Fund-Raising Challenge Raises Money for Arts Groups — and Ire

An online matching-grant challenge brought in $3.75-million for Detroit-area cultural groups — but not without technical difficulties and some angry donors, reports the Detroit Free Press.

The Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan put up $1-million for Tuesday’s Community Foundation Challenge, during which it agreed to match every dollar donated through its Web site to roughly 75 local arts groups with 50 cents from the foundation.

For weeks, participating groups had been using e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media sites to let supporters know about the matching challenge, but their outreach efforts proved to be too successful. The large number of donors trying to make gifts overwhelmed the Web site. Some people spent hours trying unsuccessfully to make a gift, while others had their credit cards charged multiple times.

Amy LaBarge, of Dearborn, Mich., tried to donate $7,500 to the Henry Ford Museum, but the system charged her credit card for three gifts totaling $16,000, which pushed her over her credit limit.

“It’s a mess,” she told the newspaper. “I don’t know who to be mad at. Everybody meant well, but whoever set up this program didn’t get the bugs out.”

Despite the technical problems, the initial $1-million match was gone by 3:30 p.m., less than six hours after the start of the challenge. In recognition of the frustration caused by the technical problems, the foundation made an additional matching grant of $250,000 available at 6 p.m. Those funds were gone by 9 p.m.