Crowdsource + Fundraise = Crowdrise
This is a post by Transcapitalist co-founder and contributor Anita Gardeva.
Unsurprisingly, one of my most embarrassing moments took place my freshman year of high school. My dad had motivated me to run a fundraising campaign at school for the Heifer Foundation and I was full of enthusiasm and ideas about fun dances and bake sales that would help our class raise enough money to donate the exciting Gift Ark to a poor African village of our choice. (The Gift Ark donates $5,000 worth of livestock to a poor village so that the villagers can breed, sell, eat, milk, shear, or otherwise use it productively.) 
As it turns out, in order to start my fundraising campaign I had to present my idea to the Student Council—a body of older, much cooler, juniors and seniors. Needless to say, after my undecipherable mumbling about dancing and buying cows and chickens, the perplexed student council body did not vote to approve my campaign and my idea wafted away.
A decade later I am happy to see that a new site called Crowdrise can make it so that the story above never has to take place; Crowdrise combines social networking with crowdsourcing to provide an innovative fundraising platform.
Launched by actor Ed Norton, the site allows users to:
- Create a profile like they would on Facebook, add friends, tweet from their profile, and share a little about themselves
- Add projects for which they are fundraising money
- Donate money to another member’s project or support volunteers by donating directly to their charities (projects can fundraise for specific charities or for purposes independent of existing charities)
- Join other members’ project teams as volunteers or fundraisers
- Receive votes from other users for being compelling and creative
- Win awards based on their interaction with and success on the site
The website uses various carrots, in the form of prizes and points, to inspire its members to take action. It also uses a powerful stick—peer pressure. The logo’s tag line states, “If you don’t give back no one will like you.” While part of the fun-natured and quirky environment nurtured by the site, the tag line is also illustrative of the basic premise of the site. The community’s transparency and use of carrots are not just meant to reward the do-gooders but also create competition and possibly even guilt-trip the not-as-good-doers. Leveraging competition is a good idea, but generating guilt can backfire.
I am interested to try out this site and follow its development. (One unexpected and pleasant aspect of this site is the personal, fun, and interactive welcome messages you receive upon signing up.) The extent to which pressure is a part of the model will make a big difference in the site’s ability to grow. If the community is supportive, accepting, and non-judgmental than Crowdrise might succeed in building a diverse group of individuals who contribute at a range of different commitment levels, but who are bonded by the idea that anything is better than nothing.
crowdfunding 
Reader Comments (2)
Crowdrise is a cool site but we found an even better one that was much less expensive and just as cool and easy to use.
http://www.simpleregistry.com
SimpleRegistry was awesome because we could register for specific items we needed for our school. It made the 'giving' more personal for each donation giver instead of just giving a general gift. I highly recommend it.
This is a really good post I think that crowd sourcing and social networking is the way of the future. Thanks for sharing.