As the first waves from the tsunami triggered by the massive earthquake in Chile have now reached U.S. soil, both the U.S. government and non-profit organizations like the American Red Cross have pledged their support and are standing by waiting to assist the Chilean government if asked.
For those looking for a loved one in one of the regions impacted by the disaster, the Red Cross asks you to submit inquiries through their Safe and Well List. Lots of updates on the quake and the potential after effects spreading along the Pacific Coast are available on Twitter by following @RedCross, @breakingnews, @cnn and others.
A video update from Tracy Reines of the American Red Cross’ International Response Operation Center is below.
Each year, the Phelophepa Train of Hope travels the length of South Africa for 37 weeks to provide critical medical care to 45,000 people who would otherwise never see a doctor. The train covers more than 9500 miles of railroad a year, serves 250 meals a day and issues 24,000 prescriptions. Last year, three high school students traveled to spend a week with the train, and produced a film about the train that has now been endorsed by leaders such as Reverend Desmond Tutu and recently won the Accolade Award at the 2010 Accolade Film Festival.
We interviewed two of the students (both named Arabella), who graciously took time out from their studies to share their story with us:
Q: Tell us a little bit about your story… How did you become involved with this project and what inspired you to make the Train of Hope Film?
A: (Arabella Weston-Smith) In April last year, my mom’s good friend from Africa told my mom about the Phelophepa Train. Our friend, Jenny Newman, knew that I was interested in making a film during the coming summer so she told us about the train and how to get in contact with the people who ran it. When I found out about the train, I thought it would be a really great idea to make a movie about it because not only did they need an updated fundraising movie, but I also just really wanted to help to create awareness for the train. So soon after my mom and I decided that we wanted to make a movie for the train, I asked my friend Arabella Watters to come with us, and my mom’s friend’s son Jason Vietch decided to come too. We thought the train was a great cause and we wanted to help it get the publicity it deserves and also help it raise the money for a second train.
Q: Tell us in your own words what the Train of Hope means to you and why it’s important?
A: (Arabella Weston-Smith) The train means a lot to me because after being with it first hand for a week, I really experienced something life changing. Being with the people who live in poverty and despair everyday, the people who rely on the train as their source for hope, made me look at life from a different, more humble, perspective. It was a shocking reality check for me as a privileged American teenager to really learn about a completely different side of the world. The train is really important because it gives everyone who comes full attention and helps to treat them in any way they can. Not only do they help the people with medical problems, but they also give emotional support and form bonds with all the people they help.
Q: What challenges did you face along your journey to raise money and awareness for the Phelophepa Train and how have you been able to overcome them?
A: (Arabella Weston-Smith) Well when we first started fundraising, we raised quite a lot of money pretty fast from our first round of emails to everyone we knew. Recently, because of the flim festival I think, we have had some more donations, but for a little bit we were struggling to raise money. In order to keep sending money to the train, Arabella and I started organizing bake sales at my school and garage sales with our “Laguna Blanca Phelophepa Club. ” We have kept a steady flow of the weekly sales coming in and therefore were able to overcome the slight drop in donations.
Q: You are well on your way to raising $10,000 to support your cause. Once you are able to raise the full $10,000, what will that money be able to provide those in need through the Phelophepa Train?
A: (Arabella Watters) The $10,000 we are hoping to raise is going to towards the Transnet’s project of building a second train in order to cover more ground and reach more people during the year.
Q: How have you been able to leverage social media and online donations to drive awareness and fundraising? How were you able to balance promoting through these different channels with such limited time and resources available?
A: (Arabella Watters) Our website has really been a huge facilitator in getting our message across, but Givezooks! has been the engine that has made our fund-raising possible. The accessibility of Givezooks! directly from the website, the widget, the vivid graphics and the ease it takes people to find the donations page has really been fundamental in getting people to donate. Additionally, we have also promoted more awareness by starting a club for the Phelophepa, promoting the train at our school. We also have a Facebook page with hundreds of friends, and are Tweeting too. I think the biggest way which we can promote both the film and the train is simply by word of mouth, online and offline, getting people to talk to others about our project to each other is what really gets the word out and helps our fundraising.
