Desktop fundraising (and don't forget the 'e')

Howard Lake | 8 May 2006 | Blogs

Just as an aside, I hate having to use a prefixed ‘e’ to refer to electronic fundraising channels. But I think ‘efundraising’ is the most accepted term?…
In my first year at CAF back in 1996 I remember getting all excited about the possibility of developing a charity giving wallet. This would be a desktop application that would monitor all a donor’s gifts to their chosen charities, regardless of which debit, credit or CAF card they had used, or which giving method (GiftAid, payroll etc). They would have to load their wallet up with the information on their different charities and different giving methods to start with, but then it would track their future activity and offer reports to them from their desktop.
A bit like today’s online banking aggregators combined with a BBC news ticker. You wouldn’t have to visit a website as updates would automatically download.
We had a couple of big technology companies interested for a while. But those were the days of bandwidth agony, and nothing materialised.
But bandwidth is no longer the issue it was, so it leads me to ask what could be the new wave of desktop fundraising applications?
Ideas from the crazy to the mundane here please! Let’s have some fun with this. Of course, if you think you may have hit on a truly brilliant one you’ll be contacting that developer in Mumbai or that angel investor instead. Think of me 😉
 
 

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.