Beth KanterLast night, I received an email from Beth Kanter requesting that I put out a final word about the charity badge on America’s Giving Challenge that was created in support of The Sharing Foundation.
The deadline for donating is 3pm EST on January 31st. Beth sits on the board of The Sharing Foundation and has done a tremendous job, along with Michele Martin, in recruiting donations. As one of the top four charity badges created for an international cause, The Sharing Foundation is likely to receive a $50,000 grant from The Case Foundation and Parade Magazine.
Assuming The Sharing Foundation wins on Thursday, Beth Kanter will add another victory to her list of successful peer-to-peer fundraising contests. In December 2006, she won a $49,537 matching grant from Yahoo during a competition organized by NetworkforGood.
Why do I mention all this?
1) So that readers can
join a winning team in the final days of the contest. Beth is asking for donations as small as $10;
2) To draw attention to Beth’s extraordinary ability to leverage social media for online fundraising.
Currently, I am building an automated wizard that will assist in planning and implementing a peer-to-peer social change campaign. The wizard will recommend platforms to use and best practices for spreading the campaign through social networks. The wizard will also feature an after-action survey covering the tools used and the strategies implemented. This information will feed back into the system that recommends platforms and best practices.
If the Social Actions automated wizard helps produce peer-to-peer social change campaigns that compare to the ones that Beth has created in the past year, then I will have accomplished something significant.
My goal is to create a system that will walk even the most technologically challenged through the process of launching a successful social change campaign online. I have so many friends and family who would love to use the internet to rally support for a good cause – but they lack the knowledge base and social networking skills of Beth Kanter.
That’s why I’m asking people to help me clone this amazing woman.
Here’s the request:
If you want to help me assemble the knowledge-base required to build the system I’m describing, please leave a comment below or contact me directly. I have created a Backpack-It group to work on this collaborative project. I’m looking for technology consultants, online marketing gurus, and representatives from nonprofits, foundations, and independent projects. Thank you in advance for your interest and support. And thanks for making a donation to The Sharing Foundation!
