Worldreader, whose work in bringing Kindles and thousands of ebooks to kids in poor rural African villages I have been following closely and writing about since the beginning of the project, have another weapon in their money raising armoury – Self made fund-raising pages.
Apparently these individual fund-raising pages have been going on for some time, but I was simply not aware of them until the other day. But it seems like a really good idea to me, and is very easy to set up as well.
Basically what Worldreader have done is to create an area on their website to which you can go – links below – and there you can set up your very own page to try and raise money for Worldreader. Once you have set everything up as you want it to be, then you can send an automatic email message to all your contacts telling them about your page, and also let everyone you have as “friends” on your various Social Media sites know about it too.
The basic layout is predefined, but you can add photos, set the amount of money you hope to raise, place text to explain what and why you have set up the page and so on. So it is possible to make it your own in a number of ways.
When your friends and contacts decide to donate money, they are taken to a pretty standard ecommerce page, where they can enter the amount they wish to donate, and set up the payment, using the normal range of online payment options (credit cards, PayPal and so on). They can also leave a message on your page about why they have donated the money, so that others can see who has donated what.
Further, there is a sort of metric that shows graphically what portion of your goal has been achieved.
Every $5 is an ebook:
As you may know, Worldreader is a sort of NGO operating in a number of African countries bringing Kindle ereaders into schools and small rural communities with considerable success. The main idea is to give these children access to books, something that before the advent of ereaders and the work of these good people) was basically non-existent. So far they have been able to get several hundred thousand ebooks to these lucky kids as well as hundreds of Kindle ereaders. So now, for every $5 they can raise, they can add one more ebook to the list. Bear in mind that an ebook is not like a paper one.. The ebook that your $5 buys can be shared among hundreds of kids simultaneously, So your donation is actually worth much, much more than you might think.
This is one African project that seems to be actually working very well, and is one that is very close to my heart as well, having worked in Angola and seen for myself the almost total lack of books in rural African schools, to see and read the joy that these lucky kids show about their Kindles and the ebooks that they read on them is simply wonderful.
So, how do you set up your very own fund-raising page?
Here are the very simple steps you need to follow:-
1. Visit http://www.worldreader.org/support-us/
2. Click on Get Involved (3rd picture on the page)
3. Follow the 1st steps (name, email, phone number, password) – fields mandatory
4. Follow the 2nd set of steps (fundraising goals etc.) – fields can be changed later on as well
5. Customize your fundraising page by
-changing your profile page photo
-Changing the title of your fundraising campaign
-changing your goal amount
-adding pictures/videos (besides the ones that are already pre-set)
-changing/editing your welcome message
-customizing your thank you message
- customizing your e-mail that you can blast to all your colleagues once your page is ready to go
6. Once you feel like your page is set up, you can then use the link to promote on your website, social media platforms and via e-mail.
7. Additional Fundraising tips: CLICK HERE.
8. Examples:
http://fundraise.worldreader.org/fundraise?fcid=205687 – Berlin Marathon (Individual page)
http://fundraise.worldreader.org/fundraise/team?ftid=5583 – ESADE’s got talent (TEAM page) – talent show
http://fundraise.worldreader.org/fundraise?fcid=186774 – Swim Race (individual page)
http://fundraise.worldreader.org/fundraise?fcid=201936 – 1000 e-books effort (individual page)
So, nothing to it really….
Share with us:
OK, how much are you going to try and raise for this marvelous project? Do let us know what you have set as your goal, and also return later to let us know if you have achieved it, or even exceeded it.
