"Crowdfunding describes the collective cooperation, attention, and trust by people who network and pool their money together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations." What are your crowdfunding options? Fundraising via the interweb, P2P lending and to a lesser degree, microfinancing. Please remember that these aren't quick solutions to your problems, but they're a start. <disclaimer: depending on a peace corps post's interpretation of official policy, volunteers would be wise to understand their respective administration's stance before adopting any of these tools. the same applies to a non-profit's official policy, and i'm sure individuals need not be reminded to work within the law itself, i.e. fraud.>disclaimer: depending on a peace corps post's interpretation of official policy, volunteers would be wise to understand their respective administration's stance before adopting any of these tools. the same applies to a non-profit's official policy, and i'm sure individuals need not be reminded to work within the law itself, i.e. fraud.> Fundraising Fund raising can turn viral fairly quickly with a few e-mails and a descriptive message. A number of these tools not only do the heavy lifting for you, but make that process fun and appealing. Fundable.org takes the idea that the goal for the project is entirely funded or the money is returned to donors, from Lifehacker:
"Set up a Fundable action with a deadline - say, $1000 for a contribution to your favorite charity asking for 100 people to contribute $10 each. If 100 people don't contribute by the date you set, everyone gets their $10 back." With ChipIn, you can "quickly create a widget stating what you're collecting for, how much you want to raise, an end-date and how you'd like to receive your funds. You can then send a link via e-mail or post the ChipIn widget on your personal website, Facebook, MySpace and other accounts. From there you can start working the communities you've already been developing. DropCash is "a simple way to organize a fundraiser. Are you raising money for a charity, a trip overseas, a family gift for mom, or to pay off a surprise hosting bill? DropCash lets you set up a page so everyone can follow your progress as you near your goal." According Kottke.org, Andre Torrez "came up with the idea and did the coding and helped with the design, HTML, and a bit of IA." Change.org works along the same lines as the previous methods, though you have to be a registered non-profit to take advantage of their fundraising tool. With Change.org, you'll get a page for your project(s), set up credit card funding and allow people to monitor your growth as you move toward your goal. Once someone gives to your group, that person has the option of inviting everyone in their address book to join as well. Emily Chang sums up the idea of Change:
" transform social activism by serving as the central platform that connects like-minded people, whatever their interests, and enables them to exchange information, share ideas, and collectively act to address the issues they care about." Project Agape utilizes Facebook through their Causes application which "allows users to start a cause, grow their cause through viral invitations, and raise money from their network to support any registered non-profit in the US." Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, Plaxo and Facebook, works full time on Project Agape while working as Managing Partner of the Founders Fund. Wonderful things are sure to come from the Causes app as Mr. Parker never ceases to amaze. From Om Malik:
"We want people to be able to leverage the online groups (and causes) and also act upon them" says Joe Green, cofounder of Project Agape, which is still in stealth mode and won't fully launch for sometime. "We hope that the social causes come back into the real world." A number of tools such as FirstGiving.com and GiveMeaning.com exist but there isn't the time to go through them all. Of course PayPal and the many alternatives are also useful in fund raising. P2P Lending Projects in need of a faster cash injection have the option of peer-to-peer funding for quickly raising larger amounts than the previous fundraising methods. This route of financing comes from a large number of donors pooling small amounts of money while lending at competitive rates, entirely sidestepping the banks. This method does require you to pay back the entire loan. Lendingclub, which is one of the more popular applications on Facebook, has already passed $100,000 in loans to its users. Prosper is based on a similar business model and has an application on Facebook, making both of these tools a speedy and viral method for funding. Another website based on this model, Zopa, lacks an application on Facebook. Microcredit Currently, I'm unaware of any web tools that allow for microlending to volunteers and organizations specifically though Kiva, which works through partnerships with existing microfinance institutions, is a fantastic tool for aiding established micro creditors. For more information on microfinancing and the Grameen model of lending, check out the Grameen Foundation's website. WorldChanging also has a great write-up on microfinance, Kiva and Grameen lending.