Q: What has been the most successful part of your fundraising campaign (i.e. social media campaigns, online donations, film screenings, promoting through schools or other organizations)?
A: (Arabella Watters) The majority of our donations have been collected online from our website, and handled by Givezooks!. People like the ease with which they can donate by credit card, check or even gift cards. For us the fact that all correspondence is automatically sent out and tracked is a huge help. Offline, I think the most successful campaign which Arabella and I have completed singularly was a garage sale which we had last weekend, selling our old clothes and books. We were able to make nearly $250; every dollar we earn goes further towards our ultimate goal. So far we have raised $5,000, half of our target.
Q: Do you have any advice you would like to share with other causes who would like to spread awareness and make a large impact?
A: (Arabella Weston-Smith) I think that it’s really important to just keep working, and most importantly, to not forget what you’re working towards. Although fundraising to make a large impact can seem intimidating, it all starts with ideas. Even the little things like weekly bake sales will add up. Spreading awareness through everyone you know in every country. I think that people should always remember that if they truly feel strongly about what they’re supporting, then they shouldn’t hesitate at all to work their hardest towards helping what they believe in.
Through their grassroots campaigns, online and off, the students have raised $5,000, exactly half their goal. With a little more help, they can raise enough money to get a second train up and running and help others in need of this critical assistance. Learn more about the cause and their film “Phelophepa, Train of Hope” below.
Nearly 5 years after Hurricane Katrina decimated the city of New Orleans, the city is getting a boost of hope from a project started by a teacher at George Washington Carver High School.
Fresh out of college, the now 24 year-old Brian Bordainick joined Teach for America to help make a difference for kids growing up in the inner-city. When he showed up for his first day at G.W. Carver High School, he didn’t see a school - just eight trailers in the parking lot of an abandoned school.
Shortly after starting at G.W. Carver, Bordainick was asked to step in as the school’s athletic director - and become the youngest athletic director in Louisiana history. Hoping to help reshape a program that was once great (the football program won multiple district championships and has an alumni roster including NFL-great Marshall Faulk), Bordainick faced many challenges as the school did not have resources to support the program.
But as Bordainick began to piece together the program, he learned of an NFL grant program for $200,000 in matching grants to rebuild football facilities and decided to pursue the grant to build a state of the art football field and track for the 9th ward community - called “The 9th Ward Field of Dreams”. Throughout this process, Bordainick eventually found an architecture firm to provide a budget a rendering of the project, which proved to be slightly more than he had anticipated - $1.85 million dollars.
Although told by many that this was an impossible dream - Bordainick pushed forward with the 9th ward project and over the last year has raised over $1 million dollars, has garnered support from Nike, and even scored a feature for The 9th Ward Field of Dreams on ESPN. With just a little more help, The 9th Ward Field of Dreams will be built.
“Together we can prove that against formidable odds, a few people crazy enough to believe in their own power to create change can overcome a seemingly impossible challenge.” - www.9thwardfieldofdreams.com
Learn more about the 9th Ward story in the videos below, or text “DREAM” to 50555 to make a donation and help The 9th Ward Field of Dreams reach its goal of $1.85 million and bring hope to the city of New Orleans.
The Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, founded by Bill and Victoria Strong to raise awareness and fund research for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), completed a grassroots social media campaign this week that landed them 6th place in Chase’s Community Giving challenge - along with a $100,000 grant to the foundation to continue the fight to cure SMA.
Despite a lack of national attention around SMA, the disease is the leading genetic killer of young children. Through a completely grassroots effort, the foundation managed to amass 50,000 votes from users on Facebook to propel them into the winner’s circle and take home the grant and put a national spotlight on SMA.
As the Strongs’ put it: “We’re just two parents in a house in Santa Barbara, California with two MacBook laptops caring for our terminally ill two-year-old daughter and fighting any way we can to save her life. But, in this Chase campaign the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation was much, much more than the three of us. It was also two parents in a house in New York. And three people in a house in Spain. And three people in a house in Ohio. And 25 people at a company in Mississippi. And one family in a house in Australia. And one person in a house in Texas. And five people in a house in Arizona. And two people in a house in the England. The list goes on and on. And together — collectively — UNITED — relentlessly — all of our amazing individual efforts and our enormous unwavering passion amassed into this wonderful grassroots effort.”
