Posts Tagged “charity”

I’m interested in charity from several perspectives - personally, I think it’s a moral duty; professionally, it’s baked into the business model where I work; and academically, I like to geek out on the behavioral economics. So, when this item came to my attention, I had to blog it. I blogged it at work, but I want to expand on the idea a bit here.

The short story is that somebody somewhere set up an online fundraising page that won’t take donations of less than $25. I think that’s foolish on a practical level and offensive on a philosophical level.

Why would you set a minimum donation? I suppose either it’s too expensive to process small donations, or you’re trying to encourage larger donations and are willing to take the risk that some people will just walk away.

First up, cost. I’m in this business. I know that fees for online transactions (or donations) are percentage fees and probably less than 10%. Credit card processing costs 2-3%. If there’s a service that charges a flat fee per donation, I don’t know about it. And if there is a service that charges such a fee that a $25 donation isn’t worth taking, I would call that service “theft.”

Second, encouraging larger donations. I think the $25 minimum is a bit too draconian. Look at how public radio does this - you can give any amount but you only get the mug or t-shirt at particular minimum levels. When you get a solicitation in the mail, it probably has boxes to check off at various levels, but I bet they wouldn’t send your check back if it were too small. And it might well cost them a couple of dollars to process a paper check. There are lots of positive ways charities can encourage larger donations, usually by giving recognition incentives or by demonstrating what good larger amounts can do, such as $x can feed a hungry child, $y can feed a family, etc.

Ok, I’m done with that rant. Well, actually, I’m not. Let’s suppose for a moment that it actually does cost $25 to process an online donation. Would you or should you accept a $26 donation? It’s a dollar, right?

I say yes, emphatically yes. In fact, I think if cost you $25 to process a donation, you should be willing to take a $20 donation, maybe even less, if it gets you one more donor, one more evangelist for your cause, one more address on your mailing list.

As a marketer, I regularly pay a few dollars for a sales lead.  Not a sure thing at all.  If I could pay a couple of dollars to get somebody on my list who has a proven track record of spending money on me, I think I would do it.  Wouldn’t you?

As a quant-oriented marketer, I’m open to the possibility that this restriction actually turns out to raise more money.  It’s possible that the people who up their donation outweigh those who walk away.  I suppose on some level it’s worth testing, but I also have to wonder about the message that this kind of thing sends to the donors.

High price and exclusivity are positive brand attributes for luxury goods but hardly for charities.  If you don’t want $10 more to help fight AIDS, I don’t think you’re really serious about fighting AIDS.  And if you say that $10 isn’t enough, maybe it’s all some people can spare today, but maybe in the future they’ll have more, and I don’t suppose they’re likely to give it to somebody who turned them down last time.

I’m not going to try and evangelize Twitter. I figure you’re probably already addicted to it, dead set against it, or blissfully ignorant of it. I don’t think it’s the be all and end all, but I’m rather enjoying it. If you’re so inclined, you can follow me there as limeduck.

But I am here to share some geek notes on consolidating your blogging and microblogging, if that’s the way you roll. Inspired by Sockington the cat who has over 200 followers on twitter, I set out to find a way to automate my twittering. I found TweetLater, which allows you to schedule some time-release tweets. More interesting was twitterfeed, which allows you push RSS feeds to your twitter stream.

Twitterfeed uses openID for authentication, a welcome change from having to create yet another user account. It has a number of useful options such as the ability to prefix RSS tweets with some text to identify them as robotweets. In an interesting twist on the usual “beg button,” the creator of Twitterfeed asks that you consider a donation to Burma Cyclone relief. I second that. You can go to Twitterfeed’s suggested charity, to my fundraising page, or to your favorite international relief charity.

So I’ve now set both this blog and my work blog to push their posts to my twitter stream. The complementary step, much more straignforward, was to add a WordPress widget of the RSS feed of my twitter stream. It’s a the bottom of the right sidebar now.

Next stop, figuring how to wire this all into and out of Facebook. I can see the dangerous potential for infinite loops or disturbing depths of self-absorption. Proceed with care.

Sadly, there’s nothing like a high-profile natural disaster to give Americans a crash-course in world geography and politics.  It might have been Peterman’s getaway on Seinfeld, but Myanmar has been under military dictatorship since 1992, and life was hard there well before Cyclone Nargis.  Usually when disaster strikes, caring people try to figure out how to gather the supplies and expertise most needed to relieve the pain and suffering.  The current situation in Myanmar has shifted the discussion to how to actually get the goods to those in need over the objection and meddling of the national government.  I have to wonder if this will come to foreign jets flying over sovreign Myanmar territory and dropping supplies directly to the needy.

