CDG Interactive Blog

In today’s frigid financial climate, fundraisers face the tough challenge of prying dollars from an ever-more-frugal pool of donors. How do you convince people to donate to the greater good when their budgets are growing tighter than my jeans after too many holiday cookies?

A website like GlobalGiving is a good start. This “Marketplace of Good” is akin to an online shop for charitable causes. Like a retail site, GlobalGiving packages its projects like products, letting you shop for a cause as easily as you could shop for a medium-sized, red V-neck sweater. (Full disclosure: I became aware of the site because a friend works for the organization.)

On the GlobalGiving site, users can browse projects by region, by cause, by project sponsor, by organization, and more. (Each project is displayed with a photo and a short description of its purpose.)  Or, use a snazzy donation wizard that quizzes you on your interests and matches you with a project that lines up with your answers.

By taking such a user-centric approach, GlobalGiving puts potential donors on a direct path to the causes that mean most to them—and those that they’re most likely to support. And once they select a project, GlobalGiving provides concrete information about what the donor’s dollars will accomplish.

For example, a program titled “Send a Child to School in India for a Year” presents the following donation levels:

• $40 - Provides 1 child with quality education for 1 year
• $50 - Provides stationery/books to 1 centre for 6 months
• $65 - Runs one Centre for 1 month benefitting 20 children
• $100 - Provides stationery/books to 1 centre for 1 year

By simply tying the dollars to specific results, GlobalGiving raises the stakes, tugs at the heart, and hopefully provokes an internal dialogue something like this: “Just $40 to send a kid to school for a year? How can I say no to that? Where’s my credit card?”

This is just one of the many things that GlobalGiving gets right. Their site boasts a clean, airy design, an intuitive navigation structure, and engaging content—including a nice blog.

Good work, GlobalGiving. And I mean that in more ways than one.

Come across any innovative or effective fundraising efforts lately? Tell us about them.