Free Technology Tools For Fundraising

The rise in acceptance of social fundraising for schools and community groups is making it easier to obtain donations from anywhere around the world.  To that end, there are several technology-based fundraising tools currently being used in social networks that help reach target audiences through friends that are members of various social sites.

These are the free technology fundraising tools available in Australia:

• EverydayHero allows anyone to set up a fundraising page on their website which is then accessible to your family, friends and colleagues to give you the capabilities to accept donations online. You can share a special message of inspiration, start a blog and share images or a video to help you raise funds for a charity or cause that you care about. Anyone is invited to make donations and leave a message of support to you, as the fundraiser. Donations are tallied and displayed in the fundraising page meter for everyone to see. Donations are automatically processed and transferred to your selected charity or cause.
• WordPress.com allows anyone to set up a free blog without the need for any programming skills. Simply, sign up for a free account and you can immediately start using it to attract potential donors.  Through the use of “plug-ins” you can extend the blog’s capability to meet your needs.  Searching for “charity” at WordPress.org will provide you with a list of hundreds of free plug-ins that can be easily installed to help promote a fundraising event as well as collecting the donations via a PayPal donate button.

Here are some others that we found from other countries around the world. It is unclear whether they are suitable for use in Australia so please let us know if you use them or come across anything local.

• Fundly is leading the way towards collecting charitable donations by intelligently integrating social tools that allow a donor to encourage their social network to donate to a specific cause.  This makes this donor a fund-puller of like-minded individuals who are willing to support by way of donation.  They encourage their friends to add things like badges that recommend their fundraising site to new people.

More than one thousand non-profit groups have raised a total of $200M using Fundly. For example, Teach For America uses Fundly to raise money to provide training and online resources. Once you create an account, a button will then be created for you to add to your blog or website which will direct donors to your donation page.  It also directly links your group to social media sites like Facebook.

• Give2Gether is an application that assimilates a mass email service that has customized call-to-action templates.  It brings all social networks together on one page with your organisation. A template is designed for the donor list, besides a champion page for individual donors. Funds raised in this application go directly to your organization and this avoids the complications of fund transfers and mistrust when it comes to collecting what has been donated.

Give2Gether works extremely well for those who just want small sites that contain all the necessary information for use by potential donors. It is very user friendly which is why donors are willing to share it with their friends.

• VerticalResponse allows you to reach out to a wider spectrum of potential donors. They provide free email marketing and list management for US registered nonprofit organizations.  This allows a non-profit group to send ten thousand (10,000) emails every month free of charge, which can be very effective if you have a large opt-in email list.  Non-profit groups outside the United States are also eligible for this free program using salesforce.org donation technology.