Causes Exchange

“Just 5 more donors to move into first place.  One hour to go!”

For those of you who were spared the frantic emails and Facebook messages, the Case Foundation-sponsored Giving Challenge was one of the first large-scale philanthropic competitions organized and conducted online (the social networking component of the Challenge was hosted on Causes and dubbed the “Causes Giving Challenge”).  On Monday, the Case Foundation released a report reflecting on and assessing its first-ever Challenge.

Unlike many fundraising campaigns, which simply ask individuals to make a one-time donation, the Causes Giving Challenge called upon everyone to directly participate in the community-building and fundraising effort.  Using Causes’ tool set, Facebook users could create causes in support of their favorite organizations.  These cause creators and their initial recruits were provided with tools for recruiting more friends, spreading awareness, initiating discussions and debates, and ultimately, fundraising.  The Challenge’s prizes rewarded causes that garnered the most unique donors on a daily and overall basis, stressing the value of broad participation.

Over the course of the 50-day Challenge, Causes enabled Facebook users to build over 4,000 distinct cause communities, mobilize hundreds of thousands of new members, and convince nearly 26,000 friends to donate to 750 nonprofit beneficiaries.  In total, these donors more than doubled the $250,000 in prize money provided by the Case Foundation by giving an additional $571,000 out of their own pockets.  Amazingly, all of this was done at a time when the Causes Application was a mere 6 months old and supported one-tenth of its current userbase.

The newly released report, researched and authored by Beth Kantor and Allison H. Fine, offers a number of interesting statistics from the first Challenge as well as recommendations for future challenges.   Be sure to check out the full report, but to get you started here are a few highlights:

•    Across the Challenge, the most popular causes (by number created) focused on “International” issues (26%) and “Health” issues (12%).
•    Running counter to Facebook’s traditional demographic niche, 54% of cause administrators were age 30 or older.
•    The average donation made to participating causes was $17.
•    There was a direct correlation between a cause administrator’s time spent on the cause and the cause’s number of donors.  The vast majority of administrators who secured over 150 unique donors spent more than 5 hours per week on their cause.
•    Cause administrators primarily fundraised from people with whom they already had a personal relationship, which illustrates the necessity of building a robust grassroots network if you want to fundraise on Facebook.
•    Perhaps due to the high level of flexibility and decentralization that the Challenge required, small nonprofits tended to fare better than large nonprofits.  In other words, the peer-to-peer nature of organizing on Causes seemed to level the playing field for smaller nonprofits.

Originally published on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009.
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