You’re probably thinking, duh!  Fundraising is hard, period!

But I tried a little experiment before Christmas.  I came across this website, DonorsChoose.org, which “connects you to classrooms in need”.  I found this project for a classroom in a high-poverty area in DC – a second grade class of special needs kids needing a “world carpet” which helps teach geography and spatial relationships.

This marvelous and colorful world classroom carpet is perfect for introducing map concepts and teaching my students about the world they live in. The bright colors and bold labels will make it easy to familiarize the children with seven continents and four major oceans. The compass rose will help students begin to explore the concept of the cardinal direction. My students would be able to learn geography through the following games: Tag Teams, Where in the World, Find Your Way, Read Around the World, Fill Your Passport and so on. With this tool my students will discover that learning geography can and should be fun. Our world classroom carpet will not only serve as an educational tool but as a comfortable meeting area to come together, debrief, and read aloud or independent reading sessions.

Your generous donation will help my students develop a love for learning and understanding the world beyond their own. It will also ensure that each of my students has an inviting place to sit, learn, or read in comfort.

This project really appealed to me as being concrete and achievable – local to me, a group of children who really could use a little extra help, not a high monetary goal (a whopping $623).  I donated some money back in the fall.  I later got a ping from the site saying the cause had not reached its goal yet, and the cause would expire in ten days; so I thought, the least I can do is tweet it out a few times, see if I can help raise a bit more for it.

I put it on Facebook, I tweeted it a bunch of times, I asked some influencers in my network to tweet it (which they did).

But it didn’t work.  The cause expired (although it did raise a bit more than what the link shows – if your specific cause expires you can still give your donation to the class or any other project instead, which I did with mine and others must have too, and I think it takes it off the amount shown). I felt pretty awful at this point and had I been able to I would have donated all of the money myself – but I couldn’t.

Then I read this post: Six reasons people don’t give, and what you can do about them. The post is very short so I’ll repeat the six reasons here:

1. No Identifiable Victim. Donors are much less likely to respond to a huge, abstract problem than to a specific person in need. Good fundraising shows how large-scale problems play out in the lives of individuals — and how the donor can impact individuals.

Hmm. I think this project clearly showed who would benefit.

2. Parochialism. People are much more inclined to help solve nearby than far-way problems. Good fundraising erases the distance by bringing those distant problems close to home.

Local cause – check.

3. Futility. Donors are less inclined to act when they sense they can’t make a difference. Good fundraising makes it clear that every gift makes a meaningful difference.

OK, so the fundraising goal was $623. Not hard to see how a few bucks would make a dent in that.

4. The Diffusion of Responsibility. There’s much less compulsion to act if you feel like one of a large number people standing by, waiting for someone who. Good fundraising zeroes in on each donor shows their responsibility and opportunity in the situation.

Again, this was a small project – but maybe too specialized and too local?

5. The Sense of Fairness. Many donors need proof that they aren’t “unfairly” shouldering the burden. Good fundraising lets them know that there are other donors like them who are all doing their part.

Maybe there weren’t enough initial donors to create a tipping point for others to want to help as well?

6. Money. Research seems to show that thinking about money can depress altruism. Good fundraising is about the cause, not the money.

Not sure how this applies here.

So I think this little project, which didn’t fall into any of these traps where people don’t want to give, failed for other reasons.  I will say I’m not great with fundraising stuff, I really did just the minimum to see what would happen.  I thought, I have almost 4,000 people following me on Twitter, is that enough to spread the word about something I care about?  And that’s not even including the collective reach of the other local influencers who retweeted it for me.

So here are a couple of thoughts about why it didn’t work:

1) So-called “influence” is not enough on its own. The cause apparently didn’t resonate with most of my buds on Twitter – and that’s ok, of course.  Many would not have seen my tweets unless they happened to be looking right at the moment I tweeted them.   And I didn’t push it hard enough, I just tweeted about it maybe 5 or 6 times.

2) I perhaps didn’t target the local cause enough to local Twitterers.  I did a little bit in terms of those people who I specifically asked if they could tweet to their networks, but I could have done a lot more with that.

3) I didn’t give it a story.  I didn’t write a blog post about why I cared about this.  I didn’t give people a reason beyond just a few tweets for why they might want to share the story or donate themselves.  I have to think about this some more but I think this might have made a pretty big difference.

I’m sure there are other reasons.  I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on what I could have done better.

I still think the ideas in my 15 Tips for Fundraising on Twitter are good ones (in fact maybe I should have actually looked back at this instead of winging it, but winging it was kind of part of the experiment…).  I read stories every day about organizations leveraging the power of social media for fundraising.  But bottom line is, it’s not easy.  We need to work hard to help the causes we care about.  There’s more to leveraging a network than just having a network.

What do you think?  I know some of you have had success with fundraising projects.  I’m sure every one that succeeded involved a lot more work than just a few tweets – please share what you did and what worked or didn’t!