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Nov 30, 2010

Project-Based Giving: A Project Leader’s Story

Posted by: SethG

In our Project-Based Giving: Books For Africa’s Advocate Driven Program post we described Books For Africa’s project-based fundraising program which provides opportunities for independent advocates to raise money to ship a container of donated books to their African country of choice. As a follow-up we were connected with Megan Meyer, of a A Hand in Health, whom recently led a successful project to deliver a container with 7,500 donated medical books for a medical library for a teaching hospital in Gambia.

Being connected to Megan was a great opportunity. We enjoyed speaking with Carole at Books For Africa to learn more about how they do project-based giving. Speaking with Megan offered us the chance to learn about the project experience from its leader or Container Coordinator as Books For Africa likes to call them.

It will come as no surprise that a key element in Megan’s success is passion. Her passion led her to build on her experience of doing good in Gambia. While in Gambia she connected with a hospital that had aspirations to be a teaching and learning hub but ran out of the resources to do so. Most notably they had plans for a medical library and Megan on her return to the states decided she wanted to help make that happen. Her motivation and passion helped her find Books For Africa, which inspired her to lead a project that successfully fundraised $4500 and coordinated over 5,000 medical book donations in collaboration with the US Embassy in Gambia.

Megan’s campaign utilized a series of strategies beginning with approaching folks directly to seek support of any kind from donations, to advice and introductions to others. She held community events including a fish fry and book drive which resulted in the majority of the financial contributions she received. Megan’s motivation and execution to “knock on doors” and engage her local community is inspiring.

Hearing Megan’s story brings to life Books for Africa’s project-based giving program as a vehicle to connect with, empower, and partner with passionate individuals and organizations. Their project program delivers a means for others to make an impact through a shared mission.

Some clear takeaways from the perspective as the project leader and advocate include:

• Legitimacy – The presence of the project on the Books For Africa website gave Megan a online home for her project that provided a professional and legitimate presence inspiring additional confidence and trust for those considering offering support.
• Expressing Fundraising Progress From Multiple Channels – Though there were a number of donations made directly through the project page online, the majority of funds contributed were collected offline as either cash or check donations. Each Books For Africa project page online has a thermometer that showcases fundraising progress. Megan was able to coordinate with Books For Africa to ensure that funds raised outside the website were reflected in totals to ensure the momentum of the project was properly expressed.
• Support – The support that Books For Africa provided to Megan was essential. From facilitating communication with the embassy in Gambia to coordinating shipping efforts and set up of the online project page, Books For Africa helped drive the project towards success.

For her next project, Megan will be looking to broaden the scope of her outreach in an effort to reach a national audience. The goal of this new project will be to ship 1,000,000 books to Gambia with a new container going out every couple of months until that goal is achieved. Building on her previous experience her early planning to engage a broader audience includes:

• Blogging using Tumblr to share updates, events and progress
• Facebook outreach and Causes as another channel to connect to people through and accept donations. Donations made through Causes would be shared to Books For Africa to update project totals.
• A content strategy to regularly and consistently showcase the impact of the project through various communication channels to ensure that donors are aware of where their contributions go and for whom they benefit.

We look forward to following Megan and A Hand in Health’s continued efforts.

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring project-based online fundraising. To see all the posts click the project-based giving category

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Non-profit Project-Based Giving