Bill and Victoria Strong are the parents of Gwendolyn Debard Strong, who received the terminal diagnosis of SMA in 2008, when she was only 6 months old. Shortly after the diagnosis, Bill and Victoria vowed to make a difference for others inflicted by the disease and started the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation.
You can read more about the Gwendolyn’s story here, and do your part to help the cause.
The New York Times reported today that President Obama is expected to sign a new measure that will make donations made to Haiti relief efforts tax deductible on 2009 tax returns. Under normal circumstances, donations are only deductible in the year in which they were made, but in an effort to increase charitable donations to aid the Haiti relief effort, the U.S. government will be allowing citizens to deduct donations made this year on their 2009 returns.
The measure includes donations made on cell phones (after millions of people donated $10 to the Red Cross by texting “Haiti” to 90999), as long as those who donated save their cell phone bill that shows a record of the donation. Additional stipulations of the measure state that donations must be made to a U.S. charity that is assisting Haiti, and that those donations must be made after January 11th and before March 1st of 2010.
This measure has not been put into effect yet, but President Obama is expected to sign off on it shortly. Want to help the cause? Text your donation or check out new Haiti aid campaigns from local charities like The Moyer Foundation, Bishop Garcia Diego High School and The American Red Cross of Santa Barbara, all of which are raising significant funds to help provide critical resources in Haiti.
There are so many amazing examples of young social entrepreneurs out there, and Maggie Doyne is no exception. At the age of 19, Maggie had recently graduated from high school and decided to take a trip around the world. After traveling 20,000 miles through four countries, Maggie stopped over in Nepal. During her stay, she met hundreds of orphan children lacking the basic necessities Maggie had growing up in the U.S.
Determined to make a difference for these little children, Maggie called her parents and told them she was staying in Nepal to open a home for the children. Using $5,000 of her own money made from babysitting over the years and additional funds she raised, Maggie built a three-story home that now houses 26 formerly-homeless orphans.
Now a few years later, Maggie’s efforts have enabled her to enroll more than 60 children in school and also have provided life-changing operations for children in need of serious medical attention. She also started the BlinkNow Foundation to inspire children in the U.S. to follow in her footsteps and help others around the world.
Maggie’s passion for helping others has not gone unnoticed. She won Cosmo Girl’s “Born to Lead Award” in 2008, took the $100,000 grand prize for the 2009 Do Something Awards and has been profiled by FastCompany. You can learn more about Maggie’s story here.
In the aftermath of the 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti yesterday, the Twitter community and chapters of the American Red Cross are stepping up to show their support and help raise money for relief. CNN reports that the quake was the most powerful to hit Haiti in the last century, and that ’serious loss of life’ is expected. As the story broke, live reports of what was happening on the ground came in from Twitter users in Haiti. Since then, an outpouring of support has emerged around the world from individuals and organizations utilizing Twitter to spread the word and raise money.
See what people are saying now on Twitter or donate to help the relief fund started by the American Red Cross of Santa Barbara County. See videos below to see the impact the earthquake has had and to learn more about what the American Red Cross is doing to help.
Nearly 10 years ago, a 4 year-old cancer patient named Alexhandra “Alex” Scott started a grassroots movement – and it all started with a simple lemonade stand to help her doctors raise money to cure all kids with cancer. For four years, Alex ran a lemonade stand in her community and raised a significant amount of money for the cause. In 2004, Alex set an improbable goal of raising $1 million, believing that if others like her could hold lemonade stands of their own in communities around the country, collectively they could reach the goal. That year, thousands of volunteers held lemonade stands around the country and miraculously reached Alex’s goal of $1 million raised. Shortly after the goal was reached, Alex lost her life to childhood cancer.
Though Alex did not get the opportunity to live a long life, her courage to make a difference continues to inspire over 100,000 people helping to fight for the cause, “one cup at a time”.
