Donorschoose.org is an American social networking site that connects US schools in need with individuals who want to help. Welcome to the future of fundraising and approaching donors.

Generation X and the Millennial Generation are ready and willing to donate. However, traditional solicitation, where all donors give to one cause, is not the best way to engage a generation accustomed to expressing individual preferences in many aspects of their lives. Furthermore, these generations respond better to individual and community generated causes. Donor pitches have to evolve as the donor mindset changes and as technology changes the way individuals communicate.

Imagine a social networking site, where teachers can post a project that requires funding. Donors browse all the projects, then decide which to donate and how much. Once a project is completed, teachers communicate the impact of donations. Donors can see results. A donor relationship is built. That’s exactly what happens through Donorchoose.org.

The model is simple:

Donorschoose.org utilizes Crowd Sourcing – a problem solving strategy that involves asking many individuals to leverage their collective resources and group powers to solve a problem. In lieu of placing the burden on Donorchoose.org to solicit donations and allocate to projects, crowd sources allows others to share in the responsibility, for example they can ask their friends to donate and promote worthy school needs.

Sounds too unrealistic? Why would donors want to surf the internet, join yet another social networking site and donate? The answer is that many individuals want to learn about causes and, enjoy donating through the simplicity of the internet.

Donorschoose.org is very real and successful. Since its start in 2002, it has given $32,554,970 USD to 2,019,696 students, from donors in 50 states. Everything about it is innovative and it incorporates other fundraising methods such as Cause Marketing into promoting itself.

For example, in 2006 it received a $1.6 million social innovation award from Amazon.com and Stanford University Business School. Instead of simply donating to projects of its choosing, Donorschoose.org followed its citizen philanthropy model. It gave some of the money to Crate & Barrel who distributed Donorschoose.org vouchers ranging from $25 to $100 to its customers. All customers had to do was just go to DonorsChoose.org and decide which project to give it to. The process was captivating and interesting to customers; it enhanced their satisfaction as well as customer experience. According to an article in Ethical Corporation ¹, “Crate & Barrel conducted a study of the gift voucher programme and found that 11% of the certificates had been redeemed at Donorschoose.org; response rates for conventional direct mail pieces typically hover around 2%. Furthermore, 75% of those who redeemed vouchers said they saw Crate & Barrel as community-minded, compared with 21% of those who did not receive vouchers. 6 months later, customers who redeemed vouchers had spent 16% more at Crate & Barrel than those without vouchers. Even those who received vouchers but didn’t redeem them had spent 5% more.”

The success has been such that other companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook are launching Donorschoose.org gift voucher programs.

This is a brilliant example of fundraising that incorporates Web 2.0 trends, crowd sourcing and cause marketing. It’s a model that can be integrated by other organizations. For example, imagine if donors could browse the United Way website and select causes to contribute to.