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Oct 27, 2010

Project-Based Giving: Books For Africa’s Advocate Driven Program

Posted by: SethG

There are three ways to make an online donation to Books For Africa (BFA) one of which is to support a specific project in the country of the donor’s choice. After exploring the various projects available on their site and the general information about them, I reached out to BFA and was treated to a fantastic overview of their project efforts. Before diving into details, I’d like to express my huge thanks to Carole Patrikakos, Development Associate, for her graciousness and insight and Claire Kerr, @snotforprofit and http://nonprofity.com/, for sharing this organization with me when crowdsourcing for project-based giving examples..

Motivated by a mandate from their Board to deliver even more books to Africa, BFA launched their project fundraising effort as part of a website revision about two years ago. The project idea is driven by individuals, associations, and companies whom have a connection to an African country and an appreciation for the power of books. These folks, whom don’t have the resources and capabilities to make something happen on their own, would reach out to BFA seeking an opportunity to impact education in a specific country through a donation of books. This supportive energy was tapped by allowing these individuals/groups to create a fundraising project to deliver books to their African country of choice through a project page on the booksforafrica.org website that tracks their progress.

Project leaders, referred to by BFA as “container captains”, take responsibility for promoting their projects to achieve their fundraising goals. As a small non-profit, this works well for BFA as it allows them to increase the number of monthly containers filled with books shipped through a new outreach vehicle without significantly increasing overhead for their small team. These projects provided a means to connect independent donors with specific countries to support and have also created a tool that BFA can use to connect project leaders with each other should they need to pool their resources.

Carole shared a great story of a Columbia University employee in New York City whom started a fundraising effort in memory of a colleague that had a passion for books. This individual raised more than $6,000 by asking other colleagues to donate to BFA. Carole suggested they target their support to a project in Madagascar. The donation helped that project meet it’s goal and connected this group’s effort with specific recipients to honor the memory of their colleague.

In terms of the program’s success, direct donation to container projects has significantly contributed to BFA’s efforts to ship 1-2 containers per week. Each container carries approximately 22,000 books and has an IRS value of $165,000. Projects provide a means for project leaders and donors to realize their goals, to increase the impact of the organization, and to help personalize the book donation and delivery experience.

Considering Project-Based Fundraising?
The following are some key takeaways shared by Carole.

• Need to launch a project with some financial momentum – BFA’s policy requires that project leaders must raise $1000 in order to publish a project on the site. There is a clear difference between projects that started at $0 and projects that had a significant financial base in regards to generating further donations.

• Project lifespan – A project is left on the site for up to 12 months. If a project needs to be closed out, BFA will apply any raised funds to a different project serving the same country to honor the intent of the donors.

• Thoughts on restricted vs general fund donations – In Books for Africa’s case, project supporters may donate elsewhere if country projects were not an option. The projects have therefore helped to extend their mission by offering donors a connection to their specific country of interest.

I hope you will join me in thanking Carole and Books For Africa for sharing their project-based giving experience and hope you take a moment to check out their site and project page and maybe even support a project.

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