The following is a guest post based on research done by Sumac Research.

Online giving is growing. Being able to accept donations online, therefore, is critical to any size organization. For large non-profits this is rarely an issue, since they can afford expensive database software that enables an integrated merchant account. But what options are available for small and mid-sized non-profits?

Third Party Processors

If you are a small or mid-sized nonprofit looking for a simple and immediate solution for accepting credit cards online, you are probably looking at using what is called a “third party processor.” Third party processors collect donations for you and then pay you at the end of each month. It is fast and convenient since you don’t have to set up a payment page on your website. Instead the processor gives you a “donate now” link to add to your website. In a few minutes, your donation page is up and running.

Some third party processors will also allow you to customize the look and feel of the donation page so that donors are not even aware they have left your website. But they generally charge more per transaction. Here is a comparison of the most popular third party processors:

Least Expensive, But Not Seamless

If you are looking for an inexpensive way to process donations online, you may want to consider one of the option from this first group. They are easy to set up and some even allow you to customize the donation page with your logo, colors and special fields. The drawback is that there is a disconnect in the donation process; When someone clicks “donate now” on your website, there is no question that they have left your website and are dealing with a third-party.

Features	Recurring Donation	Add custom Fields	Customize Look	Donor’s experience
Google Checkout			Add your logo	See how it works here
PayPal		1 custom field maximum 255 characters	Add your logo and choose color. See example here	See how it works here
Amazon Simple Pay Donations			Add your logo	See how it works here
Network for Good DonateNow Lite				See how it works here
JustGive				–
Canada Helps		Create a list of funds for donors to choose from	Add your logo	See example here

More Expensive, But Seamless

If you want donors to never know they have left your website and don’t mind paying a little bit more, you might want to consider one of the options from this second group. Donation usability research done by Jokob Nielson shows that creating a seamless user experience, where donors don’t know they are dealing with a third-party actually raises more money. So, paying a little extra to make the process seamless may be worthwhile!  

Features	Recurring  Donation	Add custom Fields	Customize Look	Donor’s experience
Network for Good DonateNow			They design the page for you to match your website. See example here	See how it works here
Click & Pledge (Plan A)			a) Use templates with your color, logos and graphicsb) Design a custom page and embed it on your website. See examples here	–
FirstGiving				–

Extra Benefits Offered by Seamless Options

Network for Good: DonateNow comes with instant access to EventsNow powered by givezooks! Learn more

Click & Pledge: Includes free online fundraising/donor management software, a payment gateway and over 30 fundraising features. Learn more

Firstgiving: Offers integration with Facebook by allowing users to display their current supported cause and a button to donate

Another Option: An Integrated Merchant Account

Many larger nonprofits who process thousands of donations each year set up their own payment page on their website using a merchant account that is integrated with their database to save time on inputting data and avoid paying a middle man for every transaction. In the end, these organizations actually save about 1%-2% per transaction. While this may not seem like a lot, it is when you consider hundreds of thousands of dollars in donation over a period of many years. These organizations also save a lot through reduced administration costs, because they do not have to import or manually enter donation information from a third-party provider into their in-house database; the website is directly integrated to their internal systems.

In the past, the database software used to support an integrated merchant account was expensive and not scaled to meet the needs of smaller nonprofits. That’s not the case anymore. There are now cost effective software packages available that can integrate your merchant account with your database and are scaled for small and mid-sized non-profits. For many organizations, a quick solution is what they need and they don’t mind paying extra money for the convenience. If however, you are thinking long term and want to save time on data entry and money on transaction fees, you should be aware that there are other options available.

Sumac is a complete software solution for nonprofits that includes online payment processing that is connected to your database. To learn more about Sumac’s solutions, click here.

There are multiple ways to participate:

• Host an event
• Host a food drive
• Collect cash donations
• Shop at local businesses who are supporting the cause

To register your organization to participate in the Souper Bowl of Caring, or to find an event in your area, visit www.souperbowl.org.

