In This Edition:

• Can Social Butterflies Raise Money?
  
  
• 4 Reasons To Use Widgets (hint...cash is involved)
  
  
• Taking A Donor’s Credit Card

Can Social Butterflies Raise Money?

By Michele Donohue

Leah Jones created a personal fundraising page last year when she decided to participate in the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day. She invited her friends to support her -- including between 800 and 1,200 Twitter followers and the few hundred visitors to her blog, Leah in Chicago -- Accidentally Jewish.

Jones wanted to see how she could leverage her online community for a good cause. She surpassed Komen’s $2,300 fundraising minimum and her personal goal of $3,200 to reach more than $5,000. She raised about $2,500 just from her Twitter community and an additional $2,500 through her blog, email solicitations and selling the right to wear jeans at work.

To read the complete article click here...

4 Reasons To Use Widgets (hint...cash is involved)

Saving Shelter Pets, Inc. is a small, all-volunteer organization,  spread across the country. So MySpace, a social network, serves as the central community space for the organization. “We couldn’t possibly have a car wash or hoagie sale because where would we do it? So, a lot of the typical things that nonprofits do to raise money don’t work for us,” said Jane Winebrenner, director at Saving Shelter Pets.

What does work for the organization? Widgets – code that can be embedded into a Web page. And Winebrenner shares why:

• Stand-alone tool. Most widgets allow for information – like fundraising goals and campaign details. “All the information you need is right there in the widget.”
• Location, location, location. Widgets can be embedded almost anywhere – like Web pages, blogs and social networks. Having trouble embedding on a particular site? Provide a link back to your organization’s Home Page with the widget prominently displayed.
• Campaign driven. Each widget you make can be for a different campaign. Instead of creating a widget with a $1 million goal, break down fundraising into smaller projects.
• Look for contests. Some widget makers, like SixDegrees.org or Razoo.com, will hold grant contests for organizations raising the most money. “Nothing like cash to motivate you to use the widget,” said Winebrenner. Saving Shelter Pets raised more than $22,000 with a SixDegrees widget from 560 donors -- winning a $10,000 grant for the organization’s efforts in Georgia and Ohio.

 Taking A Donor’s Credit Card

Perhaps you’re hoping to process credit card donations based on telephone calls from donors, or to allow on-site registration at your next conference. Perhaps you want to take credit card payments at a T-shirt booth at a concert, or at your organization’s gift shop.

The world of credit cards is a complicated one. There are a number of different possible methods for taking credit cards, which might require different types of hardware, software and relationships. While it’s beyond the scope of a single article to tell you everything you might want to know about every method, it can be useful simply to have a view of what’s possible.

Weighing your options requires a basic understanding of how credit card processing works. Unfortunately, this process isn’t a simple one. It’s a multi-step process that often involves a number of different vendors and entities.

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