Success Factors

case studies of action medeor, Twende Pamoja, and Dynamo Berlin

Success factors case study: action medeor

1. Starting point

A relatively large organisation collects relatively few donations at betterplace.org
medeor fundraiser Steffi Sczuka sees it as: „Investing in the future“ and „gaining new and young donors“
Donors feel anonymous with large organisations in comparison to smaller grass-root orgs. But large organisations have clout.

2. Success factors

Relevancy of the projects: medeor reacted quickly to global catastrophes announced through the media. An earthquake innSumatra is broadcast on TV at 2pm and by 6pm medeor posted an aid project online on betterplace.org
The professionalism and efficiency of action medeor as a large organisation are always emphasized
The proximity between help and helper is established through up-to-date blogs: current and on-location reports take supporters to the site of the catastrophe as the news from project workers from Sumatra is published. Emphasized urgency stirs emotions and raises donor willingness.
Working together with betterplace.org:utilizing direct telephone support from
betterplace.org, medeor experiences optimised projects and develops new ideas through dialogue.
Ace up the sleeve: the prominent actress Anke Engelke calls for donor action through videos.
In addition to photos, they will use more videos in the future, creating a more tangible urgency and vivid sense of the project.

3. Benefit

212 new donors in the course of one year
over 12,000 Euros in donations acquired
noteworthy: conventional methods of donor acquisition for 212 donors would have cost medeor 17,000 Euros!
Helping many people!

Best Practice Example: action medeor

betterplace.org/organisations/medeor | medeor.org

Sometimes even larger organisations have to start from scratch. The German medical aid organisation action medeor has cared for the people in the poorest regions of the world for 45 years. Over 10,000 health clinics in 140 countries have been set up by the organisation. In 2008 alone, they distributed 360 tons of medication and medical devices worth over 10 million Euros. Anke Engelke, a well-known German actress and comedian, stands at the helm of action medeor.

Why do large organisations like action medeor set up their projects on betterplace? Does every little penny really count for such a large organisation? The answer to such questions might sound silly but here it is: action medeor is investing in the future. “Through betterplace.org, our support base has grown to include new, younger donors,” says Steffi Sczucka, a fundraiser for action medeor. action medeor has the same problem as many other traditional aid organisations: the core foundation of donors is getting up in years. Whether their children or children’s children will contribute as eagerly as they have is questionable, increasing the pressure for organisations to seek out new core supporters.

Steffi Sczuka made her way to betterplace.org through a friend’s tip. She liked the site’s appearance among other things, and decided to stay and setup a project online. In contrast to other small organisations like Twende Pamoja, Steffi didn’t send emails to friends, acquaintances or donors, since the latter are mostly offline anyway and continue their support in ways that are familiar to them. Steffi says: A large organisation often conveys the feeling of anonymity – people identify themselves differently with us than they do with the smaller, more personal grassroots organisations.

Nonetheless, action medeor fared successfully on betterplace.org. Steffi’s reason: “We stay current.” One of the first betterplace.org projects from action medeor concerned the Cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. Shortly after the catastrophe was broadcasted through the media, 2,000 Euros for 200 medical treatments were donated on betterplace.org. Due to the relevancy of the situation, the betterplace.org team highlighted the project—the project was mentioned in the betterplace teamblog and was included in the featured projects list. The competition for support between organisations boils down to this: “We were the only ones on betterplace.org who offered aid for the Cholera epidemic.” It was a similar case in September with the earthquake in Sumatra. At 2:00 p.m. it was in the news, and by 6:00 p.m. it had become a project on betterplace.org, remembers Steffi. The important acquisition of new, additional donors is very efficient.

Posting the projects online doesn’t take much time,” says Steffi, “nor does the maintenance. The blog is kept up as needed. Acquiring a new donor conventionally costs action medeor between 70 and 90 Euros. That’s about the cost of 20 mosquito nets. Many large organisations even spend a third of a donor’s “lifetime value” on this acquisition. Steffi came to betterplace.org from the start also because of the people who work for the internet platform, real people she can call who take her questions or dialogue with her to develop ideas. In this way, the organisation remained forefront in the awareness of the betterplace project team, who took an interest in promoting the cause to betterplace corporate clients on the lookout for nonprofit partners.

