The Case Foundation Publishes Assessment of America's Giving Challenge

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-06-22 13:54:00 UTC
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A few weeks ago, Epic Change's founder Stacey Monk provoked an interesting and important conversation about online contests. Are the growing number of online philanthropic competitions an essential piece of a new democratized philanthropic landscape or are they a distraction from more important work? Moreover, even if they are important, do they select against international participants?

While these questions remain, the Case Foundation has published a report today that has a huge amount to add to the conversation. Authored by social-media-for-nonprofit gurus Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, "The Giving Challenge: Assessment and Reflection Report" is a recap of America's Giving Challenge, a philanthropic competition sponsored by the Case Foundation, Parade Magazine, Global Giving, Causes on Facebook, and Network for Good. The competition took place in late 2008/early 2009, and had two components, one of which was exclusively through Causes on Facebook.

The Challenge was designed with the hopes of moving people from passive caring to action in the form of donating. The numbers of participants were pretty impressive: "America’s Giving Challenge in PARADE Magazine and on PARADE.com raised $1,193,024 from 46,044 donors for 2,482 causes. The Causes Giving Challenge on Facebook raised a total of $571,686 from 25,795 unique donors for 3,936 causes."

The report outlines both what worked and what would improve the experience. One of the interesting take aways in the "what would work better" section is that while it was the right idea to have a time restriction, the 50 day time period was too much of a burden and a shorter time period might have been better. This recommendation resonates with the notion that these contests are about getting people engaged, but shouldn't become a burden on the relationship between a nonprofit and its stakeholders.

Check out the full report here.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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