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!

Our friend, Co-Op Images, is a non-profit in Chicago that focuses on bringing arts education to underprivileged youth.

Their programs range from glass blowing classes, to creating an on-air kids’ cooking show, to providing gallery space and professional exhibits for Chicago’s young artists.

Like so many non-profits, they struggle each year to come up with the funds they need to manage and implement new projects.

We hope that you will take a look at the three fundraisers they are doing, and choose the one that best fits your giving interests.  We’re sure you’ll find one of them to be a good fit!

Click here to see the details:

Chi-Town Chefs- a youth produced cooking show

So Fresh Printing- a youth run t-shirt business to support art education

Art! Art! Art!- supplies for youth arts programs

We would like to invite all GiveForward users to tune in OR join us tonight at Raven (Clark and Belden) to watch Ariana, our director of marketing, as she gets made over on Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style on Bravo TV.  The show airs tonight at 9pm CST.

For those of you able to make it to our Launch Party in August, you just might catch a glimpse of yourself during the final scene, where they do a brief follow-up on Ariana.

Tell us what you think of the show!

My sweet mom sent me one of those feel good emails today.  Don’t tell her, but usually I erase them without reading them…I’m a total sap and tear at anything that involves random acts of kindness, animals, or dying wishes.

But something told me today’s email would be valuable, so I read it.  The email was a short story about a passenger who boarded a plane and was suddenly surrounded by U.S. soldiers heading off to Iraq.  One soldier asked another if he was going to pay $5 for the on flight meal, and he responded that he thought that was too expensive for a sack lunch.  The passenger then took $50 to the flight attendant to buy the soldiers’ lunches.  This one act inspired three other passengers to contribute $25 to the lunch (which was given to the soldiers) and left the original Good Samaritan with a first-class lunch and a round of applause from the rest of the passengers.

When I read this, I realized that most people don’t ever get to understand what a matching gift really means.  (That is, in fact, what the Good Samaritan experienced). read more…

I’m off to give a presentation about young donors at the Youth Communication Chicago Board meeting but before I head out, I wanted to share with you all the great news!

Individual fundraisers on GiveForward.org have raised $21,455 as of this afternoon.  That is $21,000 that is going to amazing causes like stem cell research, animal rescue clinics, canvassing for presidential candidates, and more. read more…

Hi All,

Hopefully, most of you who have donated on the site have noticed that when you checkout there is an option to give an additional $1 to the Issue of the Month.  While we grow GiveForward’s community, we decided that it makes more sense to change it to the Cause of the Quarter, meaning we will fundraiser for the same cause for three months before sending our 3 selected charities the money raised.

We think this will increase the likelihood of giving more significant gifts and will give our users more time to become familiar with the selected organizations.

If you haven’t already, we hope you will take a look at this quarter’s cause, Math and Science Education in Chicago Public Schools.

Dear Friends,

Jane Chen, a new friend of GiveForward.org, has a social venture called Embrace that aims to provide $25 incubators to the more than 20 million premature babies born each year around the globe that do not have access to traditional $20K incubators.

Embrace is one of the organizations competing in American Express’ Members Project that will award $1.5 million to the organization that receives the most votes.

If you are an American Express cardholder, please take 2 minutes to vote for Embrace.

read more…

GiveForward.org is officially one month into our soft launch, and I must say we’re off to a pretty fantastic start!

So far, we have raised $5,600 on the site and have had nearly 3,000 visitors.  For a new site, with zero marketing budget, that’s pretty darn good!

While we’d love to give ourselves a pat on the back, the congratulations really goes to all of you who have been working so hard to promote your fundraisers.  Thanks to your work, $5,600 is going to great causes that would have never received that money if it weren’t for your efforts. read more…

Check out our video for Obama!

read more…