March 22, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Here’s a fund-raising strategy many charities have probably never tried: asking donors to give money if staff members eat nothing but grapefruit for two weeks. Grist.org, a nonprofit environmental-news Web site in Seattle, helped pay part of a staff member’s $35,000 salary with money raised from readers who responded to the challenge, reports Outside magazine (April).
The profile of Grist is part of a special report that also highlights 23 people in business, charities, entertainment, and government who work to help the environment.
Grist’s grapefruit stunt is just one example of the unconventional approach the group is taking to make the environmental movement more palatable to potential activists. “We’re trying to focus on the environment as it relates to normal peoples’ lives,” says Grist’s founder, Chip Giller, in the article. “What they purchase, where they live, what they drive. Not something out there that they go visit occasionally.”
Best known for the humorous headlines on its daily round-up of serious environmental news, Grist has grown from 100 readers in 1999 to 750,000 today. Mr. Giller hopes to triple readership by expanding the site to include consumer ratings of products and classified advertisements.
Mr. Giller has already raised half of the $10-million the effort will cost. But bigger is not necessarily better, says the article.
“There’s that tragic moment in so many Web tales when Thinking Big crosses a line and becomes a form of self-aggrandizing groupthink,” says the magazine. “By attempting to make Grist all things to all green people, Giller may be heading down that road, too.”
