GiveForward

This past Friday, GreatStartups.com, a blog focused on successful or growing startups, chose to feature us! We’re honored! You can find the post here or read our copy of it below. Thanks again, GreatStartups.com!

GiveForward.org—Fundraising Made Simple

By: Co-Editor, Bobby B

Not all fundraising and charitable organizations are long-term ventures. Moreover, these charities have the infrastructure and capital base to last as going concerns. However, many fund-raising/charitable efforts are short-term efforts to raise money for a specific purpose. For example, raising money for individuals with cancer, raising money for accident victims, or raising money for an injured firefighter.

In these circumstances, keeping overhead down and reach donors quickly and efficiently is paramount.

A Chicago based web startup called GiveForward.org is providing an answer for these situations. Started in August of 2008, GiveForward.org provides free personal fundraising pages to individuals to raise money for friends and family members battling illnesses like cancer.

The Chicago Tribune has called GiveForward.org “The future of medical fundraising in the Internet Age.”

GiveForward.org helps individuals raise $10K, $20K and even $30K + to pay for their friends medical expenses. It gives people an easy way to help their friends and loved ones when they need it most.

By incorporating social media such as Facebook and Twitter to help empower users, GiveForward.org raises money from people all over the country for good causes. It is turning the idea that social media is frivolous on its head.

Co-founder Desiree Vargas, worked as a specialist in collegiate entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City and as an independent consultant for Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors. Her passion for philanthropy and the role that young and small-scale donors can have on our communities has been a cause celebre. When not working, she spends her time inventing new recipes that don’t always work, walking her golden retriever, Ellie, and going to Zumba. Desiree likes Hangar One, cheese, and kicking Ethan’s butt in bar trivia.

She remembers being distraught when Hurricane Katrina hit because she wanted to employ the same practices we used every day with the few dollars that she personally had to give. But, there was no easy way to give directly to a family wanting to rebuild. Her and her colleagues talked openly about how much more we would give if we knew money wasn’t being lost in the bureaucracy. She thought to that there should be a site where people can give directly to people and causes they care about. Eventually GiveForward.org was born.

A review of the site sees also kinds of spirited individuals stuck on horrible situations not of there own making. With GiveForward.org caring and giving people can reach these people and give then the financial support they need.

Jenn of the ridiculously awesome blog “Free & Flawed” isn’t our typical blog award winner. She doesn’t focus on fundraising and the like, but she’s hilarious, witty, clever, and enjoyable. Jenn’s blog is a breath of fresh air in a smoggy world filled with mundane, emo-tastic personal blogs. She writes on a variety of things from the Victoria’s Secret Christmas catalog, the latest and greatest PostSecret cards, and (my favorite) her vacuum vs the cat!

Maybe I’m biased because I would also describe myself as a 20something geekish girl, love PostSecret, and also battle my cat with my vacuum—but Jenn’s blog is funny, has lots of pictures, and updates frequently with interesting content: all winning attributes in my book. Congratulations, Jenn! GiveForward thinks you’re awesome (but you probably already knew that!)

We’re not the only people holding holiday parties for a good cause this year (might as well make sure your karma’s in check while you’re rocking out, right?). Jelly Chicago, a group that allows freelancers, entrepreneurs, telecommuters and other professionals that may normally work from home to hang out with others with similar working arrangements, is holding their second annual “Tech the Halls” holiday party on December 11 and you’re invited to hang out with some awesome people and donate to a very worthy cause.

This year’s “Tech the Halls” will take place at Noble Tree Coffee at 10 PM on December 11. Jelly is taking donations for one of our favorite nonprofits, Cabrini Connections, a “grassroots non-profit organization founded to address the large number of children who live in educationally disadvantaged environments.” (You may remember them from their Northwestern vs. University of Illinois Alumni Fundraising Challenge held on our site last month)

So if you missed our Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl (or if you just can’t get enough of fundraising and partying simultaneously!) RSVP for “Tech the Halls” ASAP—the party is in 3 days!

In case you missed our Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl this weekend, here a couple links from NBC Chicago so you can experience some truly horrendous sweaters virtually. If only we could share booze with you through the internet…

Cheers to Ugly Sweaters!—A Slideshow

Three Places to Pimp that Fugly Sweater — by Marcus Riley

It’s time to dig into your closet — or maybe your grandmother’s closet — to uncover the most hideously ugly Christmas sweater you can find, because it’s time to party.

The second annual Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl kicks off Saturday at 1 p.m. at Redmond‘s (3358 N. Sheffield).

The ugly party continues south, passing through Sheffield’s, Trader Todd’s, Mad River, and Uncle Fatty’s.

Tickets are $15 in advance or $25 at the door, which gets you a wristband for drink specials at each participating bar.

A $100 cash prize goes to the best/worst dressed, and proceeds from the event go to www.GiveForward.org charities.

Timothy O’Toole’s pubs are also joining the ugly sweater craze.

The Streeterville and Gurnee locations are hosting ugly sweater parties on December 11 at 9 p.m.

Prizes, including a $200 gift card to Water Tower Place, will be given to customers with the ugliest sweaters.

And forget the high fashion the Gold Coast is known for, the tackier the better will be expected at Luxbar‘s Ugly Sweater Christmas Party on Dec. 19.

