“Online Fundraising: Ups and Downs”

Trying to raise money for the Pan-Mass Challenge, primarily via this web site, has been an interesting experiment. Over-all, I am disappointed with the results. I now have to resort to more analog methods to finish off even the minimal requirement of $2500.

I have raised about 76% of what I needed. That's not so bad, except very little of that money is really because of my "online fundraising efforts." $1170 came from just six of my friends. I communicate with all of those friends "mostly online," but I don't believe they'd have given more or less if I had sent them letters and SASE's in regular mail.

Chelsea-Groton Savings Bank, where Corinne works, is chipping in $100. Even better, though, is that her coworkers have raised a few hundred dollars. One raised over $100 at her "parent support group," which she described as a "room full of drunk moms with a little money."

Jim Roepcke posted about my efforts on MetaFilter. That sent a couple hundred people to my fundraising page, but not a single one of them made a donation (and there's no minimum!). You'll notice also that most of the comments on that metafilter page are pretty negative, as if there's something wrong with making a donation when an "event" is involved. My response: the "event" is the only reason we're able to raise so much money.

Also, the PMC is not a challenge. It's not a "give me $1 per mile" event, or anything like that. Why should you pay the Jimmy Fund for me to ride my bike?!? No, it's a "please donate to the Jimmy Fund, which I'm trying to raise money for." The bike ride is mainly to raise awareness of the fund, get some media coverage, etc. (Helps provide something specific for us "fund raisers" to focus on, too.)

I honestly thought this would be a successful way to passively (non-intrusively) raise money for a good cause (kids and cancer), but it just hasn't worked out. Lesson learned. Next year I'll keep it much more low-key here on [tw], and concentrate on old-fashioned fundraising.

Still have to come up with about $550, though. Pronto.