As most of you will know i’m trying to put together a charity skydive event and come up with something unique and creative online to raise the cash. I’ve come across some really quality sites and organizations….
KIVA.org for example – i came across these guys a while back but just forgot the url. KIVA is a website designed to help entrepreneurs primarily in developing economies to fulfill their dreams of starting or maintaining a business. This is one of my favorite charity websites and i’ve decided that should i raise over $1k, i’ll use the rest to fund as many people as possible on KIVA.
The problem i have with charity donations is that there’s just so many nowadays. LITERALLY every weekend in town there’ll be some crowd who just take over. Traffic lights, every corner, outside shops… it’s ridiculous and it’s something that annoys me. That’s just here in Monaghan, don’t get me started on Dublin – it’s a 7 day a week thing there and i often joke about whether Concern will have a 4-4-2 formation out today or a 4-3-3 (making reference to the seemingly strategic placement of these ‘chuggers‘).
Ok, most people who collect are innocent, good people trying to help a worthy cause (anyone with a clipboard is getting paid) but if there’s no creativity in the approach then i see it as a form of begging. If it’s a charity walk or swim or marathon or something it’s not so bad – at least you have reason to give.
It’s the idea and the thought that counts and that’s why anything different will always be more successful than the norm because people like me like something fun or new or creative.
For my skydive, i was going to set up an account with mycharity.ie or justgiving.com – but then i thought that’s not gonna work because i’m technically running a contest online… – people aren’t just donating to charity out of goodwill. Mycharity.ie have a 3% charge on transactions whereas paypal is free (with a personal a/c) if people send money funded by their balance. So that’s another small reason.
Also, i know a lot of my readers and people that may be interested in the competition aren’t Irish so if they see .ie links everywhere and Irish only charities it somewhat freezes them out…. so that’s where KIVA comes in. Should i get more than what i need, i’ll be funded people from all over the world with the remaining cash.
- $1,000 = pays for skydive + charity payment
- Any more than $1k = KIVA.org
- Any less than $1k = EPIC fail
No, if i should raise less than $1k, i’ll be going ahead with it but i might need some more time just to raise cash doing other stuff.
At the minute, i’m looking at about late-October for the skydive jump. All depends of how quickly i can get things organized. I’ll be looking for sponsors starting next week with a view to running a competition for the entire month of september, but i’m trying to put the shoe on the other foot and give sponsors more incentive to donate prizes, so that’s what i’m doing as we speak – fine tuning my pitch to potential sponsors 🙂