The result: in one year, action medeor has received 12,250 Euros from 212 donors. Obtaining these donations by traditional methods would have cost around 17,000 Euros. This group of donors gave on average 57 Euros to action medeor. Conventionally, this would never have been enough to cover acquisition costs, whereas betterplace.org ensures the most bang for each buck, helping more people and directing support to where it should go. Since donor trust is a worthwhile value, and transparency should never be ignored, Steffi will soon apply to fill a need that seems less exciting: administrative costs. Although betterplace.org forwards 100 percent of donations received to the organisations, one shouldn’t forget that large organisations must always use a portion for general administrative costs.

Besides the relevancy of their quickly-posted aid projects, action medeor has another ace up their sleeve: Anke Engelke. The well-known German actress is an inimitable advocate and uses her notoriety to draw visitors from betterplace.org into action medeor’s project pages. But Steffi won’t let this be the only distinction from other competitor projects: “You have to do something unique with your projects,” she says, and has plans to post more videos to betterplace.org. Though the conventional methods of fundraising are still dominant, Steffi believes that online fundraising, as on betterplace.org, will continue to grow.

Success Factors Case Study: Twende Pamoja

1. Starting point

Relatively small organisation collects relatively few donations
The Twende fundraiser Verena Specht-Ronique claims: “phenomenal reach through betterplace.org!”
Twende had very few contacts. The organisation was able to present itself over betterplace.org for the first time with a much larger public audience.

2. Success factors

SPREAD THE WORD! Emails are sent to friends, relatives, and colleagues with the message: spread the word! People talk about it and post the project on Facebook, in their email signatures and in their status updates.
Blogs signal that the project is continually active. Twende wrote an average of 24 blogposts per project, in total over 170 posts.
Blogs signal transparency. Twende also wrote honestly about setbacks, thereby building priceless trust for support (the hemp bags project)
Blogs, photos and other entries stir up supporters. Each time one is updated, supporters/advocates/visitors receive an email from the betterplace.org system: “Your project has an update!” One click later and they are directly on the project-site.
Outsourcing the project presence on the betterplace.org site. Small organisations have no capacity to present themselves online so professionally.
Effort is made to get positive ratings for the projects, thereby landing at the top of the project-startpage list.
Very efficient and acting as a role model: the beneficiaries were taught through workshops how they could put their own projects onto betterplace.org

3. Benefit

Significantly expanded their outreach, thanks to betterplace.org they were brought for the first time into the public eye
Increased their donations, many new donors
New projects were brought to life
Workshops provide for efficient work delegation, saving Twende employees important time
Helping many people!
Football (soccer) club, not an aid organisation
No Know-How, they don’t have their own online-fundraising infrastructure
Potential: easy to mobilise, a large fan network

Best Practice Example: Twende Pamoja

Big gifts come in little packages - Twende Pamoja is a prime example of this. Without their own powerful fundraising apparatus, Twende Pamoja has relied almost solely on betterplace.org to reap donations quickly and efficiently. As well as abundantly.

Twende Pamoja is Kiswahili for “Let us walk together.” That’s exactly what a couple of Germans have been doing since the year 2000, together with their friends and partners from the east African country Tansania, on the island Zanzibar. It was here that the aid organisation Twende Pamoja was established.

The project’s fundraising success is due in part to Twende Pamoja’s embrace of the full gamut of online-fundraising opportunities: the internet is fast, current, and aesthetic and a presence on the internet is inexpensive to maintain. And that’s just how Matthias Mnich, Michaela Blaske, and Verena Specht-Ronique, who placed the organisation Twende Pamoja on betterplace, brought it into being. Never before have potential supporters had the opportunity to stay so up to date or to develop with as much transparency such trusting network relationships as they now are able to with betterplace.

Transparency and the development of trust require the strength to openly admit weakness. While Twende Pamoja thanked supporters for donating toward the material needed to produce cloth bags, they also simultaneously admitted that the bags were not competitive in the long run and openly reflected in hindsight that this project wasn’t especially sustainable.

Up to now, Twende Pamoja workers have written a total of 167 blog posts about their seven projects; that’s almost 24 blog posts per project. News about the life of the projects have been updated continuously through the blogs, fresh information is reported as it happens, and the trusting relationships between the supporters and the project initiators are maintained. Users who are connected to a particular project as an Advocate, Visitor or Supporter, receive a prompt email from the betterplace system each time a blog post or photo is uploaded for the project. “There’s a news update on your project!” it says, and since news always serves to pique interest, a single click on an embedded link takes one directly to the updated information on the project blog.

The blog entries also give the project managers the opportunity to show supporters that they are pouring their hearts into their work. Together with photos that portray the history and evolution of the project, the regular blog updates turn the act of donating into a real experience. One doesn’t only donate money or goods, but rather feels connected in tackling the project alongside the project managers.