Fundraising isn’t all about checkbooks and making money. In order for your fundraising event to be successful, you must take this ultimate fund raising tip in mind: a fundraising event no matter how organized and innovative the ideas are, if your heart is not in it, the event won’t turn out well. You may be wondering how you can possibly make your own fundraising event a successful one. Well, wonder no more, for the words that follow contain tips that will surely work favorably as expected:

1. Fundraising is more than just a checkbook. Donors do not easily engage themselves and their money to something they know little of. Although the main objective of raising funds is to collect significant amounts of money for a common cause, it is still salient to reiterate the emotional and cathartic aspect of the event. If you’re able to bring forth this message to your would-be sponsors, you’ll certainly gain their full attention and support.

2. Fundraising is about personal involvement. Involvement isn’t confined to organizers alone. If you want your sponsors be touched on a personal level, you must instigate in introducing the project to your prospective benefactors. Apart from this, it is best that you pave the way for them to get involved in all aspects of the event. It is only when a person experienced hands-on involvement and participation that he realizes the underlying positive cause of a fundraising event he supports.

3. Fundraising isn’t just a momentary act but a journey towards achieving a common goal. Each and every organization has their visions and missions, hence the birth of a fundraising event. But one fund raising tip that you must heed is that the task does not end the moment letters of solicitations are circulated In fact, the journey is just starting. Until you push through with the project and be able to see results and transformations will you know that you did a great job.

For more information on fundraising events and projects for your organization try visiting http://good-fundraising-ideas.com, a website that specializes in providing helpful tips, advice and fundraising resources to include Fund Raising Tip and more.

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Arrange space for an on-going fundraiser where you can sort and display items people donate for sale. Open up the shop one or two days a month with the help of a volunteer staff. Promote throughout the year that you are accepting donations. Merchandise your items well, like other retail stores to increase traffic and sales.

Contact local stores about donating their merchandise that doesn’t move. The business can write it off as a tax deduction and get it out of their way. You benefit by having new items donated to your sale regularly.

• Arrange for use of a parking lot that gets a lot of visibility and traffic. (Think grocery store, mall parking lot, football stadium.)
• Sign up participants ahead of time to collect food donations in the trunks of their cars. Encourage school and church groups to put together a team to participate. Local businesses can also get in on the fun and challenge their local competitors.
• Encourage the participants to decorate their trunks.
• Have celebrity judges vote for the best decorated trunk.
• Supporters can “vote” for the best decorated trunk by placing non-perishable food items in the trunk of their choice.
• Set up a donation box for those that perfer to give a monetary donation instead.
• Have music, games, prizes, and trick or treat candy to hand out.
• Sell food and beverages for those that come to parcipate and volunteer for the event. Proceeds of refreshment sales can also be donated to the food pantry.
• Get the local media to come out and cover the event.

After ghostwriting hundreds of blog entries for dozens of corporations, executives, and self-employed professionals, I’ve come around a bit to their marketing power. More than just a collection of articles, there are great way to engage readers and search engines alike, gradually bringing new money into any organization.

But can that dynamic be used by nonprofits?

It absolutely can. Like most things in the business world, the same skills and techniques can be transferred over into the fund-raising arena. In fact, you’ll find that a lot of the methods that companies use to turn blog posts into sales can be used by nonprofits to raise donations. Here are five tips for fund raising with your organization’s blog:

Give steady updates. Perhaps the best use of a nonprofits blog is showing donors and interested parties how the cause is progressing. The more you fill people in, the easier it is for them to feel connected to your group – and its goals. Try to regularly add a few hundred words that explain the good you’re doing in the world, and to thank the people who are helping you do it.

Strike a positive tone. This doesn’t apply exclusively to blogs, but I’ve noticed a lot of nonprofit organizations that seem to have a very “down” note in their fund-raising materials. There’s nothing wrong with making readers aware of a specific problem, but try not to overwhelm them with it. Instead, engage them by showing positive solutions. By staying upbeat, you encourage them to donate and get involved, rather than feel depressed about a problem.

