09 Feb 2009 2 Comments
25 Random Things About Firstgiving
If you’ve even logged in to your Facebook account within the past two weeks, you know what we’re talking about. So without further ado:
1. Our favorite coffee spot is Diesel Cafe.
2. Our sister company in the UK is called Justgiving, and we love having people with British accents in our office.
3. We recently called the fire department because there was an exposed electrical wire smoking outside our window and we were in fear of our lives!
4. Frank once signed up for 100 social media sites in less than 30 days. A bit more discerning selective, David is the biggest Tweeter.
5. We do marathon kick-off meetings. That means we help marathon teams who are raising money for charity figure out how to make the fundraising easier than the running.
6. We have over 500 sticky-notes on the wall in our office.
7. A bunch of us volunteered at Special Olympics New Hampshire’s Polar Plunge last weekend.
8. We have an amazing and dedicated customer support team. Their names are Beth S. and Ryan. Ryan happens to have the most extensive collection of action figures we have ever seen.
9. One of our fundraisers is gradually transforming himself into Mr. T.
10. Almost a quarter of our team is named Beth.
11. Firstgiving ranks #8 among Tweeters in our hometown.
12. James met his wife through an NPO referral. And Ben and Beth L. met through Firstgiving/Justgiving (they’re married to each other).
13. Beth P. (that’s me) was inspired by Firstgiving athlete-fundraisers, signed up and trained for triathlons but never raced because they were flooded out. Well, there’s always this year. I hope I didn’t just jinx myself again.
14. We do all kinds of free webinars to help people be more successful with online fundraising.
15. The desks in our office used to be made out of doors. Then we went shopping for a modern Scandinavian look. We managed to transport all of them in David‘s car due to IKEA’s ingenious flat-packing system.
16. Two of us, Beth L. and Mark, are running the Boston Marathon this year for charity.
17. When the whiteboards need cleaning, we have been known to photograph them and upload the photos to the fileshare in case anyone is afraid of erasing important data.
18. There’s only one real Mac in the office, but we’ve made pseudo-Macs out of a lot of the other computers with those nice Apple stickers they sent along.
19. The key to the bathroom in our building is attached to a giant plastic squid, making it difficult to lose.
20. On Inauguration Day, we all went out to watch the speech together over lunch.
21. We power the Fundraising Application on Facebook.
22. James once climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.
23. Grant used to be a sous-chef.
24. Beth L., Beth P., David, Frank, and Melinda have their own blogs.
25. We love hearing from non-profits, donors and fundraisers about their experiences with Firstgiving. You inspire us every day with your stories. So feel free to give us a shout, post, or Tweet!
Jay B. Love
Feb 10, 2009 @ 13:27:28
I loved the post! Nice to hear about your special culture. Be ruthless about not changing it going forward.
Summer
Feb 12, 2009 @ 18:50:18
I love reading this:) Sometimes it’s hard to think about the names and culture behind what seems to be huge org. Thanks for taking the time to write such a fun post.