The New York Times Lede blog identified a dozen charities known to be active in at least attempting to provide relief in Myanmar.  Some of these organziations have managed to get people on the ground already.  I urge you to consider a donation to any one of these organizations.  I’ve set up a fundraising page (see the widget in the sidebar at right) for one, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and there are other Firstgiving pages operating for the Heart Touch Project and WorldVision.

Last week, I wrote about my experience with DonorsChoose and their thank-you packages. I got a very nice comment from Mike Everett-Lane explaining some of the inner workings at DC. Yesterday I got two more emails of thanks which included links to six more worthy projects, which I thought I’d share here.

Dear David,

Thank you so much for making “Through the eyes of a child…” a reality for Ms. Thompson’s classroom. By now, you should have received your thank-you package in the mail. If you have not received it, please email zach[at]donorschoose.org. We welcome any questions or suggestions.

We hope the feedback illustrates the difference you’ve made for Ms. Thompson’s students. In case you’d like to help another classroom, we’ve selected some projects for you that are similar:

Proposals from Suffolk, Massachusetts

• This…Is…Jeopardy!
• All the World’s a Stage Part 2
• Blending Science and the Real World

Proposals involving Visual Arts

• Picturing Small Moments
• Colorful Self - Portraits
• Centered on Learning

Alternatively, you can see proposals that need less than $200 to come to life.

Thank you again for your generosity.

Sincerely,

Putting on the marketeer hat for a bit, I have to admire the clever customized upsell. Nice work. And remember, you can save everybody some work if you cap your gifts at $99 each. But please make as many gifts as you can.

Back in December, I received an odd corporate gift - a 2GB flash memory card, and a $100 DonorsChoose gift card - from Google. I suppose it isn’t that odd to get a gift of some sort when you (your employer if you want to get technical) spend over $100,000 with a vendor. Anyway, I pocketed the flash card and logged on to DonorsChoose to see what that was all about:

DonorsChoose.org is dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials and experiences in our public schools. We believe this inequity is rooted in the following factors:

1. Shortages of learning materials prevent thorough, engaging instruction;
2. Top-down distribution of materials stifles our best teachers and discourages them from developing targeted solutions for their students; and
3. Small, directed contributions have gone un-tapped as a source of funding.

DonorsChoose.org will improve public education by engaging citizens in an online marketplace where teachers describe and individuals can fund specific student projects. We envision a nation where students in every community have the resources they need to learn.

I poked around and found a request for a digital camera from a teacher at the William Ohrenberger Elementary School in West Roxbury, MA. The $100 from Google put the project close to completion, and I chipped in $30 more to finish it off. (Very smart marketing, BTW, reminding users of the amount needed to complete!) One of the interesting things about DonorsChoose is that you have the option of paying or not paying their overhead costs, assessed at 15%. They claim that 90% of donors choose to pay the fee, and I’m proud to be part of that group.

I didn’t think much more about the donation. My work was done.  I got some nice thank-you emails from DonorsChoose, and a tax statement after the end of the year. This week, I also got two letter-size envelopes containing some more personalized thank you letters from the teacher, and also a packet of photos and thank you notes from the students themselves.

It’s nice to get some acknowledgment and its nice to see that the children are being taught to acknowledge gifts, and it’s good that I was reminded of the organization and inspired to write this post that might spread the word and get more people doing similar good things.

But I’m still a little uneasy at the effort and expense going into thanking me.  I had the option to pay the overhead, I should have had the option also to put all that overhead into running the organization and none into sending me big hand-assembled packages of paper.  When I give to public radio, I make sure to check the “I don’t want your stinkin’ tote bag” box.  Additionally, I’m note sure how I feel about the schoolkids being reminded that some of their educational equipment comes at the whim of donors and that they should take time out of their day to write these notes.  I received four photos (pretty obviously film photos, I guess the digital camera wasn’t operational yet) and four crayon drawings in each of the two packets, and (Google and) I gave about a quarter of the total funds for the project, so there were probably at least six more such packets created at the school and collated at DonorsChoose HQ.

Probably, I’m just having another grumpy day, but I still think charitable gifts should be anonymous and minimally acknowledged - just enough to feel secure that the funds went to good use and to satisfy the tax man.

And one more parting rant:  If anybody at Kodak is tuned in (LKB?), these photos and crayon drawings with KODAK prominently featured are priceless.  Why does it fall to individual citizens to place your products in elementary schools?  These kids will probably never know what film is (was?), don’t you want them growing up associating Kodak with cameras?