Use pictures and layouts to tell a story. Sometimes, words and statistics just won’t do it. If you really want to highlight a problem or development, try to add in some photos or charts. Not only do they make your posts easier to read, but they are also more effective in conveying a message.

Think fun and interesting. In the same way that it’s difficult to guilt people into giving, you can’t make them read your blog. The challenge for the fund raiser – just like his or her marketing counterpart – is to blog on a topic that’s fun, or at least interesting. Give people a reason to come back and read later, and they will.

End every post with an appeal. Here is where fundraisers have a distinct advantage over their corporate counterparts. While asking someone to buy something at the end of every blog post would be annoying in the business world, it’s perfectly acceptable for nonprofits. People know you are trying to raise money, so they aren’t bothered by your asking for it. Take advantage of this by ending every blog post with a clickable link to a page that people can use to donate money or otherwise get involved.

Matthew Aaron is an independent copywriter living in Denver, Colorado, USA. For more than ten years, he’s grown a solid reputation for delivering effective sales copy for his clients across North America and the United Kingdom.

A former commissioned salesperson, Matthew draws upon the lessons and experiences he learned firsthand to create materials that spur readers into action. His belief is that good copy shouldn’t be judged on how clever or pretty it is, but how many new leads or customers it brings.

He is the author of Selling in a Recession, as well as hundreds of articles on sales and writing. His writing has been used by publications in more than a dozen countries, and he continues to work with organizations of all sizes.

For more information about him, his books, or his copywriting work, please visit http://www.matthewaaron.com.

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Fund raising is always a fun thing to do. You get to beat your brains to a pulp, hand over all your money to some worthy cause and go home with nothing to show for it but a big thank you. Oh but what a great feeling those thank you’s are. One of the most popular ways of raising funds for that worthy cause is through the running of a tricky tray. A little history of the tricky tray. For starters, they weren’t always called tricky trays. Back in the good old days, they were called Chinese auctions, but in an effort to be politically correct, the term Chinese auction was done away with, at least in most parts of our civilized society. The term tricky tray has been used ever since.

A tricky tray is really nothing more than a massive raffle. Instead of raffling off just one item or even a couple of items, what you’re basically raffling off is a room full of items. Depending on how much stuff you can get your hands you may actually end up with several rooms full. So where does all this stuff come from? That’s the hard part.

The items auctioned off in a tricky tray are basically donated, either from the people running the tricky tray itself or from store owners in their various neighborhoods. Most store owners are pretty cooperative when people come around asking for items to donate, but there are some who clearly place signs in their windows that say, “no donations”. It’s getting harder and harder to run these things all the time.

Once all the items have been acquired, the next step is to set them all up. Presentation is everything and therefore you just don’t throw them on the tables. What you should try to do is arrange the items in a way where they go with each other. In other words, if you’ve gotten a number of donations such as perfumes or stuffed animals, you should try to have them all grouped together. This way, people who are interested in one type of item don’t have to go very far to put in their tickets. Which brings us to how this works.

The system itself is basically very simple. There are companies that make special cards for these types of raffles. A person will buy a card, which might contain about 20 tickets and will then break up the tickets into individuals and throw the individuals into tin cans placed next to each item. After all the tickets have been placed, the drawings begin. One ticket is chosen from each tin can. If you’ve got 300 items to raffle off, this could take quite a few hours. This is why these fund raisers usually include the selling of food during the event.

Tricky trays are great fund raising activities. Even though most of the items aren’t really worth much, people love winning things. It’s the thrill of the chase that makes a tricky tray fund raising gala something to look forward to.

Try running one some time. You won’t be sorry.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Fund Raising

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Sometimes you need to raise funds in a hurry. It’s easy to think, “We should have established a fundraising plan earlier!” That may be true, but it doesn’t help now. Here are some ways to raise modest funds in a pinch. Because institutions like foundations, government, and service clubs typically take more than a month to make funding decisions, your best bet to raise money in 30 days usually involves asking individuals for donations.

