2009 ASSESSMENT & REFLECTION REPORTResearch by Beth Kanter and Allison H. Fine of Zoetica Table of Contents About the America’s Giving Challenge 2009 Assessment and Reflection Report……………………………………………………..3 About America’s Giving Challenge 2009……………………………….....3 Organizing Partners………………………………………………………….4 Research Team…………………………………………...…………….…...5 Opening Letter from the Research Team………….……………..6 America’s Giving Challenge 2009 Assessment and Reflection Report…..……………………………………………………………….7 Conversational Case Studies……………………………………..13 Introduction……………………………………………………………...…..13 Conversational Case Study: Darius Goes West………………………..14 Conversational Case Study: Students for a Free Tibet………………..17 Conversational Case Study: A Special Sauce for Contest Success....20 Conversational Case Study: Reflections………………………………...22 For more information please visit http://www.casefoundation.org/case-studies/giving-challenge-2009. 2 About the AGC 2009 Assessment and Reflection Report About America’s Giving Challenge 2009 America’s Giving Challenge, presented by the Case Foundation, Causes and PARADE Publications was a 30- day national online competition that enabled passionate individuals and nonprofit organizations to easily leverage their online and offline personal networks to increase awareness, attract new donors, and encourage people to get and stay involved with causes they care about. Participants in the Challenge competed for $245,000 in daily and overall awards funded by the Case Foundation, along with contributions from the Aspen Institute and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which were given to the causes that received the highest number of unique daily donations. The Challenge brought together thousands of people and encourage more than 105,000 donations which helped to raise $2.1 million for nonprofit causes. For more information, visit http://www.casefoundation.org/projects/giving- challenge For more information please visit http://www.casefoundation.org/case-studies/giving-challenge-2009. 3 Organizing Partners The Case Foundation The Case Foundation, created by Steve and Jean Case in 1997, invests in people and ideas that can change the world. The Foundation champions initiatives that connect people, increase giving, and catalyze civic action. For more information, visit http://www.casefoundation.org/ Causes Causes empowers anyone with a good idea or passion for change to impact the world. Using the platform, individuals mobilize their network of friends to grow lasting social and political movements. To date, over 115 million Facebook users have installed the application and created and joined more than 400,000 grassroots causes that benefit more than 78,000 nonprofit organizations. For more information, visit http://exchange.causes.com/ Parade PARADE Publications produces PARADE magazine, the most widely read magazine in America, which is distributed in more than 510 of the nation’s top newspapers. The magazine, which launched in 1941, now has a circulation of 32 million and a readership of 74 million. Each Sunday in PARADE and every day at Parade.com, the organization’s mission is to entertain, inspire and inform Americans about the issues they care most about and move them to action. For more information, visit http://www.parade.com/. In addition to the Case Foundation’s leading contribution towards cash awards, generous donations were also provided by: For more information please visit http://www.casefoundation.org/case-studies/giving-challenge-2009. 4 Research Team Allison Fine Allison Fine is a writer and activist seeking to understand and enhance the utilization of new social media tools for social change. Co-author of the recently published The Networked Nonprofit, Allison also authored the award- winning Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age. She is a Senior Fellow at Demos: A Network of Ideas and Action and writes her own blog, A. Fine Blog. She is the host of a monthly podcast for the Chronicle of Philanthropy called Social Good. For more information, visit http://www.allisonfine.com/ Beth Kanter Social media expert, author, and co-founder of Zoetica, Beth writes Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the most popular and longest running blogs for non-profits on the web. She is the co-author The Networked Nonprofit. She is the Visiting Scholar in Nonprofits and Social Media at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and in 2009 was named one of BusinessWeek's Voice of Innovation for Social Media. For more information, visit http://www.bethkanter.org/ Zoetica Zoetica provides communications services to non-profits and socially conscious companies. To help its clients affect social change, Zoetica provides communications consulting, training and strategy aimed at building relationships between clients and communities. As part of its mission, Zoetica’s founders donate 10 percent of the company’s proceeds to choice non-profits. For more information, visit http://zoeticamedia.com/ For more information please visit http://www.casefoundation.org/case-studies/giving-challenge-2009. 