A digital idea for legacy fundraisers?

I heard the other day about an online service that might just spark-off some interesting ideas amongst forward-thinking legacy fundraisers. Called YouDeparted, the US-based company provides its members with a secure ‘online safety deposit box’ for the storage of important documents, photo collections, videos, etc., accessible 24/7 from anywhere in the world. But here’s the twist. As the company name suggests you can also store your Will, letter of wishes and last messages – all of which can be accessed by your loved ones in the event of your death.

All stored documents are protected by what the site describes as “military-grade encryption” (apparently the same 256 bit Advanced Encryption Standard the US Government uses), so they’re kept safe and sound for whenever you need to access them. Then when you die, your named loved ones can unlock the account once a pre-defined number of them have signed-in and confirmed that you’ve really gone.

The founders describe their site as “a personal organiser with a death benefit”. Given the ever growing amounts of digital information that we collect as part of our everyday lives – from photos to formal documents, passwords and bank account PINs – it seems like the type of service that could really catch-on. Both to help organise everyday life as well as to help prepare for the inevitable.

So, what’s in it for legacy fundraisers? Well, over the years I have seen a wide range of legacy fundraising activity which offers pledgers support in terms of advice on Will making or how to value their estate and calculate potential inheritance tax. Could it be that the next generation of such services might include the provision of something like YouDeparted for supporters who have included your charity in their Will? They get to keep their Will and all of their other documents safe throughout their life and then the charity benefits after they’ve died.

At present, the YouDeparted pricing model starts at $9.95/year – which could perhaps be covered as part of a combined regular monthly donation and legacy pledge product? That’s a combination I haven’t seen used before.

Meeting the fresh challenges of online-savvy new audiences such as Baby Boomers, and families with children, will require very different legacy propositions to the tried and tested ‘will guide’ approaches we’re used to.

In the light of this, might the integration of “a personal organiser with a death benefit” into the legacy fundraisers product range be a viable idea for the future?

Second Life Relay for Life event set to top US$100,000

As mentioned last week, the third annual Second Life Relay for Life was held in the virtual world of Second Life this weekend on behalf of the American Cancer Society.

The great news is that, according to the Second Life Insider blog, the event looks set to raise over US$100,000 - more than double that achieved last year.

As promised in my earlier post, I’ve put a selection of snapshots I took at the event here on Scribd (a site like YouTube, but for documents) to try to give a feel for it. Although, to be honest these really don’t do justice to just how amazingly well designed and implemented the whole event was.

Coming just a couple of weeks after the Guardian and Intel sponsored Secondfest Second Life music and arts festival, this is another great example of the type of international event that is now possible in the virtual world.

However, the big difference between the two - which for me makes the Relay for Life event stand-out head and shoulders above the commercial Secondfest - is that Second Life Relay for Life was begun by a group of Second Life residents working with the charity to re-create its ‘real world’ Relay for Life event.

These ‘grass roots’ community origins have led to the whole event being significantly richer and more engaging than the commercially sponsored Secondfest, as well as appearing (to me) to be better designed and run.

This is something that other charities looking to become active in Second Life could do well to learn from - working with the in-world community to develop something that works for them is undoubtedly the best way to develop an effective Second Life presence.

Like any big event, the great success of the Second Life Relay for Life is down to an incredible amount of hard work by a team of highly talented and dedicated people. It’s certainly no easier to pull-off, just because it’s ‘virtual’. Infact in many ways it’s far harder. I certainly felt for the organisers when I spotted a group of walkers who had got stuck at one point on the route because a temporary technical glitch had caused the road ahead of them to cease to exist. That’s not something you see happening on the London Marathon!

For anyone inspired to consider the possibilities for promoting their own charity in Second Life, I’d suggest you take a look at the Nonprofits in Second Life site and then just get yourself in-world and spend some time travelling around and talking to people. If you’d like some ideas of interesting places to visit, then let me know and I can give you some pointers.

Fashionable SMS fundraising

I originally mentioned this on livinginadigitalworld.com a couple of months back, but it’s such a fun idea that I thought it worth mentioning here too.

Reactee is a great online t-shirt site which not only offers shoppers the opportunity to share their views on any subject that takes their fancy through a personalised t-shirt - but takes t-shirt communication to a completely new level by creating clothing that “texts back”.

Every Reactee t-shirt displays the wearer’s personal slogan plus a keyword and SMS shortcode. Anyone interested in knowing more about the slogan - or the wearer - can text-in the keyword and will automatically receive a response set by the wearer. The responses can be updated as often as the wearer wants, and they receive a notification each time someone texts their t-shirt.