Each of these techniques can raise a lot or a little depending on who is doing the organizing. For example, a house party in one organization can raise $500 in one evening, while in another it can raise $100,000. In either case, the amount raised is likely to be a significant help towards whatever financial situation you are facing. Every technique is one we have seen first-hand to be effective. 

1. Have a phone-a-thon three days in a row, Monday through Wednesday of one week. Get all the board members to gather at the organization’s office (or one of their offices) at 5 pm. Practice how you’re going to ask for donations on the phone. Provide pizza or refreshments and make a party of it — a little food and drink can go a long way in supporting the right atmosphere for fundraising. Divide up the lists of members, donors, clients, patrons, neighbors, or whatever other lists you have. Call them. Take a break every 45 minutes to swap stories. Go home at 7:30.

2. Together, a board member and the executive director can ask government, foundation, and corporate funders to renegotiate grant and contract agreements. Everyone knows the economy is in turmoil — it won’t be a surprise to your funders if your grants, contracts, and donations are down. Ask for a meeting, for example, with a county funder, and see whether they would be willing to have you provide fewer shelter nights or fewer senior meals, without reducing your contract payment. Tell a foundation funder that the grant they gave you to hire a second librarian needs to be spent just to keep the first librarian. Many funders appreciate the significance of board leadership on these matters, and remember: obtaining an agreement for a lower amount of services for the same money is often as good as getting more money.

3. Send out a 2-page letter to your members, volunteers, and donors. Explain that you are on a 30-day fundraising campaign and ask for a donation. If you can, follow up with phone calls.

4. Give yourself a birthday party, half-birthday party, or some other party, and tell people that it is a fundraiser for the organization where you volunteer as a board member. Have a donations box at the door or food table and have a volunteer sit there and ask people (in a friendly way!) for contributions. You don’t have to make a “pitch” . . . just thank people for coming and making a donation to something that’s important to you.

5. At a board meeting, bring a list of the organization’s 30 biggest donors and, at the meeting, divide them up among the board members. Call to get an in-person appointment with each donor to explain the organization’s situation and to ask for a donation. At the appointment, ask for a donation that is twice as large as the previous donation. “We really appreciate the $500 you donated last year. Would you consider doubling that gift and making a $1,000 gift this year?”

6. Ask all board members (and anyone else) to post an appeal to their own Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn networks, saying something like: “I’m a volunteer for this organization, and we’re on a 30 day blitz to raise needed funds. Please help me meet my goal by giving a contribution to ____.”

7. If you have lots of members and volunteers, have a garage sale. Get a huge amount of stuff together, sell it on both days of a weekend. Have a couple of great organizers do a barbecue at the event — perhaps with foods related to your organization’s work. Who can resist the lure of the one dollar item bin at a garage sale or a one dollar hot dog?

8. Ask your biggest donor to make a challenge grant. “We need your help to raise some special money right away. Would you consider making a gift of, say, $20,000, contingent on our raising $20,000 within 60 days? That would help motivate us on the board as well as the people we ask.”

And now for some “don’ts”:

• Don’t say you need donations because you’re in a financial crisis. Say, “We are determined to get through this economic time, and we need your help.”
• Don’t promise that you won’t ask for another donation. Instead, say, “We know we are asking you to stretch to help our clients right now. This is an unusual situation for us — we do raise money every year, but this is an especially important year.”
• Don’t ask for a loan instead of a donation. If someone offers you a loan instead of a donation, say, “Your offer of a $2,000 loan means a lot to me. But I can’t accept a loan on behalf of our organization. Could we ask you instead for a donation of $100 per month for 20 months?”
• Don’t accept a pledge as a substitute for a donation. If someone offers to pledge $500 by the end of the year, ask for $250 now and the remaining $250 in September.