Starting with the movement Alex began in her own neighborhood, The Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation continues to grow virally. Nearly 35,000 people follow Alex’s Lemonade Stand on Twitter, volunteers use Meetup.com to organize groups of supporters to hold lemonade stands in their communities, and even complete strangers from all over the country have united to put on charity auctions to support the cause. This year, the foundation is getting support from Grammy-nominated recording artist, Jordin Sparks, who will perform at ALSF’s 4th Annual Lemon Ball, this weekend in Philadelphia.
To date, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation has raised over $30 million and funded over 100 research projects to find a cure. Watch the video below to learn more about Alex’s story.
Thanksgiving is great time to reach out to your organization’s supporters - without asking them for a donation! Rather than asking for a contribution, thank them for their faithful support all year, mention the great work your organization has accomplished as a direct result of their generosity, and wish them a Happy Turkey day!
In the weeks following Thanksgiving, people are often looking for Holiday service ideas for their family, school, church, or office. Make sure you have a some ready-made Holiday giving programs that are easy for them to join! Here are two ideas: Holiday Wish Lists and Grassroots Fundraisers. Grassroots Fundraisers can also be pitched to board members and other ardent supporters of your cause.
Wish Lists are perfect for this time of year. Fill yours with things that directly impact the people you support - blankets, medicine, groceries, books - the stuff that changes lives. Here are a few good examples: Storyteller’s Daily Needs , Dare to Dream Programs , Girls Inc’s Membership. Put a Holiday spin on your Wish List and email a solicitation with a Holiday message in the subject line - like ‘Make Christmas Special for a Special Child’ or something that ties in directly to your program.
In just a few minutes (really, a few minutes is all it takes…), board members and other passionate supporters of your organization can create their own grassroots fundraiser; they’ll tell the story of why your organization is important to them, upload a few pictures of themselves helping, publish, and then send an email to their friends and family inviting them to contribute - and they will because someone they care about asked them to. Done.
After the holidays is the perfect time to have a GIFT CARD DRIVE campaign. Make it fun - ask folks in your community if they received any gift cards to stores that aren’t on their A-list. If you haven’t already enabled accepting gift cards as donations, just go to your fundraiser ‘donation types’ and select ‘gift cards.’
According to Amazon.com, their account holders possess the following qualities:
45% have a household income over $75,000
26% have a household income over $100,000
52% have graduated college with a degree
47% have children in the household
In other words, your donors probably have an Amazon account. Furthermore, according to a 2008 study commissioned by Convio, these attributes map very well to their definition of a “Major Donor.”
So, your donors probably have an Amazon account. Other “Major Donors” (that you might not know about) have an Amazon account. Why not make it easy for them to donate to your organization using a platform that they already know and trust?
Now, givezooks! nonprofit customers can provide their donors with an option to give using the information stored in their Amazon accounts. In addition, Amazon is offering two incentives for givezooks! nonprofit customers to try out their payment processing services:
An low introductory rate (2.0% + 0.30/transaction) through January 15, 2010.
Nonprofits that accept donations through Amazon Payments may be featured on the Amazon Payments Non Profit Directory. This directory is accessed by millions of Amazon customers. In addition, nonprofits may be featured in monthly newsletters, blogs and webinars.
Nonprofits that use the givezooks! platform can now offer their donors a myriad of ways to donate including: credit card (one time and recurring), Amazon, Paypal, gift cards, checks, wire transfers, stock transfers, pledges and pledge payments. Because donors have so many options, the average donation to a givezooks! fundraiser is over $400 (or about 4 times the national average for online donations)! Below is an example of what donors experience when they give to a givezooks! fundraiser:
For more information and live examples, please check out the givezooks! website.
The Gwendolyn Strong Foundation
There are so many amazing examples of young social entrepreneurs out there, and Maggie Doyne is no exception. At the age of 19, Maggie had recently graduated from high school and decided to take a trip around the world. After traveling 20,000 miles through four countries, Maggie stopped over in Nepal. During her stay, she met hundreds of orphan children lacking the basic necessities Maggie had growing up in the U.S. 