We've got a profile on the Nonprofit Matrix. Yes, we submitted it. Yes we are seeing an apostrophe as a "?" at least in Chrome. We tried to update that but it did not seem to take. Regardless, we are now in the matrix and that is fun to say.

http://www.nonprofitmatrix.com/view_profile/?ID=1541

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Yesterday, Giving Impact got a mention on John Haydon's blog on "How do I get my Nonprofit’s Facebook fans to donate?"

There are great tips in the article, many of which are foundational ideas behind Giving Impact. There are a few in particular that John details that really connect with us including to express and communicate the impact clearly, publish a fundraising target goal, make it easy to share, and measure progress.  

All strike us as key best practices for social fundraising on Facebook or elsewhere.  All are criteria that are carefully considered for Giving Impact.

How does Giving Impact consider these?

• Campaign Description - When you create a campaign you provide a description that we weave into the publication and sharing of the campaign.  For example our when a supporter shares to Facebook the wall post includes your full campaign description giving you an opportunity to create a brief and compelling ask. 
• Fundraising Target - When creating a campaign we require that you enter a target goal.  This target is expressed in our campaign widget, donation pages, and is available through the Developer API to be used in custom presentations.
• Share - A core component of our offering and the context of John's mention of us in the article is our share features which give supporters the opportunity to promote your campaign to their social networks.
• Measure Progress - Our dashboard and campaign overview features are designed to provide meaningful data to assess your campaign progress.

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After a couple of our recent walkthroughs we were asked if we had a PDF document that highlights the key details and functionality of Giving Impact. Though our website addresses this, we appreciated folks wanting to to reach out to colleagues and send some information along or to have a digital/hard copy for reference. So we put together the following document.

Click here to download:

givingimpact_overview.pdf (196 KB)

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The Berkshire Historical Society @ Herman Melville's Arrowhead is an example application of the Giving Impact Developer API. The API is used to create a integrated and polished look for their fundraising campaign that matches the look and feel established in their recently redesigned website. They are using Giving Impact with their PayPal Standard account (through PayPal Express). The screens highlight the campaign's presentation on their home page, an internal detail page, the initial donation page, and the final thank you and share page.

Want to experience it first hand?  Visit http://berkshirehistory.org give it a try and make a donation.

       

Click here to download:

Berkshire_Historical_Society_H.zip (1231 KB)

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Given some recent post ideas we thought it best to give Giving Impact its own blog - blog.givingimpact.com.  We have moved related posts made to our Minds On Design Lab blog over and we are looking forward to sharing our Giving Impact updates in our new home.

We are also excited to use posterous as the engine to drive it.

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Yesterday, we updated givingimpact.com with a revised tour page to highlight our tools and features, and an updated pricing/signup page.

We have decided to put in place a new pricing approach. One that we feel meets our tool’s criteria of accessibility and value.

A Giving Impact account is now $30 per month plus $1 for each transaction that is over $20, with no transaction fee for donations under $20.

Our previous model included multiple plans with varying monthly fees and percentage transaction fees. Based on our continual assessment of our application’s performance and discussions about the product with individuals using it and/or exploring it, we felt a revision was appropriate.

Over the past six weeks since we first launched Giving Impact we have continued to iterate and release numerous new features and enhancements. In addition to the application improvements our iterative approach extends to our marketing efforts and business development as illustrated by this weeks changes and announcements.

Please let us know what you think about the changes we are making and please do not hesitate to contact us at support@givingimpact.com with any questions you might have.

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Giving Impact™ launched with a widget that can be added to an organization’s website and other web destinations. Two weeks ago we released a Facebook Application that publishes active campaigns to a Facebook page. Today we add a campaign Givlnk.

The Givlnk is a short url that links directly to the secure donation experience of a campaign. These 24 character links offer a new degree of flexibility that allows organizations to extend their campaign marketing by including this simple link in a variety of promotional media.

Share it wherever you can share a link:

• Include the link in an email blast directly or wrapped around a “Give” button.
• Include it in your email signature.
• Wrap the link around a “Give now” button on your website if the widget is not your style.
• Add it to print material
• Share it directly through your social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, Myspace, …)

Each campaign’s Givlnk is accessible from that campaign’s “Publishing Setup” tab.

The Givlnk is another tool to extend and promote your online fundraising through multiple channels, all of which are empowered by our thoughtful social media integration and campaign tracking features.

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We have a trio of new features that are being added to Giving Impact following up our launch last month. The first was announced last week regarding our Facebook application which is now available for Giving Impact subscribers. The second was made available yesterday offering donors the opportunity to tweet about the giving opportunity following their donation to compliment our Facebook sharing. The third update which will offer yet another tool for promoting and providing donation opportunities is coming soon.

As part of the Giving Impact donor experience, donors are encouraged to share the opportunity with their friends on Facebook and/or their followers on Twitter. When a donor clicks our “Tweet this” button from the donor share page he/she will be able to enter his/her twitter account information, modify the default tweet content if desirable, and post it.

Like our Facebook wall post, we feel it is important to provide some context to the tweet to provide followers with a little context about the campaign. The default tweet includes a call to action, the name of the campaign, a dynamically generated Givlnk that will link back to the source where the donor initiated his/her donation, and, if entered as part of the campaign settings, a hash tag. We also feel it is important to empower the donor to modify the message they want to share, so the tweet content is fully editable.

When creating/editing a campaign you can define a hash tag that would be included as part of the default tweet for that campaign. For those of you who are not familiar with hash tags, they are way to help relate tweets to each other and these tags can be used in Twitter searches to help see what people are saying about a particular topic offering further opportunities to learn and engage. Has tags also help to create trends which has the potential to broaden the audience of potential viewers and donors.

With our Facebook application and now Twitter integration additions, we are excited to see Giving Impact continue to grow into its role of a social media savvy, multi-channel online fundraising platform. Looking forward to sharing more about that role and additional developments soon.

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Following our initial release of Giving Impact, we have been continuing to work on a variety of new enhancements to our online donation toolset. One of those enhancements that we will be releasing shortly is a new Facebook application that provides organizations with the opportunity to automatically have their active Giving Impact campaigns published to the organization’s Facebook page.

The screen below showcases the feature. Once our application is installed which only takes a couple of minutes, every active campaign created in Giving Impact by an organization is shared. Information and metrics about the campaign are displayed along with a Give button providing fans and visitors the opportunity to donate directly. Clicking the Give button will launch a new window directly to your Giving Impact donation experience including our social network share features.

We are excited to provide an additional channel for online fundraising; however we are equally excited about the technology our Facebook application is utilizing. Giving Impact was built with an API designed to provide developers an opportunity to integrate and extend our tools. Our Facebook application uses our API to access campaign information and connect to our donation experience. As such, it is our first demonstration of Giving Impact’s flexibility and capability as a donation platform.

We are preparing to release this application shortly, so sign up for our mailing list at givingimpact.com, follow us on twitter@givingimpact, or fan our facebook page to receive updates.

Once released this application will be made available through Facebook’s Application Directory for use by Giving Impact members at no additional charge.

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