Facts and Figures with Go Fund Me

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By JohnPosted In: Charity in BusinessTagged:

As a site that looks at charitable causes and charitable giving, it’s interesting to see an article about Go Fund Me. We all know about Go Fund Me, the site where anyone can set up an account and ask for money for just about anything and anyone. How have they changed the face of fundraising? And who uses the site?

According to this article from CBS News, Go Fund Me says that “10,000 new campaigns are created every day – about one every eight seconds.”  Over $9 billion dollars has been raised on the site, and a third of all pages are for medical expenses.

The Go Fund Me platform has a few very interesting pieces to it. First of all, “For years, GoFundMe collected five percent of every donation, plus three percent for credit card fees. But in 2017, CEO Solomon made a change that was both different and risky: Instead of taking a cut of every donation, GoFundMe now asks every donor for a voluntary tip. ” And this has actually worked.

In addition, you would assume that a lot of fraud would take place on the site. But they have many people working just to weed out fraud and have found that only 1/10th of 1% of their campaigns have misuse associated with them.

It’s certainly an interesting platform and the article is one worth reading.

Humble Bundle Offering Great Charity Options

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By JohnPosted In: Charity in Business

If you love games, then you’ll want to check out the Humble Store where 10% of all profits go to support charities. This means that buying games helps out charities. So far, the company has donated more than $3 million since it launched in November of 2013. Until today, however, you were only able to select a few charities. Humble Bundle just announced a new “choose your own charity” choice that will now let you direct your money to thousands of different organizations in the US and the UK.

To select your own charity, you simply go to the Humble Store and click “select a new one” in the charity window. You can then browse the list of available charities. They have many options like Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace, and the American Red Cross.

As co-founder of Humble Bundle, John Graham, explained “There are a wealth of amazing charities out there. We don’t ever like saying no to great causes but in curating things ourselves, we find ourselves mainly picking larger nonprofits that have awesome established global brands that we think will resonate with our community as a whole. With this new feature, if parts of our community want to give aid to homeless shelters in San Francisco and others wish to provide fresh drinking water to Ethiopia, they can choose as they please.”

 

Ed Sayres Giving Back

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By JohnPosted In: Charity in BusinessTagged: , , ,

raking-leavesToday is National Philanthropy Day. It is a day set aside by the Association of Fundraising Professionals to recognize the incredible contributions individuals make to the philanthropic community. In line with this, we thus today take the opportunity to recognize the contributions of two businessmen who have taken time to give back to the community.

Not-for-profit businessman Ed Sayres was recently appointed as Chairman and CEO of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council. Boasting four decades of experience in the animal welfare industry, Sayres – who is also Principal of Sayres Consulting (a nonprofit management consulting and philanthropic advisory firm) – is passionate about responsible pet ownership, pet sale bans and more. Indeed, it was Sayres who, in his work at the ASPCA, introduced and developed the no-kill animal shelter model he implemented while working at the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SF/SPCA). In terms of his business acumen, Sayres can be proud of the fact that when most nonprofits faced major challenges to keep afloat in the recession, the ASPCA still received substantial donor support, while expanding.

Moving on to something quite different but still with the same attitude of giving back, a week-and-a-half ago churchgoers skipped their services to help out in the neighborhood. Northview Christian Church members raked leaves to help those not up to the task. Around 280 volunteers last Sunday participated in this endeavor, working on 20 projects as a way of enhancing the neighborhood. As Pastor Dave Choutka pointed out, it is a way to “love our community.”

There are many ways that businessmen, students, the unemployed and indeed anyone can get involved in giving back to the community.

Scientific Approach to Dealing with Hunger

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By JohnPosted In: Charity in BusinessTagged: , , , , ,

hungerIn the spirit of using his business acumen in his role as philanthropist, John Arnold gave a generous donation to setting up the Houston Food Bank.  Through the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Houston Food Bank received $10m grant so the facility could actually be constructed.  However, it was given with the understanding that officials there consider ways of using its system to tackle larger issues of poverty, unemployment and chronic health.  In addition, Arnold found it interesting that data from the food bank showed that most of its end users were actually not derelict and had places to live.  However, in times of fiscal difficulties, they chose to pay rent rather than use the money for food, resulting in hunger.  Thus the hunger in these cases was actually caused by unemployment – an issue Arnold found the Houston Food Bank was failing to address.

Today, when John Arnold donates funds, he does so through a “scientific” approach.  This makes sense given his success as a trader at Enron and then later, as founder of Centaurus. Maura Daly, Chief Development Officer of Feeding America, is impressed with the way John Arnold is using the scientific approach developed as a trader, to donate monies.  He says, “the great thing about the Arnolds is that they are not thinking small.  Most billionaires don’t have the luxury of putting forty years into solving a problem.”

John Arnold pushed CEO and President of the Houston Food Bank, Brian Greene to try to figure out a way to help the poor access other essential services to ultimately prevent the need for the food.  For example, perhaps job-training could be given?  Or, a way of getting healthier like programs to manage Type 2 Diabetes to stop individuals ending up with chronic health problems and not being able to work thus leading to inadequate financial resources with which to buy food.  In other words, Arnold works on a systematic approach to philanthropy.

The Giving Library

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By JohnPosted In: Charity in BusinessTagged: , ,

library-1In August 2012, together with his wife Linda, John Arnold launched The Giving Library.  This $4m project is a collection of videos featuring the works of 250 charities.  The idea is that philanthropists can use the data from the Library to facilitate learning what they need to know about the nonprofits.  The Giving Library was launched because when Linda and John Arnold started their philanthropic journey, they found it challenging to figure out which nonprofits were most worthy and in need of support.  Spending so much time on searches and meeting with executive directors is not necessarily the most efficient use of everyone’s time so once they had done it, they developed this resource to save others’ time.

