Growing with Givology

Givology is at a tipping point where in a contained environment with limited capital and resources, we are functioning well. However, demand for Givology to grow its platform and accept additional inbound solicitations from partners has exceeded the supply of capital. Though we have a large team of volunteers and a solid management core team, in order to reach the next level of growth, we need to start investing larger amounts of capital in internal technology to better organize our resources, external marketing and programmatic partnerships to broaden our reach to fund increasing demand. We understand that, as a technology-based non-profit, investment in online campaigns as they relate to offline activities is imperative. Here is an example of an online campaign we would run at a much larger scale, provided we had more capital to offer as incentives and to use for marketing: Our goal is to raise over $100,000 next year to support grassroots education projects and student scholarships. We hope to fund 200 students and 45 projects, register 2,000 donors, contact 5,000 Twitter and Facebook followers, expand to 30 chapters, and reach 50 field partners. More specifically, Givology will focus on: • Increasing partners and students served. The Givology team wishes to build Givology through the formation of new chapters in various cities and countries in the world. Initially, the team will take advantage of its geographic dispersion to draw in those in the professional and social networks of major cities in the United States, Europe, and China. Givology will recruit a Chapter Head based on each city location. He/she will coordinate with the Executive Team to build the organization in a federated manner. At the same time, Givology will further develop its chapter model with universities and high schools that have pre-existing relationships with the team. The logistics and management of educational facility-based chapters vs. city/regional chapters will be similar • Providing technology resources. Many of the students and villages Givology sponsors are not connected to the Internet. As donors can read in the student profiles, students expressed a desire to understand the world beyond their village. One of our long-term goals is to provide each school that we support with computers, digital cameras, and Internet connectivity. By providing these technological resources, students have access to better learning resources and have the opportunity to peer into a world beyond their village. Likewise, the provision of these resources enables students and schools to connect to Givology’s donor community. • Expanding our letter writing campaign. One of the most unique factors about Givology is that donors can directly message students and read their updates online regularly. Donors can form tangible relationships with the students, acting as mentors and sharing stories about one’s life. Simply by telling a student a little about himself, his family, or his life, the donor is opening his mind to new ideas and inspiration. A student is less likely to become disengaged from school and drop out if she knows that people all over the world are cheering and supporting her. Givology’s letter writing campaign asks for “one letter per child.” A physical letter adds immeasurable elements of compassion and connectivity between the writer and student recipient. • Creating more videos and multimedia. Givology is planning a series of visits to local partners to gather video footage and student interviews to provide our donor community with richer visual and audio updates. In addition, it is experimenting with holding webinars to connect schools in the developed and developing world to share ideas, aspirations, and challenges. • Expanding our channels of funding. In addition to online donations and fundraising, Givology is looking into launching a related social business, of which 100% of the profits are donated to support Givology sponsored students and projects. Sustainability is a core focus. In addition, Givology is actively working to start and expand chapters across the world to get more students and professionals engaged in our efforts. The growth of Givology chapters broadens our network of active supporters and provides Givology local community support, from fundraising and translation to advocacy and outreach. Givology also hosts events in order to increase marketing and fundraise for various students and projects. Ideas from events are generated through the executive team or individual chapters. Givology’s events thus far have ranged widely in scale. For instance, in August 2009, Givology held a launch event in New York City at Marquee and raised $12,300 in one night alone. On the other hand, chapters have been successful in implementing microfundraisers on their individual campuses. Givology plans to continue various channels of fundraising to diversify our sources of income. • Growing our supporters, users and donors base. With respect to our online platform, the target is for Givology to grow its student and project profiles at an increasing rate, keeping pace with the volume of dollar donations from its user / donor base. For the year 2010-2011, the goal is to reach $100,000 in funded student grants and projects and 2,000 donors / users in the Givology online community. Givology also intends to create a wider net of Giving Teams, in which many individuals are able to sign up together and donate. The goal is to have 50 giving teams registered by 2010 year end. • Improving our volunteer Program. Givology volunteers are indispensable assets to our work. As a 100% volunteer-driven organization, Givology depends on a network of global supporters to help us grow, forge new connections, and make an impact. Givology will streamline the volunteer program to better accommodate the schedules of a wide variety of people as well as the unique skill sets of people. Interested parties are asked to send their resumes as well as volunteer interest forms to Givology. Givology then assesses organizational needs as well as the potential volunteer’s interests and skills. The volunteer will then be placed in contact with a specific Givology Core Team Member that will work with the volunteer on the assigned project. Bi-weekly, Givology will send out a volunteer newsletter to update our volunteers on what Givology is working on and what projects need volunteer help. • Making our internal system more sophisticated. Givology is an online-based platform that will continue to innovate on design and functionality. The Givology team plans to increase the speed of transactions and reduce its dependency on fee-based processing service as we have recently obtained tax exemption status (i.e., Google, Paypal). By building blogging and messaging capabilities into the site, Givology intends to further advance such capabilities in the future through offering additional file uploading capacity, text messaging, and cross-linking with other online social networking sites.