Sunday, March 23, 2014

Crowdfunding Site Guidelines for Charitable Fundraisers

U.S. charities, like many individuals and entities trying to raise funds for special projects, are embracing crowdfunding.

At the same time, many brand-name nonprofits are concerned that individuals unaffiliated with an organization may be the ones pitching a proposal on crowdfunding sites, depriving the charity of an opportunity to train volunteers about its mission and what it wants to tell donors.

Another issue for nonprofits is that they usually don’t know who contributes to them through crowdfunding sites, often because the sites won’t reveal names or will charge for the information. As a result, the charity is unable to build a relationship with donors to encourage them to give more.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported last week from the annual SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, that two players in the crowdfunding arena had proposed best practices they would ask sites to follow.

Miriam Kagan, a senior principal at Kimbia, an online fundraising outfit, and David Neff, a digital strategist at PricewaterhouseCoopers and co-founder of Lights. Camera. Help., a nonprofit group that encourages other nonprofits to use film and video to tell their stories, offered the following guidelines:

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