So far, Reactee t-shirt wearers apparently range from those just looking for a personal response (“Am I hot?” seems quite popular) to those wanting to raise awareness of charities or political campaigns. One young Democrat has created an “Obama for President” t-shirt and updates her text response each week with a new reason to support him.

Seems like there could be real potential for charities with their own shortcode services already in-place to replicate the idea in support of their own campaigning or fundraising.

Online Social Networking = Community Fundraising 2.0

The latest news of the ongoing race between three of the UK’s most discussed social networking sites – Bebo, MySpace and Facebook – came from Hitwise UK last week, who reported that UK Internet searches for Facebook had exceeded those for MySpace for the first time.

While also confirming that Facebook is rapidly closing the gap in terms of UK Internet visits (as shown above) Hitwise don’t yet offer a prediction as to when it will actually catch-up – although this seems inevitable given the way the site’s popularity has rocketed since it lifted its students-only restriction back in September 2006.

But Facebook is particularly interesting for fundraisers for a couple of reasons beyond just its incredible growth.

Firstly, in terms of the user profile of the different sites. The average Bebo user is around 19 years old, while the average MySpace or Facebook user is now apparently mid-thirties – and Facebook seems to be ‘ageing’ faster as it grows. So, it could well be that Facebook folks are better suited to being potential donors.

Secondly, in May 2007 Facebook became the first (and currently only) major social network site to allow 3rd party developers to build applications which can integrate directly with the site’s core functions and user data – as opposed to just sit on the surface. Importantly for fundraisers, such apps. can conduct transactions directly with users – meaning that the opportunities for engagement go far beyond simply enabling them to stick something on their profile page (you can read more about this here).

It’s been great to see that the resulting flood of new Facebook apps. has included a number from charities. Initially these were US-based, like ‘Causes’, and ‘Ribbons’, but now several web-savvy UK charities are catching-on including the Royal British Legion and the NSPCC.

I was asked in a recent client presentation to say why I felt social networking sites were so important for charities and the best explanation I could give was that they essentially represent the future of community fundraising – Web 2.0 enabling Community Fundraising 2.0.

If you haven’t yet ventured onto a social networking site, then I’d really encourage you to give it a try – and look-out for the ways people are supporting charities (and charities supporting people supporting charities) while you’re there.

American Cancer Society’s Second Life Walkathon back for a third year

On July 27th and 28th, the American Cancer Society will be hosting what it is describing as “the largest contiguous event Second Life has ever seen” in the form of its third annual ‘Second Life Relay for Life’.

Building on the great success of the charity’s ‘real world’ Relay for Life events (now also run here in the UK by CRUK), in 2005 a group of Second Life residents worked with them to re-create the event within the virtual world. In its second year, over 1,000 people took part by walking their Second Life avatars along a custom-designed track – raising more than $41,000 (in ‘real world’ US dollars).

This year is planned to be bigger and better, with a community goal of $75,000 and all sorts of fundraising events, including an auction of items created by top Second Life designers.

Admittedly, in comparison to some of the ‘real world’ sponsored events run by big name charities, $75,000 isn’t a vast sum. However, by working with Second Life residents to pioneer this type of community involvement, the American Cancer Society is achieving far more than purely raising funds on the day. They’re successfully communicating their cause in a new and highly engaging way to an online audience who get to support the charity in a way that is most interesting and relevant for them.

I’m often heard mis-using a JWT quote about the future of advertising, because I think it’s a very strong reminder for all fundraisers: “The future of fundraising is to stop interrupting what people are interested in and to become what people are interested in”. This is an excellent example of a charity doing exactly that

If you have an opportunity, do head-on down to the event to see it for yourself (it’s free to join Second Life and really pretty easy). Alternately, if you find Real Life enough to handle without adding a Second one then don’t worry, I’ll post some snapshots from the event afterwards so you can see what you missed.

What is Web 2.0?

You’re likely to read a lot of references to Web 2.0 in the posts that follow here, so I thought it’d be handy to kick-off with a very quick explanation of just what is meant by the term.

In short, Web 2.0 is used to describe web-based services which specifically facilitate collaboration and sharing between their users – such as social network sites (e.g. MySpace and Facebook); wikis (e.g. Wikipedia); and folksonomies (e.g. Flickr and del.icio.us).

The term Web 2.0 is really a bit misleading, in that it could be read as meaning a second generation of the World Wide Web itself – which it is not. The extension ‘2.0’ originally came from Tim O’Reilly at O’Reilly Media and was intended to refer to an evolution in Web use which characterised those internet businesses which survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble in late 2001.

If you’re really keen, you can read Tim O’Reilly’s full explanation of the term in his article ‘What is Web 2.0’.