Until the Giving Library was established, most philanthropists were only able to access details from a few worthy organizations.  Thus foundation executive directors had to spend way too much time on fundraising.  As Laura Arnold explained, “we saw a need to create more efficiency in the system to have a more organized vision of receiving and processing information on nonprofits.” John added, “we started to do our own research, trying to go to websites to read about nonprofits. We realized we got much more insight by speaking to the founder. If you have significant resources, it’s worth their time to sit down and meet a particular funder but that’s not always practical for the majority of funder or nonprofits.”

The Arnolds thus took it upon themselves to film the work of worthy organizations and made the short documentaries Internet accessible so that these people could tell their stories and reach a much larger audience. They also sent letters to nonprofits – any organization that they had received confirmation was a legitimate nonprofit.  They then began working with some of these places to help them improve their scripts.  This is an ongoing project which has already helped save a lot of time of many willing philanthropists.

Stars Take Off Their Shoes for Soles4Souls

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By JohnPosted In: Charity in BusinessTagged: , , , , ,

Shoes appear to be the hot charity item at the moment. Certainly, if you’re going to give to charity, you might as well end up looking your best as you do so.  That’s the idea behind Soles4Souls, the international shoe charity that has just announced an exciting new line-up of amazing celebrities who are taking off their shoes for charity.

Celebrities like Taylor Swift, Ryan Seacrest, Jimmy Fallon, Chase Crawford and others are offering their shoes for auction. Soles4Souls, a Nashville-based charity, collects shoes from all over the world and distributes them free of charge to people in need.  Since 2005, they have given away over 11 million pairs of new and gently used shoes in over 125 countries.

With their latest auction, they will be auctioning off the shoes of famous people and also auctioning four destination trips. The auction will be hosted at CharityBuzz.com.

As Kevin Goughary, CEO of Soles4Souls, said “For most celebrities, the shoes they wear are an important reflection of their personality and fashion taste. But for millions of adults and children around the world, their shoes are a necessity to protect them from life-threatening diseases like hook worm. This auction is a perfect example of one person’s shoes being able to make a real world difference is someone else’s life.”

This auction is a brilliant way for celebrities to get involved in a great cause – and for the charity to assist those who need the most basic of necessities – like shoes.

New Platform Newsflash Helping Charities

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By JohnPosted In: Charity in BusinessTagged: , , ,

Now, there is another, creative way to donate to charities. Dreamkind has just announced that is it launching a new platform that is designed to offer current events in a fun and engaging way.  Every weekday, players will be competing against each other to answer timely questions. The questions will appear at noon EST from Monday through Friday.

Every day, players will pick a charity and they will be playing for this place; Dreamkind will also make donations to the charities designated by the top performing players.  As Dreamkind President Jay Schiffman explained in a press release, “In addition to being a fun trivia game, Newsflash also provides players with a fast and fresh new way to stay on top of the news. If it’s a trending topic, it will be in Newsflash. Each day we feature questions on the latest stories from the worlds of politics, entertainment, sports, business, technology, and national and world news.”

While playing the game each day, players will also develop their knowledge level and skills. Every question in the game will be accompanied by a brief news story, allowing players to stay informed while they have fun and raise money for charities.

Take a look at Newsflash today. http://dreamkind.com/newsflash.

Dunkin’ Donuts Donates Coffee for Good Causes

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By M. MarksPosted In: Charity in Business

Certainly, people who are hungry need food – but sometimes they can also use the pick-me-up of a great cup of coffee as well. That’s what Dunkin’ Donuts is assuming, anyway, as it gives away thousands of cups of coffee for charity.

Dunkin’ Donuts just recently donated 500 pounds of coffee, which is the equivalent of 16,000 cups, to the Food Bank of Central New York and to the Food Bank of Southern Tier. They started an initiative for the 2011-2012 sports season that they would donate 1 pound of coffee to a food bank for every goal that was scored by The Syracuse Crunch, the Syracuse Silver Knights and the Cornell men’s hockey team this season. And clearly they’ve stuck by their word.

Now, Dunkin’ Donuts is also setting its sights on donating an addition pound of coffee to the Food Bank of Central New York for every run that the Syracuse Chiefs score during the home games that they participate in this season.

In another Dunkin’ Donuts move, but one that isn’t related to coffee, they are also offering support to Hillside Children’s Center by donating $1000 to Hillside as part of the “Homers for Hillside” program.

How Turn2us Works

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By JohnPosted In: Charity in BusinessTagged:

Turn2us is a great organization for charities that don’t know where to begin when it comes to fundraising. It sets out to facilitate and assist the charities’ access the financial resources that are available to them.  Turn2us offers a free website that was designed to help in exactly this realm: to “find appropriate sources of financial support, quickly and easily, based on your particular needs and circumstances.”

Green Fingers

Currently, one of the charities’ Turn2us is working to assist is the Gardening for Disabled Trust which is “an entirely voluntary organization offering grants to people with physical or mental disabilities living anywhere in the UK to help them to continue to garden.”  One individual – known here as Barry – wrote a thank you letter to the charitable organization, detailing his experiences, supplementing his words with photos of his garden.  He wrote, “Thank you, for providing the means to create a garden which is available to the wheelchair.  We have had so much joy from planning the plants to grow, gardening and watching everything happening in the new beds.  It has overwhelmed us and we are really thrilled.”  For most of his life, Barry has been dealing with the “side effects of n inoperable brain tumor.”

The fact that Turn2us is able to make things easier for such worthy organizations, means that these charities are able to focus more on the work at hand – helping these needy individuals get a better life, as in the case of Barry and many others.