalGiving as an Atlas Service Corps fellow can be summarized as a window, a window in the digital world of non-profits. Whether it’s the fast changing technology, user-friendly services or the Internet tools, the market or rather Donor’s choice governs every thing.

It was interesting to know how a common person like you and me can induce change by just a click as a ‘donor’ and how a single feedback can direct change in an organization.

For me the encounter with web 2.0 was most exciting. Whether it’s tracking website traffic through Google analytics, designing online surveys or poll or getting RSS feed on Reader, these tools has been a great input for me professionally. Apart from it learning about social media sites, viral marketing, searches & adwords every thing were also very enriching experiences. I belong to India; the largest producer of IT professionals but its application there in the citizen sector is negligible.

The exposure with GlobalGiving has shown me the enormous potential of IT & the use of online tools to be tapped by the ‘non profits’. I started my blog after I joined GlobalGiving, but the best part is to connect with other bloggers that gives a continuing learning experience and first hand news of what’s new in the sector.

No matter where I live and what I do I would love to be a GlobalGiving ambassador, why? Because of its staff, they are so lovely & friendly; I really enjoyed so many things while working with them, the music played by Donna, Birthday celebrations, holiday preparations, potluck organized by Duane & the most exciting raffle. Often it is said that GlobalGiving provides excellent experience to customers or donors; to me it is just an extension of the warm personalities of its staff. All of it has become now ‘part of me’ and will remind me of my days in GlobalGiving.

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I came across this Martin Luther King, Jr. quote from a speech he gave in 1967.  More than 40 years later, I’m amazed by its relevance - probably even more so today than when he first delivered it.  On the occasion of his birthday, thought it would be worth sharing.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that’s poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

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Eggs Baton Rouge. Po’ Boy sandwiches. And BEIGNETS! Few Washington, DC transplants may know it but in the heart of Adams Morgan, you can get a great taste of Louisiana. The spicy Cajun gem that I speak of—Bardia’s New Orleans Café—is something special, and what tops off the quaint dining experience is the personal touch of the café owner, Bardia Ferdousi.

Now I’m not a restaurant critic by trade (I’ll leave that to the guys at Zagat), but I do want to talk a bit about Bardia. I’ve dined at his restaurant at least 25 times in the past two years and have found his friendly one-to-one chats as appetizing as the food—we talk about his days studying engineering, the latest rebuilding efforts in New Orleans, and the secrets behind fried okra (delicious with spicy mustard). I love seeing the glow in his eyes when he talks about his son and daughter, and have reciprocated by bringing my friends and family to share in the “hearty” experience.

Bardia’s service is a counterpoint to the mass-produced flash that has come to dominate the information age. His restaurant may be small—and tucked away between the thumping techno clubs and posh bistros—but he’s retained my business because of his commitment to a personalized dining experience.

I wish more organizations would embrace Bardia’s example—for those in retail and nonprofit marketing, the lesson seems obvious. More isn’t always better. If I can’t relate to you or your service offerings personally, I’m sure as heck not gonna tell my friends about you. There’s something to be said about genuinely caring about your customers.

Whether you live inside or outside the Beltway, if you get a chance, I highly recommend a trip down Bardia lane.

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