4 Online Fundraising Lessons from Bill Clinton

The Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) is a conference for university students that are creating projects, products, and organizations for social impact. Each student that attends makes a commitment to social action.

This past weekend, President Clinton invited us to present at CGI U to help these students raise funds for their commitment.

If you’re looking to get funding for your project, you can follow these tips too.

1. Start with a compelling story

The single most important asset you have in raising funds is your story. Stories are important because they bring you more awareness and in turn, more donations. Journalists, funders, and individuals are looking for great stories.

Here’s an example of a compelling story from The Adventure Project.

Storytelling compels you to take action. It creates emotion, which drives fundraising results.

In our Starter Guide to Nonprofit Video Storytelling, we talk about the types of plots that you can use to develop a compelling story.

• Challenge plot – This plot is about a protagonist succeeding against an enemy. Obstacles seem insurmountable, but they inspire us by appealing to our appreciation for perseverance and courage.
• Creativity plot – This plot is about someone making a mental breakthrough or solving a problem in a unique way. Creativity plots make us want to do something different and try new approaches to solve problems.
• Connection plot – This plot is about people who develop a connection across a divide—racial, class, ethnic, religious, demographic, etc. These stories make us want to help others. They are about our relationships with others

You can use these plots to craft your story.

2. Find your true believers

Come to terms that you can’t go it alone. One person can make a difference, but it takes a team of people to change the world. Find a founding team and advocates to support your cause.

One Girl Australia raised $50,000 the first year they ran Do it in a Dress, a global campaign to empower girls in Sierra Leone with education. The second year, the campaign raised over $270,000! They were able to do this by raising up 100 champions that served as fundraisers, event organizers, and true believers for the cause.

To find your true believers, create a list of the people in your network that have these characteristics:

• Responsive – They respond to your emails, Tweets, and posts. These people are engaged in what you do.
• Giving – They give their resources, whether it be time, money, or reputation.
• Sustained passion – Those that have a persistent interest for the cause. People that are irrationally passionate typically burn out very quickly.

Find these people, recruit them, and add them to a list that you can easily track.

3. Extend your reach (bloggers & press)

The more reach you have, the more likely you’ll be able to get more funding online. Focus on building relationships and getting into publications or blogs.

For SXSWCares, a crowdfunding campaign for disaster relief, we worked with the press to get featured in CNN, NYTimes, Forbes, AdAge, and more.

The basic steps to get press are:

• Identify – Find people that write about your space or have some type of connection. Try Muckrack and the publication’s own directories.
• Cultivate – Once you have a list of people to target, figure out what they are interested in, and start to build a dialogue with them. Be a resource and send them tips. Comment on their posts, and RT their Tweets.
• Pitch and update. Update them on your project if it hasn’t launched yet. Pitch them an interesting story if it has.

It’s wise to have some type of spreadsheet or tracking tool so you can track the conversation.

4. Create a fundraising site

A fundraising site is a website that allows you to tell your story and take donations. You can use CauseVox to create a beautiful fundraising site in minutes.

Tips in creating a fundraising optimized site:

• Personalize it – Studies have shown that you can get 14% more in donations just by having a site that has personality.
• Include a video. This allows for visual storytelling. 80% of the top-grossing campaigns on CauseVox used a video.
• Leverage personal fundraising pages. Ability to create for each team true believer to create a personal page on your fundraising site. This is a way for you to get more donations, and leverage their social networks for funding.
• Content fundraising. To use social media effectively, you’ll need to have great content. Allow you and your true believers to create content so it gets more shares, engagement, and SEO.

You can use these components to drive donations to your site.

Afternote: Hustle. 

The defining factor of success and failure that I’ve seen can be summarized into one characteristic: hustle. Hustle is living a challenge plot (see above). You’re faced with an insurmountable challenge, but you chip away at it, until there is a breakthrough. Hustle doesn’t care how long it takes. Hustle makes 1+1 = a gazillion.

Becky Straw from The Adventure Project couch surfed for a year to get her nonprofit off the ground. Chantelle Baxter sold her apartment to get funding for One Girl. Becky helped take charity: water from living room startup to the fundraising innovator it is today. Chantelle will raise over half a million dollars (or more) this year.

You need to preserver to get what you want. You can do the same thing that Becky and Chantelle have done. Don’t give up.

Additional Resources.

We’re launching a few guides in April that discuss these topics in more detail.

• Press for Online Fundraising
• The Definitive Guide to Online Fundraising
• Using Grants for Online Fundraising

Subscribe to our blog to get these guides for free.