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It is difficult times.  Many non-profits managed their entire budgets from funding from big donors or from endowments and trusts.  Enter 2008 and 2009, the housing crisis, the bank failure debacle, the loss of market share by American auto makers, etc and you end up with endowments that had huge losses of income.  Further, even the most well invested around the globe suffered huge losses and could not give to charity the way they once did.  So keeping good things going and starting new grassroots organizations is the key to supporting charities.  Enter Givimo.com.

I got this email and decided to check them out:

About a month ago the team at Mindbox Studios launched Givimo.com. Givimo is a social-giving community that brings causes and activist together all over the web. We’re passionate about giving nonprofits tools to make fundraising easier, and empower generous givers to become activists for their favorite causes.

I need your help! You can help by simply signing up on Givimo.com (free), share the site with your friends, and tell nonprofits or causes you know about us. We’re meeting with the Fine Arts Fund- Cincinnati (they raise $15 million every year) and others next week and want to get 200 generous givers on the site by then to show them an already vibrant growing giving community. We have 55 givers right now and have raised just under $1k (with no marketing).

I’d also appreciate your feedback. Use the “feedback” tab on the left side of the site if you have ideas, questions, or experience any problems.

Here are just a few of the features built into Givimo.com:

Features for Givers

• Facebook Connect (login or sign up using Facebook)
• Recurring Giving
• Save Multiple Giving Methods
• Giving Reports (download CSV)
• Save your favorite causes and campaigns
• Become an activist for your favorite campaigns (fund raising using your social networks)

Features for Causes (personal or nonprofit)

• Create and manage causes
• Create and manage campaigns
• Customize gift page
• Goal setting
• Local nonprofit directories (example: http://cincinnati.givimo.com)
• Recurring giving
• Giving reports
• Share with Facebook and Twitter

Thank you for your help and joining the cause of making a more generous world using Givimo. We hope it make giving and fund raising easier for you.

I signed up myself, but haven’t really looked too hard.  I like the idea that you can easily raise money for your favorite start up charity ideas, like my pals’ charity, Feed a Friend.  They just got together and decided to feed the local homeless int heir neighborhood.  They could easily benefit from small amounts like $5 and $10 dollars.  What’s more, since it is all volunteers, everything will go directly to those in need.  As large charities are becoming less mobile and have less resources, smaller more nimble charities are filling the void left behind as these charities cut services.  A charitable group is trying to do the outreach that was cut by other groups in outreach to LGBT youth.

I think this is great.   Sign up and help them out.  Help them know that you care and help support a good idea.

Tags: charity, giving

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 8:05 am and is filed under Arts & Culture, Cleveland, Technology and the internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.