The year of the fundraising widget (or badge)?

Howard Lake | 8 February 2007 | Blogs

Online community fundraising is taking off with many providers offering widgets or badges that their users can post on their blog, website or social media page (e.g. MySpace, Friendster, FaceBook) to promote the sponsored event or fundraising appeal that they are running. These little snippets of code place small, automatically updated, branded updates of how much has been raised/donated to date, which cause is benefiting and, almost always, which online provider is handling the service.
ChipIn started it with their widget last year. ChipIn widgets are flash-based and contain rich media such as video and audio. As a result, supporters are now advertising their charity to their own community network of readers and website visitors who are thereby encouraged to donate or get involved. The fundraising charity’s message has become distributed, and sometimes on a massive scale, all with little or no input from (or indeed control by) the charity. ChipIn’s CEO Carnet Williams says of the widget and its powerful moderation and tracking tools: “Call it the first word of mouth fundraising tracking system online!”. You can read an interview with Williams, “the widget king”, by Steve Bridger on nfp 2.0.
Network for Good teamed up with Yahoo! for Good over the Christmas period to promote their widgets, which enable anyone to create and post a widget for any nonprofit that is listed on the US Guidestar site. “Got a cause that’s close to your heart?” asks Network for Good. “Let your friends and family know about it, and help raise necessary funds at the same time. Yahoo! — in partnership with Network for Good — has made it easy by allowing you to create your own Charity Badge. It takes about 5 minutes, and can include a personal message, photo, and even video. Post your badge on your blog or in the signature of your email.”
Online fundraising expert Beth Kanter won the Yahoo! prize for highest income from their charity badges. She raised $49,537 from 745 donations for the Sharing Foundation. Her prize? A matching gift for the foundation from Yahoo! Not bad for five minutes of cut and paste online.
Yahoo! for Good is still showcasing the top 10 performing charity badges as of 31 December 2006. Admittedly Beth Kanter was the runaway winner, with the second place winner raising a quarter of her total, $12,877 from 524 donors and third place raising $14,321 from 261 donors.
You can listen to Beth Kanter explain on the Grassroots Channel Podcast how she achieved her Yahoo! widget success. She also discusses her first personal online fundraising campaign using a ChipIn widget on her Beth’s Blog.
If you haven’t grasped the wide variety of widgets already available try exploring Widgetbox. Only two had a direct fundraising element last time I looked, but many others could certainly be applied effectively by charities.
Now fundraising widgets are on offer from a range of online fundraising companies including Kintera, Convio and Justgiving. But get ready for far more effective widgets that move away from effectively fancy banner ads to operating almost like mini applications.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.