The customer with the ugliest sweater will receive a $250 cocktail card to Luxbar.

Sip on $5 Grey Goose martinis and work up a sweater sweat on the dance floor to the mixes of LuxLounge’s all-female DJ team.

And of course you’ll want to embarrass your kids with the evidence one day, so take advantage of a green screen Christmas photo booth where you can choose from a variety of backgrounds to match your holiday apparel.

Consider it a “tongue in chic” homage to the holidays.

As you loyal GiveForward blog readers know, this month we started giving out a blog award for our favorite blogs and websites. We run into a lot of great people with amazing tips and great articles, so we thought we’d share them with you and give back to some stellar sites at the same time! Our second GiveForward Awesome Blog Award winner is Karyn Brianne, creator of The Fabulous Giver.

“The Fabulous Giver exists for the purpose of spreading the word about fantastic ways to participate in philanthropy,” writes Karyn, “I do my best to stay on top of the latest happenings…” We think she does a pretty good job!

Her blog contains everything—she profiles organizations and people doing great things in the philanthropic world, doles out tips for leading a fabulously charitable life, educates the world on HIV/AIDS with the Red Pump Project, shares cool events (with a charitable purpose), etc. It doesn’t hurt that she’s profiled two of our fabulous events, Run4aReason and Party4aReason. Karyn does it all!

So congratulations, Fabulous Giver. We think you’re fabulous too

Remember that sweet Yelp! party I posted about a couple weeks ago? Well now you don’t have to take my word on how awesome it was—we’ve got visual evidence! See3 Communications created this great video of the event. They do videos specifically for nonprofits. If you need this for your nonprofit, or you know of a nonprofit that does need this, definitely contact them!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKpyrgcajM8 [/youtube]

Here at GiveForward, we meet a lot of fantastic people, read a lot of cool blogs, learn great tips, etc. Well, we’ve decided to give back by awarding some of our favorite blogs and websites with the GiveForward Awesome Blog Award!

Our first award goes to Miriam Kagan, writer of GenerationYGive. Her blog focuses on younger donors and how they can (and do!) benefit fundraisers, nonprofits, etc. Miriam says,

“I believe in younger donors. I believe we want to give and to get engaged with issues we care about. I believe most of us non-profit marketers haven’t yet really truly understood how to reach these younger donors-going beyond the digi-fad of the day to build a relationship with donors whose own relationships are intervowen with technology and constantly shifting attention spans.”

She writes about fundraising on twitter, mobile fundraising, ways other companies/nonprofits engage younger donors—she even tells you how you can help out just by playing Sudoku (though I’m a Text Twist fan myself). Her posts are helpful, humorous, modern, and always entertaining! Check it out!

On my second day at GiveForward, I was lucky enough to work the GiveForward table at Yelp’s October 15 event—Community: Causes for a Party! By work, of course, I mean eat some free spring rolls, hand out chocolate, explain GiveForward to any interested person, and award scavenger hunt prizes!

That’s right, we had a scavenger hunt—but instead of finding objects, we had our participants discover facts about some of the other nonprofits at the party. We gave out cards with questions about organizations such as Imerman Angels, Climate Cycle, Open Books, Clearbrook, Chicago Inner City Outings, etc. and when participants came back with three correct answers, they could choose a prize from our lovely, colorful, sticky note prize board of awesome.

One super awesome GiveForward enthusiast won a $350 8 bottle wine tasting at PRP Wine—congratulations, Lisa Center! You can bring up to 12 people for your private wine consultation—or less, if you don’t like to share

Other winners weren’t quite as lucky. Prizes ranged from gum to Giveasaurus t-shirts to GiveForward coozies to Sticks & Twigs (it’s a snack food, I swear). One player won our only set of Energizer Bunny foam ears. Other equally lucky participants won instant grits, cans of soup, and “vintage” (circa March 2009) GiveForward t-shirts! Only one awesome winner managed to choose the right sticky note and left with the highly coveted Giveasaurus tee.

Our next event is on December 5, the ever-fabulous Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl, so if you’re just dying to get some more GiveForward SWAG, be one of the first people there and receive a sweet GiveForward Santa Hat. For more information, check out uglysweaterpubcrawl.com!

A couple weeks ago, we started a contest. Anyone who donated $10 or more before October 16 was automatically entered to win one of our sweet Giveosaurus t-shirts. Now, we have winners.

Kaylie Young, Leanne Repetto, and Cyrus Patel have all been bestowed the title of Giveosaurus. Great job, guys!

Kaylie donated to Community Kitchen, a group working to construct a community kitchen that will provide discounted food to Tibetan refugees.

Leanne donated to Kujali Book Funds, a grassroots organization trying to supply Kujali’s pilot orphanage academy (Hananasif Academy in Tanzania) with a complete set of nationally certified textbooks.

Cyrus Patel donated to Elaine Runs the Chicago Marathon for the East Village Youth Program (EVYP). EVYP provides a free comprehensive college readiness program to low-income Chicago youth.

Don’t worry, we’ll be giving away these awesome t-shirts again soon so you can proudly proclaim that you are a prehistoric creature with a big heart!
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