Kickstarter.com, a growing microfunding website, has taken off, including providing $1mil for a iPod nano watchband now featured in Apple stores, and a reprinting of Art Space Tokyo. Local artists have also successfully used Kickstarter for successfully funding smaller projects.
Wouldn’t be nice if non-profits and arts organizations could take advantage of similar opportunities? Well, they can!
The Arts & Science Council launched power2give.org in 2011 to great excitement in Charlotte, NC. The site’s projects, with a generous match from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, received more than $40,000 in donations during the first week it was live on the internet. Within 14 days, and about a week after the official launch, that number had jumped to more than $76,000!
Since that time, more than $230,000 has been raised. The site has supported scholarships for deserving music students at Community School of the Arts, saved trees at Historic Rosedale Plantation and helped young choristers at Charlotte Children’s Choir perform at the White House.
In an effort to bring that success to other communities around the country, earlier this month we launched power2give in Kentucky and Southern Indiana, and Miami.
Miami has been thrilled to watch the most successful launch to date. In its first week, again with a generous match from Knight Foundation, the site raised more than $86,000 with an additional $19,000 raised in just the last three days. That’s double what the site raised in Charlotte in the first week!
So far, seven projects have been fully funded including equipment for young dancers with Thomas Armour Youth Ballet, instruments for the Greater Miami Youth Symphony and a free classical music experience for families with young children, retirees and the community-at large from the Alhambra Orchestra.
In just four months, with generosity from hundreds of donors and several matching grant partners, power2give.org has helped raise just shy of $400,000 for the cultural sector. We look forward to the great success and potential of power2give as we expand its geographic footprint.
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By Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs
This is a great month for the arts in Miami! The way that non-profit arts groups approach fundraising and the tools they have traditionally employed have fundamentally changed just before we end this year with the launch of power2give.org in Miami. By tapping into the growing micro-giving trend in the digital age, our local arts groups now have access to non-traditional donors and can solicit tax-deductible contributions large and small to fund projects individuals are passionate about. Within just a few hours of the website’s official launch, this passion became evident as traffic and donor activity continued increasing and several projects were closing in on completing their funding goals!
True to their innovative spirit, our local arts groups immediately embraced the idea of online fundraising and accessing a new generation of donors. The power2give.org Miami site launched with 45 projects of $10,000 or less from 32 different arts groups. By communicating directly with their donors, and employing social media as the major form of communication, arts groups big and small now have the power to connect and develop relationships in a personal and meaningful way.
Gift cards are available for purchase on the power2give website. These cards enable their lucky recipients to make contributions to any organization with a posted project. And beyond the satisfaction of supporting some amazing projects, donors can see the list of great, personal benefits that they will receive once they make a gift to a project.
We worked closely with our partners, Arts & Science Council in Charlotte, NC and founding sponsor John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to launch power2give.org in Miami. The Knight Foundation’s generous grant of $100,000 is matching every dollar contributed by donors up to the first $100,000 of gifts to projects. So, a $10,000 project needs to raise $5,000 which then, will be matched with $5,000 of Knight Foundation funds to complete the goal! This incentive is empowering our local arts groups to contact new donors who essentially can support a very specific project and leverage these matching funds to make their gift even more powerful. Power2give.org makes it easy to get involved and with the straightforward strategy of taking arts directly to the people. This potent new fundraising platform has the potential to cultivate a whole new generation of contributors to the arts by making giving adventurous, fun, easy and affordable.