Easing the fundraising pressure

Rhode Island’s charitable community is now feeling the full influence of the Internet and actor Edward Norton’s successful 2009 New York City Marathon fundraising campaign for a Kenyan nature reserve.
The star of Primal Fear and The Incredible Hulk wanted to raise money for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust and with three colleagues created a social networking site to do it.
A year later, the site helped the ING New York City Marathon raise a record $33 million for charity, up from $24 million the previous year and $18.5 million in 2008. That caught the attention of race promoters around the country, including Eident Sports Marketing in Providence, which signed up with the website that Norton and colleagues created, called Crowdrise.com, for the inaugural Citizens Bank Pell Newport Bridge Run last year.
Encouraged by the results, this year Eident is creating Crowdrise pages for the Cox Providence Rhode Races, which kick off May 6 in the Capital City.
“We were impressed with what they did at the New York City Marathon and reached out to them,” said Eident Sports Marketing Vice President Matt Gray. “For us it’s a win-win. The charities get more money and exposure and our event is associated with raising more money.”
Crowdrise and other social media platforms for charitable giving, like Firstgiving.com, are dramatically changing how people raise and donate to charity, both here and across the country.
For years, companies and individuals have promoted their charitable causes on social networks like Twitter and Facebook and many large charities connected to events have sophisticated websites for collecting donations.
But dedicated charity sites like Crowdrise aim to make raising money for charity entertaining and addictive.
The sites not only provide Web pages for charities to collect contributions and show real-time tallies of donations from top givers, they also provide pages for individuals to promote and raise money for a slew of their favorite causes just as they might promote their favorite bands on Facebook. “The ease of use has engaged people who might not have ever done things in the charitable sphere,” Gray said about the feedback from the Newport Bridge Run. “People who are active on social media set goals for themselves and then blew them away. They never realized how easy it is to raise money on social media without having to make direct contact. Not having to ask people for money directly does take the pressure off.”
In addition to making it easier to raise money, Crowdrise in particular trades on the competitive side of fundraising with contests and a point system that rewards top fundraisers with prizes. The idea is to harness the obsessive energy often put towards collecting friends toward something with a social good.
Although it serves as a platform for charitable giving, Crowdrise is a for-profit company.
While fundraising for the Cox Rhode Races is promoted through Crowdrise, registration for the races themselves – a marathon, half-marathon and 5 kilometer – is done on active.com, which is a site for networking for public sports events across the country.
Taking the cue from Eident, Rhode Races sponsor Cox Communications, on top of promoting the races on Facebook and Twitter, has set up a Crowdrise page for employees running in the race. The page allows employees – approximately 100 run each year – to compete with each other and seek pledges for running in the race for causes other than Cox’s primary charity.
“We already use social media to raise awareness of community events and have Facebook and Twitter handles, but this is a way to supplement that for our employees,” said Cox spokeswoman Amy Quinn, who noted that the program was just for employees and the company is not using the platforms to solicit donations from customers. The Citizens Bank Newport Bridge Run has only been run once, so there is no way to compare fundraising totals, but Barbara Cottam executive vice president for Citizens Financial Group, said it was encouraging that the 2,000-runner race has 1,587 Facebook fans.
“We made a conscious effort to support the race through the Citizens Bank Facebook and Twitter pages through re-tweets, tagging, posts and sharing. Crowdrise was used as a way to show the funds that were raised for our five official charitable partners,” Cottam said in an e-mail.
“More than $20,000 was raised for these charities, including the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Center and Meeting Street, which are long-time Citizens partners,” she said. “Although the race ended more than three months ago, our fans are still active on these pages.”
Another area bank, The Washington Trust Co., is moving further into the social media realm with its “I Love Rhode Island” campaign and a Facebook page with odes to the state and charity announcements.
Washington Trust Senior Vice President for Marketing and Investor Relations Elizabeth Eckel said social media doesn’t replace the traditional methods companies use to reach the community or promote charitable works, but adds to them.
“It is reaching a different audience with a very targeted approach,” Eckel said. “I think the value it brings to nonprofits is reaching an audience they haven’t captured before, a little younger and more female audience. Some organizations have a lot of retirees and older people and it is important to try to reach younger donors and volunteers.” •

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