Give Forward

If you’re like me, you probably make a new year’s resolution every year, stick to it for about a month and then slack off or lose interest by the end of January or early February.

So I recently asked my friend who always sticks to his resolutions how he does it.   He said, “I make myself accountable to others.”  This makes perfect sense. Once you are accountable to others you have an obligation to others to stay on track.

One good way to make yourself accountable is to create a new year’s resolution “motivation fund” by asking your friends and family to donate on your behalf to a non-profit that is related to your resolution. For instance, let’s say you are trying to quit smoking. Ask your friends and family to help you raise $1500 for the American Lung Association or some similar non-profit.  Once they have each donated $50 or $100 to your fundraiser, you have an instant support group to help keep you motivated, not to mention an angry lynch mob that will jump on you the minute they find you are cheating.

New year’s is right around the corner and that means it’s time for new year’s resolutions.  Well, this year at GiveForward our new year’s resolution is to help more of our users reach their online fundraising goals.  That’s why we’ve decided to start a new section of our blog called the Fundraising Tip of the Week where, starting in January, we will provide a new fundraising tip or strategy each week to help you become a fundraising rock star.  That’s 52 tips in 52 weeks for the low, low price of FREE!! (1000% lower the newstand cover price)

And while the tips are scheduled to start in 2009, we’re even going to throw in an early sneak preview bonus tip coming out tomorrow…So now you get 53 weeks for the price of none.  Good Deal, right?

Anyway, until tomorrow, here’s wishing you all a grievance-free Festivus!

">/0.jpg" alt="YouTube Preview Image" />

Last Friday the most amazing thing happened to me.  For several months I had been training with my sister to run a half-marathon. It was my sister’s first half marathon and both of us decided to use the race as an opportunity to raise money for causes we cared about. My sister raised money for cancer research and I raised money to start a scholarship fund for my friend’s daughter, Clementine, whose mother had passed away earlier this year.

To create a little extra incentive for my friends and family to donate, I promised to run all 13.1 miles in a banana costume if they helped me reach my goal of $2000 by race day.  As it turns out, the day before the race I was stuck at $1987 — $13 short of my goal.  So I did what any normal, rational banana runner would do – I put on my banana costume and took to the streets of Los Angeles to hand out fliers asking for donations.

My goal in this endeavor was simply to raise the final $13.  But what happened instead was nothing short of amazing. I ran in the banana costume from Venice Beach to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and back.  While the great majority of people looked at me like I was crazy, one guy I had handed a flier to smiled at my ridiculousness and told me that I had “just made his day”.   Later that night I looked at my fundraising page to see if anyone had donated, and there was a $500 donation sitting in the account from a man named Eric Silver, whom I had never met.

To say the least, on that Friday afternoon Eric Silver made my day– no, that’s a huge understatement.  Eric Silver made my 2008. I don’t know who he is or why he decided to give so generously to a stranger, but if anyone reading this knows Eric Silver, please let him know that BananaMan says “thank you” from the bottom of my heart.

On December 6th, GiveForward hosted our first annual Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl to support three organizations that we think are working hard to prevent homelessness here in Chicago: StreetWise, Teen Living Programs, and the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation. read more…

Last night a few local ABC News affiliates picked up a short story about GiveForward.  Click here to see our debut performance!