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 be jump on you the minute they find you are cheating.

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…

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…

GiveForward’s “Run for a Reason” is two weeks away and we’re happy to say that Team GiveForward has raised over $5000 so far a number of different charities and causes. So far there are about 45 people signed up to run the race with us on the 26th and many of them have been busy raising money for their favorite charities.  For everyone who has been busy fundraising, great job and keep up the good work.

We’ll keep a running tally of our total raised and add more updates on the blog as the race approaches.

Thanks again for all your hard work!

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.

Every day at GiveForward we come up with new ways that we can help our users. We love bake sales, raffles, and car washes and consider them a right of passage. In addition to these tried and true fundraising methods, GiveForward can be a great tool for parents and students especially when it comes to raising larger amounts of money.

Through Give Forward, parents and students can use their online network of family, friends and colleagues to raise awareness and money for a particular cause. We make it easy for you to provide donors with plenty of information, photos, videos, and links. Generally, the more information a potential donor has about a cause, the greater the amount of money they are willing to give.

In addition, unlike many of the traditional fundraising methods, GiveForward makes it easy for donors to use their credit card, often the preferred method of payment for larger amounts of money. By posting your fundraiser on GiveForward, you open yourself up to receiving funds from strangers, which happens more often than you’d expect!

So next time you buy a cookie at a bake sale, remember check out the latest projects at GiveForward and give a small amount of yourself to a worthy cause.

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.

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Check out our video for Obama!

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