5 Opening Letter from the Research Team July 15, 2010 It is our pleasure to submit this final report to the Case Foundation assessing the 2009 America’s Giving Challenge. Over the course of two Challenges in three years, the Foundation and its partners at PARADE Publications and Causes have inspired many other corporations and foundations to launch contests of their own and enhanced the capacity of nonprofit organizations and their champions to utilize social media to raise funds, supporters and awareness. Nonprofit organizations, philanthropies of all types, government agencies and the corporate community will all find value in the best practices and lessons learned contained in this report and the related case studies. We believe the Case Foundation’s efforts as pioneers in charitable contests, challenges and open grant making have helped to catalyze the widespread proliferation of these approaches and associated best practices for promoting innovation and leveraging public participation. A number of survey respondents mentioned in the open-ended comments that Case Foundation played a significant leadership role in the prevalence of online giving contests. One respondent said, “Thanks so much for being the innovators of online giving contests. Because of your effort there [are] many more opportunities that rally non profit teams across the country. That's a win.” But it’s not just a win for the Case Foundation and its partners. The general contest trend has contributed to the industry’s adoption of online fundraising via social media. It’s a testimony to the entire nonprofit sector’s growth in social media adoption and capacity to effectively use these tools to raise money and awareness for social change work. Thank you to the contest participants who made both America’s Giving Challenges such successes. And thank you to the many individuals from multiple sectors who shared their insights and invested in online conversations about the report’s findings. Beth Kanter and Allison Fine Zoetica For more information please visit http://www.casefoundation.org/case-studies/giving-challenge-2009. 6 AGC 2009 Assessment & Reflection Report Research by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine of Zoetica The 2009 America’s Giving Challenge, presented by the Case Foundation, Causes “America’s Giving and PARADE Publications (with additional matching funds provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Aspen Institute) was a national online competition that Challenge was a 30-day enabled passionate individuals and nonprofit organizations to easily leverage their national competition that online and offline personal networks to increase awareness, attract new donors, and encourage people to get and stay involved with causes they care about. This encouraged people to was the second America’s Giving Challenge; the first Giving Challenge ran from leverage online and December 2007 through January 2008. Both Challenges were effective in helping the nonprofit sector become more skilled in its use of social media and inspiring offline social networks to other corporations and foundations to launch similar online contests. help recruit supporters.” The 2007 contest pioneered the million-dollar social media-driven philanthropic contest era. The 2009 contest rode the crest of the contest wave amidst other mega contests like the Chase Community Giving Contest and the Pepsi Refresh “In total, $1,990,805 was Project. There were two primary differences between the first and the second raised from individuals round of the Challenge. The first difference was a shortening of the total time of the contest from fifty to thirty days. The second was the change in the rules concerning during the 2009 donors. In the first round an individual could only donate to a Cause once. This was America’s Giving changed in the second round to allow donors to give as often as they wanted (limited to one donation per day), and some Champions did just that by asking their Challenge. More than donors to give on a daily or weekly basis. 82,000 individual donors In total, $1,990,805 was raised from individuals during the 2009 America’s Giving Challenge. More than 82,000 individual donors made 105,000 donations to 7,876 made 105,000 donations causes with an average gift of $17.73. By comparison, during the 2007 America’s to 7,876 causes with an Giving Challenge $1,764,710 was raised from almost 72,000 unique donors to 6,418 causes with an average gift of $24.50 overall with the use of the PARADE average gift of $17.73.” 1 Magazine site for giving and $17.30 on Facebook . During the first Giving Challenge, the public was able to participate and donate through Causes on Facebook, GlobalGiving and Network for Good. In an attempt to simplify the process, Causes.com was the sole portal for participation and donation for the 2009 America’s Giving Challenge, although a platform upgrade was made that allowed people to donate without having to be a member of Facebook. This change in platform, the economic downturn and the proliferation of online giving efforts all may have played a role in the difference in dollars raised and average gift size between the two challenges.