If you are a small (or not so small) non-profit organization, looking for new fundraising ideas through the internet \u2013 this article is for you. Web can be a very lucrative ground for fundraising. The organizational costs are low, and you can reach people across geographical borders.<\/p>\n
There are many ways to collect money for your generous purposes on the internet, besides the traditional donation form on your website. <\/span>What if I tell you there is a way to easily collect money through the internet without asking people for hard cash? A fundraising campaign that runs on good spirit and a little bit of technology. Easy to set up, maintain, track and\u2026 free. <\/span>And no, it\u2019s not a scheme of any sort. Not even a big secret \u2013 I\u2019ve found mentions of it around the internet. I\u2019ll just go into a little more detail here.<\/p>\n So what are the ingredients and how does it work? <\/p>\n Clicks on the internet are worth money. If they wouldn\u2019t \u2013 we would not be invaded with banners and spam. But not all of it is evil. Small and big businesses are struggling to get their message in front of potential buyers, and they are ready to pay for it. Last time you were \u201cgoogling\u201d on the internet, looking for some product, you probably noticed the non-intrusive ads on the top and on the right side of the search results. Those ads are relevant to your search. It\u2019s just a way for companies to appear within the first pages of that search.<\/p>\n It\u2019s such a big business for Google, that they make now much more money on selling advertising than their search engine. Google has extended the idea of contextual advertising to the whole internet \u2013 everybody can register and start placing Google ads on their own website, making some profit when people click on those ads. This model is called AdSense.<\/p>\n You can find more details on AdSense on Google\u2019s official website: https:\/\/www.google.com\/adsense\/<\/a> . <\/span>But all you have to know is that it\u2019s free to set up and the more visitors you get to your website \u2013 the more money you can make. Google takes care of the rest, like matching the ads with your website content.<\/p>\n The key is to generate enough clicks on those ads, usually by having a very popular content. So how can it help a non-profit? How can you bring more users to your website?<\/p>\n We, at Theoworlds.com, came to this idea by accident. In order to promote our brand we developed a set of highly interactive ecards for Halloween<\/a>, Christmas<\/a> and Valentine\u2019s Day<\/a>. <\/p>\n Ecards are a perfect viral marketing tool for the internet. We took extra time to create original ecards, investing a lot of time in it and, at the end, it paid off. We got a lot of attention and even got mentioned on CNN Headline PRIME news<\/a>. At this point, as a way to cover our traffic expenses, we decided to give AdSense a try. The results proved to be very good for such a small website. <\/p>\n For our Valentine\u2019s Day campaign we decided to share a part of our modest AdSense income with The Salvation Army. And that\u2019s when I started to think about how this model could be used for fundraising.<\/p>\n Events like Christmas, naturally, generate a huge amount of traffic for Christmas-related ecards. People exchange them with each other, across geographical borders, spreading the spirit of holidays. It\u2019s also a good time for non-profit organization to appeal to people\u2019s best qualities. All you have to ask them is to keep sending those ecards to their friends and family and anybody they know, because every single click generates a small amount of money for your organization. This will make them even more willing to do so. It\u2019s fundraising driven by good spirit (do not forget the technology). <\/p>\n Setting such campaign takes a couple of easy steps:<\/p>\n Besides the cash generated from AdSense campaign, you will also build awareness of your organization, and this can bring more donors through traditional channels. So it\u2019s a win\/win situation. A free promotion that actually generates money, while asking people nothing more than greeting each other during the holidays.<\/p>\n\n