February 21, 2008 | Read Time: 3 minutes
An Oklahoma charity that aids orphaned Chinese children, a small animal-rescue group in New Jersey, and an organization that fights epilepsy are among the top winners of a pair of online fund-raising contests designed to demonstrate the power of large numbers of small donations.
The competitions, financed by the foundation created by Steve Case, founder of AOL, and his wife Jean, promised $50,000 grand prizes to nonprofit groups with the greatest number of donors to their cause, not the largest amount raised. In all, the Case Foundation handed out $750,000 in awards.
The competitions are part of a growing — though still relatively small — movement in philanthropy to allow members of the public to get a say in where money awarded by grant makers goes.
The trend has earned praise for its open and democratic approach, but some people worry that it may lead foundations to channel more money to safe, broadly popular ideas rather than controversial causes.
Both contests were held from December 13 to January 31.
One was run with help from Parade magazine and its Web site, “America’s Giving Challenge.” It promoted the use of electronic donation links, often called badges, that can be attached to e-mail messages or Web sites. That contest focused on bringing print readers to online giving, and sought to reach the older adults who read Parade.
Participants in the second competition, “Causes Giving Challenge,” raised money and awareness for their causes through the social-networking Web site Facebook, which serves a younger audience.
Altogether, about 3,100 charities competed in the contest — 2,500 via Facebook and 600 through Parade — and won more than $1.7-million from about 80,000 people.
Many of the winners were very small grass-roots organizations that were able to garner more support than bigger, well-established groups.
Love Without Boundaries, an Oklahoma City all-volunteer group that provides humanitarian aid to Chinese orphans, won the Causes Giving Challenge and a $50,000 prize. The $25,000 second-place award in the Facebook contest was Students for a Free Tibet, in New York. Third prize and $25,000 went to Nourish International, a group in Durham, N.C., that recruits college students to serve poor communities and encourages social responsibility.
Ten other organizations that ranked just behind those groups won $10,000 apiece through the competition. Those groups worked on a range of causes, such as voter education, advocating for an end to legalized abortion, and AIDS treatment. Additionally, prizes of $1,000 were awarded each day to the group with the greatest number of donors in the past 24 hours.
Joe Green, the co-founder of Causes, an effort to help charities use Facebook to reach potential supporters, said his organization is still studying what helped certain groups pull ahead, but that the grass-roots groups “jumped into the platform and tried a lot of creative stuff” to win donors and gain a lead over wealthier organizations.
“This is not about blasting a lot of people” with mass e-mail messages, he said. “This is about people one on one. It’s about conversations.”
America’s Giving Challenge, the promotion with Parade magazine, awarded $50,000 each to the four national organizations and four internationally oriented organizations that attracted the most donors, and $1,000 each to the next 100 charities.
Nationally, the $50,000 winners were Engineers Without Borders, in Longmont, Colo.; the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund, in Eugene, Ore.; the Idea League, in Afton, Minn.; and the 11th Hour Animal Rescue, in Rockaway, N.J. Of those groups, Engineers Without Borders, which helps needy communities worldwide with engineering projects and education, had the most donors — 2,979 people gave $60,655.
Among the internationally focused groups, Route Out of Poverty for Cambodian Children, in Concord, Mass., won a top prize from America’s Giving Challenge for bringing in the most donations, 1,650. The other groups that won $50,000 were Students Helping Honduras, in Fredericksburg, Va.; Atlas Service Corps, in Washington; and Friends of Burkina Faso, also in Washington.
