bryanmiller's blog

Great news from the folks behind ‘Causes’ last week, with the announcement that they just passed the $10m point in donations since launch back in May 2007.

I must admit that when I blogged about Causes on its first anniversary I wasn’t all that impressed with its fundraising success. Despite being one of the most popular Apps on Facebook, boasting some 12m registered users, over its first 12 months it had raised just $2.5m – equating to just $126 for each organisation being fundraised for. However, things have clearly improved since then to take them through the $10m mark just 14 months later, and what is especially interesting is the fact that $5m of this has apparently been raised in just the six months since the start of 2009.

This set me to thinking what might have changed since the first 12 months to have generated such a boost in donations and what others might be able to learn from this success. It seems to me that there are three key contributing factors to take note of:

Click here to read on...

Last week saw the launch of The List of Change, a new ranking of the top English-language change and cause-related blogs – providing a very handy way to find some new sources of news and information of interest to nonprofit marketers and fundraisers.

The ranking is based on each blog’s Technorati Rank, Technorati In-Links, Bloglines Subscribers, Alexa Points, Google PageRank, and Yahoo In-Links, which are combined to give a score out of 100.

Click here to take a look at the full ranking...

One of the regular topics that comes-up when I’m discussing the potential of online social networks with fundraisers from outside the UK is just which social networks are dominant in their particular country. Because, contrary to how it might feel from the UK or US perspective, when you go further afield the Social Network world doesn’t start and end with Facebook.

So, I’m always on the look-out for data which helps shed some light on the relative strengths of different sites across different countries – and two such sources cropped-up over the last couple of days that I thought you might find useful, wherever you happen to be based.

Click here to read on at Giving in a Digital World...

There has been a lot of discussion this year about the potential value of microblogging service Twitter to nonprofits, so I’d imagine there will also be a lot of interest in the latest version of the Twitter-based virtual currency – the Twollar.

Described as “a currency of appreciation” for Twitter, the idea is that every Twitter user is given 50 Twollars and can then use these to thank or reward other people who use Twitter.

But the interesting thing is that you can also give your Twollars to a charity which uses Twitter and the receiving charity can then convert them into real money at an exchange rate of 10 Twollars to 1 $US.

Click here to read more about Twollars on Giving in a Digital World...

From May 10th to 25th, US Facebook users can go to the Target Facebook Page and vote (once daily) for which of the ten charities listed they would like to receive a share of a $3 million donation from the retailer.

It’s classic viral marketing stuff – authentic, very simple and highly ’share-able’. And, of course, the power of it being on a social network like Facebook is that each time someone votes they can also publish that vote on their Facebook feed so all their friends see it – and so the reach of the campaign grows and grows, without the need for lots of forwarding of intrusive emails to your friends.

Click here to read more about the campaign on Giving in a Digital World...

It’s May again, which means that the latest update of the annual M+R and NTEN eNonprofit Benchmarks Study has just been released.

The study, which provides cause-specific benchmarks across a range of email metrics is based on data from 32 US nonprofit organisations, but I’ve always found the results to be a good steer for European nonprofits too.

Click here to download the study for free through Giving in a Digital World...

There was quite a bit of talk of Crowdfunding in some of the sessions at this week’s IFC Online eConference and that reminded me of an article I was asked to write a while back for Professional Fundraising (the Monthly trade magazine for the sector in the UK) specifically about how online fundraisers might learn from commercial crowdfunding initiatives.

It was a timely reminder, because the article has just been published on their website as well as in this month’s printed edition – so you can read the whole thing for free.

Just click here to access it through my Givinginadigitalworld blog.

The world of online charity crowdfunding ’supermarkets’ looks set to grow yet again later this year, with the launch of See The Difference - a website that plans to engage supporters with a diverse range of projects from all around the world through video-based ‘digital storytelling’.

With a very impressive line-up of corporate backers and endorsements from a diverse group of people (from the RSPB's Head of Individual Marketing to the editor of Heat Magazine) See The Difference is clearly a very ambitious initiative - as illustrated by their target of raising £500m over the next five years.

To put that in context, the incredibly successful Kiva just reached £47m over its first three and a half years of operation...

Click here to read-on at Giving in a Digital World...

If you’re feeling lost or left behind in the whirl of hype that has grown-up around the micro-blogging service Twitter over the last few months then don’t worry - you’re not alone.

In the same week that internet traffic monitor Hitwise announced that UK Internet visits to Twitter are up 6-fold since January (making it the 5th most popular social networking site in the UK), analytics firm Webtrends just released results of research confirming that most marketers remain reluctant to use the service...

Click here to read-on at Giving in a Digital World...

The Big Give is a charity project ’supermarket’ site established by Alec Reed, founder of the Reed employment agency, apparently (according to an interview in Intelligent Life magazine) following a brainstorm that led to the idea of creating a ‘virtual charity’ using the existing architecture beneath the successful Reed job-seekers site.

Originally launched in October 2007 to encourage high-wealth philanthropy by simplifying the process of matching a corporate or major donor to a specific project of interest, the site is also used by more everyday folks wanting to give the odd £25 or so.

What is interesting from the individual donor point of view is that, as well as the usual project search functionality, The Big Give also offers ‘matched funding’ on certain projects....

Click here to read-on at Giving in a Digital World...