Which of the following statements would be more likely to get you to donate to a homeless shelter?

“Our homeless shelter provided beds for 125 people each night last winter,” or “Mary came to our shelter one freezing night last winter and this was the beginning of her journey back to her family.”

The majority of prospective donors would respond more positively to the second statement. Not only does it put a face on the homeless, it gets people to ask questions such as “Why did she come to the shelter?’ and “What did your nonprofit do the help her get back to her family?”

Statistics can be important in fundraising, particularly in the world of public and private grants. However, the human element is generally what gets individuals to give to your nonprofit. Below are three brief stories that organizations have used successfully to increase their annual fund.

A private girls’ school needed to increase their annual support because the downturn in the economy was affecting their tuition payments. They held a fall breakfast meeting for their donors where the only speakers were the students at the school. A seventh grade student talked about how the teachers helped her overcome her shyness. She wouldn’t even speak in class and here she was talking to a hundred people. A freshman shared her joy in playing on the basketball team in a school which encouraged all the girls to participate in athletics. A senior announced proudly that she had been accepted to college and she would be the first one in her family to ever go beyond high school. The audience was charmed by the sincerity of each of the girls and many attendees increased their annual donations.

An addiction recovery center usually had a noted speaker in the recovery field as the keynote at its fundraising dinner. One year, they decided to have a graduate of the program do the key note speech. Although he wasn’t a polished speaker, he held the audience captive as he shared his journey from the isolation of living on the streets, to the horrors of drug addiction which led to being incarcerated, to his reluctant entry into this demanding treatment program which led him to full recovery. The smile on his face and his obvious joy in helping others recover inspired this audience to increase their annual giving.

A housing nonprofit held an annual event for the business leaders who supported their operations. The format was that a key business leader would speak followed by the Executive Director doing slides of their projects and the Board President asking for donations. By the third year, the director felt that they needed to change the format while still staying within the short time frame the businesses expected. The Board President simply introduced one of their clients. She was a single mom who told a powerful story of how this nonprofit helped her rehab her home to accommodate her three multi-handicapped children. With tears in her eyes, she closed her presentation by asking each of the business men and women present to increase their donations to help other people like her. The lead business donor stood up and announced that he was increasing his donations that year and many others did the same.

Schools, charities, clubs, not-for-profit organizations, individuals.

What do they all have in common?

As the title of this article suggests they are all looking to raise money through fundraising and have turned to the internet for help.

There is a lot of fundraising ‘stuff’ out there for someone’s favourite project, it’s just a matter of sifting through it.

Some of the fundraising websites are simply lists of ideas to raise money and can be very useful. They do not however appeal to everyone, especially those looking for a ready made answer.

This is where fundraising websites such as Just Giving and Simple Fundraising come into their own.

Just Giving is one of the larger websites aimed primarily at charities and their supporters. For an ongoing monthly fee and a small commission on each donation Just Giving offer an attractive proposition for busy fundraisers who rely on donations to support their cause.

Simple Fundraising on the other hand is aimed at anyone who uses the internet for online purchases, although they focus on organizations run by volunteers, and who wants to support their favourite cause.

Internet entrepreneur and Simple Fundraising founder, Dan Golding, explains:

‘The internet is a fantastic environment and despite the few obvious issues which the media feed on is also ideal for doing good as well. Retailers are moving more and more online, away from costly bricks and mortar outlets. The advantage is the savings they can make which can then be passed on to their customers. The problem they have is making their customers aware of their websites and the special offers. In-store it’s fairly obvious thanks to point-of-purchase displays when the customer walks in off of the street. It’s harder to get customers to ‘walk-in’ off the internet, especially the smaller retailers.

One of the ways that retailers have addressed this is by joining an affiliate marketing scheme where they pay a percentage of the item’s cost to the person that directs them to their website. As a result there are now a number of affiliate marketing companies looking for this business as ‘middlemen’ and then a host of sites listing the savings available to the general ‘net-surfing’ customer’.

And where does all this fit in with fundraising for schools, for example, on the internet?

Golding continues, ‘A lot of these websites are confusing to the average person, as is the whole concept of affiliate marketing. I decided that it was possible to not only make this process simpler for people but also give something back to the community. That’s why Simple Fundraising was started. We create a free fundraising webpage for anyone that wants to join, be they a big charity or an individual. Listed on the webpage are hundreds of shops that are offering discounts to anyone who cares to use this route. Whenever someone wants to buy something off the internet, be it car insurance, a holiday or a bouquet of flowers, they go through their webpage. The commission paid by the retailer is indicated and the cumulative amount they earn is paid to them at month end, via Simple Fundraising. Basically you were going to spend the money anyway and the commission was going to be paid if you used the affiliate marketing scheme. We just join up the dots!’