One of the most rewarding things we do at Firstgiving is meeting with individuals and charities that use our service and make a real difference as a result. These opportunities are always energizing and tremendously educational for us here at Firstgiving. We recently had the opportunity to speak at two conferences on the subject of person to person fundraising and all that’s happening in this area.
We were asked to talk at the Executive Director Conference for the Ronald McDonald House Charities here in Boston a few weeks ago to discuss Firstgiving and person to person fundraising. What a great group! We had a lively conversation about the growth and evolution of person to person fundraising. Several of the RMHC chapters use Firstgiving for their pledge based events but the conversation centered on the myriad of non-event uses of Firstgiving personal fundraising pages and widgets. The session really got the “wheels turning” for us as well as the Executive Directors about the possibilities. Here is a great example of the kind of thing they are doing: http://www.firstgiving.com/BostonRMcDH
Many thanks are due too Edie from RMHC of Eastern New England for inviting Firstgiving to the conference and to Michael from the Providence Chapter for pointing out both to us and the other chapters how many things online fundraising pages can be used for in addition to the traditional events. Michael articulated this very well as ‘a year in the life of Firstgiving’ to mean that once the event fundraising is over, person to person fundraising continues year round for all sorts of reasons as determined by either the charity (such as holiday appeals, awareness months, etc) or by individuals themselves (such as a wedding, birthday or in memory). The possibilities are endless…stay tuned for more on ‘the year in the life of Firstgiving’. Since the conference we have continued our conversation with many of the RMHC chapters and are looking forward to working closely with them on a variety of efforts in 2007!
Just this past weekend, Firstgiving was invited to attend the 2nd annual Midwest Rescue Conference which was put together and hosted by Larry Little and the fabulous crew at Guardian Angel Basset Rescue (GABR). Larry and GABR have worked with Firstgiving for the past several years for their Basset Waddle, which is the largest gathering of Basset Hounds in the world! Larry is a creative and seasoned development professional when it comes to person to person fundraising. However, this year Larry challenged Firstgiving to teach him and everyone else at the conference something new about the subject! Always being up for a challenge we showed each of the rescue organizations how they could benefit from making Firstgiving fundraising pages outside of their events by creating pages for particularly needy animals, in memory or beloved pets and even in honor of adoption dates!
Here is a great example of what one rescue organization accomplished since last weekend: http://www.firstgiving.com/sonyascare. This page was set up to raise $500 and they exceeded their goal in less than 1 week!
We appreciate the opportunity to attend and speak at these sessions and conferences to both share and learn ourselves. If your group has a session where the attendees are interested in what’s going on in the world of person to person fundraising, please post a comment and let us know!