Blue Avocado editor Jan Masaoka wrote this article with New York fundraising consultant and coach Burke Keegan, who says, “If you need money right now, it’s going to be major donors, honey.” You can order Burke’s book on fundraising by clicking here.

Mobile Donations in the US

In the US, a mobile donor can make a $5 or $10 donation per text message. The amount is determined by the non profit charitable organization, so the donor can decide whether or not to make a donation but not how much to give. Pre-paid mobile plans can also be used to make donations.

The donor sends a text message to a short code with a keyword, like any other text message. For example, for the Haiti campaign, mobile donors sent the word HAITI to 90999 and a $10 donation was automatically added to their mobile phone bill.

Once the keyword has been sent to the short code (e.g., ‘HAITI’ to 90999), the donor receives a message back that asks her to confirm the donation with an OK or YES response. The donor confirms the donation and the next time the donor receives their mobile bill, the $10 donation will appear on the statement. There may be other messages sent to the donor, including opt-in marketing messages, etc.

Fees for Mobile Giving

The fees related to mobile fundraising can include one-time costs for set-up, recurring monthly costs which can also include other services like text message campaigns or extra keywords, and the actual transaction costs for the mobile donations.

There are some providers who charge fees as low as $99 and allow charitable organizations to begin mobile giving campaigns almost immediately.

Depending on your mobile giving volume and contractual agreement with a provider, you could be looking at a couple of thousand dollars or more each month as a cost base for a mobile giving initiative.

Service Providers

There are a couple of different players in the mobile giving chain. Trusted third parties sit between the mobile carriers and non profit fundraising organizations. Their job is to validate your organization so the mobile carrier knows it’s a true tax-exempt, non profit organization.

The trusted third party receives the donation payments from the mobile carrier and then pays the fundraising organization. Two trusted third party organizations in the US are the Mobile Giving Foundation and the mGive Foundation.

The charitable fundraising organization will work directly with what’s called an application service provider (ASP). ASPs provide your organization with short codes and keywords that can be used to facilitate the mobile giving initiative (e.g., text the word ‘HAITI’ to 90999).

They may also offer CRM, e-mail marketing, and other tools your organization can use to further connect with donors. The ASP is the primary point of contact for the non profit fundraising organization and will arrange the contract with the trusted third party.

What About Security?

The mobile donation process is fast and secure. As I said above, the amount of the mobile donation is set by the organization at either $5 or $10 and the number of charitable donations that can be made in any given month is typically capped at 5 or less. This limits the exposure and risk of the donor and the fundraising organization.

The non profit charity fundraising organization also has limited information about the donor; the only information provided to the organization is the donor’s mobile phone number. Donor’s can opt-out of further communications by replying to a fundraiser’s message with the words STOP or NO.

Keep in mind it could take 90 days or more before your charity receives the funds from donations. Currently, donations are filtered to the fundraising organization from the mobile carriers via one of two trusted third parties: The Mobile Giving Foundation and the mGive Foundation.

Mobile giving can be a great addition to your integrated marketing campaigns. More information about setting up an account and getting started is available at the links above.

Gene De Libero helps people and companies innovate, compete and succeed. Find out more at www.genedelibero.com.

Article Source: Fundraising Through Mobile Giving Initiatives

Just in case you need a cake walk refresher course, the object is to have your number called and be a lucky winner.  This can be accomplished in many ways, but I think the easiest is to write numbers on squares of paper, and tape them in a large (15 feet across) circle on the floor.  Make sure that you do not have more than 1 person per paper square.  Play music and encourage people to dance and go around the circle.  After a minute or so, stop the music, make sure everyone has found a number, and pick a corresponding number out of a box.  Call the number, and the person who is standing on that number wins a cake!  If you have many donations, you can call more than 1 number at a time.

Really, this couldn’t be more simple! Just ask for volunteers to make some goodies, and have this walk before a big game….or better yet, why not ask if it can be half time fun? Charge a dollar a ticket, and keep everyone dancing!