It takes less than 20 minutes to post a project on betterplace.org. But without proper care and attention the project may wither. In order for it to grow and thrive, those responsible for the project have to put their backs into it. Verena Sprecht-Ronique has worked with Twende Pamoja since its founding and has been responsible for two projects on betterplace. She invested several hours each week to update blogs and photos and to develop the project’s network. She describes the response of her labors with one word: “Phenomenal!” Not only has Twende Pamoja won countless new donors, but in comparison to the limited fundraising opportunities of pre-betterplace-days, the organisation has now also risen in international prominence. “Today we even receive support from England–a super publicity effort!” according to Verena. As a small organisation, Twende Pamoja has virtually outsourced their Online-Fundraising and now links their projects directly from their homepage to betterplace, where they are then elaborated and evaluated by the Web of Trust. One important key to a project’s success is to activate one’s networks. You have to hold matches under several logs simultaneously to really start the fire going. In other words: write loads of emails, exhaust the rolodex, inform colleagues, friends and acquaintances about the project on betterplace, send around the link, post it in your email signature, on Facebook, on Twitter, in your status update, tell the whole world! And be sure to remind everyone: spread the word! “But don’t forget that the project rating system is also very important,” says Verena. She remembered to ask friends and acquaintances to rate her projects with several stars, pushing them to the top of the Recommended Projects list on betterplace.

Because betterplace participation is possible wherever internet access is, Twende Pamoja decided to take their results one step further: the organisation trained people from Zanzibar on how to use betterplace.org (using laptops that were acquired from a betterplace.org project). With no more gobetweens, the shortest route between points stands wide open: the Zanzibari are now independently fundraising with betterplace for the construction of a street to a maternity ward and for an important bridge. The crow doesn’t fly any straighter than that.

Success Factors Case Study: Dynamo Berlin

1. Starting point

Football (soccer) club, not an aid organisation
No Know-How, they don’t have their own online-fundraising infrastructure
Potential: easy to mobilise, a large fan network

2. Success factors

Blogs are used for transparency, with use of anecdotes they remain interesting and personal, supporters are happy about the words of thanks received upon the fulfilment of project needs.
The blogs indicate what the next project will be
On the club’s own homepage, a link to their project’s betterplace widget takes them directly to the project support page: brings awareness to fans, guests, sponsors, journalists and other disseminators. Involvement of (potential) supporters through forum discussions
SPREAD THE WORD! They don’t only send around emails. Project managers also wrote up a call for donations text on their homepage that fans could copy and paste and, with little effort, call for support through their emails, online communities, blogs and messenger.

3. Benefit

Significantly expanded their outreach,thanks to betterplace.org they were brought for the first time into the public eye
Increased their donations, many new donors
New projects were brought to life
Workshops provide for efficient work delegation, saving Twende employees important time
Helping many people!

Critique: It would have made more sense, rather than presenting the projects individually, to have listed the needs under the umbrella of one large Dynamo Project. This would have had the benefit that the acquired donors for one project could be retained and informed about new needs instead of always needing to write again to request support. This would have been possible through the betterplace.org mail system. In the case of Dynamo, this critique could be ignored since the club took such a special, active roll with its fans.

Best Practice Example: Dynamo Berlin

This year, the Berlin Football Club (BFC), Dynamo became the first professional football club to have a playground built on their stadium grounds. The club has its diligent fans and supporters to thank, as well as betterplace.org, the transparent marketplace for social engagement. The entire playground project was financed in record time by donations made over betterplace.org. Such a successful campaign is therefore a prime example for effective fundraising among one’s own networks over betterplace.org.

Fans of the BFC Dynamo began by posting a profile site on betterplace.org. Potential supporters and helpers could read about chosen tactics: how the project was planned, how much money is needed for which specific purposes, and who was managing those tasks. A teeter-totter was the first in line to be constructed, followed by a swing-set, a bench, a sand box and – last but not least – a slide.

To give the project the initial boost needed for its launch, the project managers next activated their networks: the fans of the BFC. They displayed the playground project prominently on the club’s official homepage along with a link to the project page on betterplace.org. Fans, guests, sponsors and journalists learned first-hand about the planned construction of the new play area. Each contact was thereby a possible networker for further donors.

The project was quickly picked up on and discussed in the club’s forums. One click, one donor – it couldn’t be more simple. Fans were updated about latest developments on the project as well as the donation levels needed for the next step. The project managers posted a Call-to-Action text with a link to the project on their website. The text could be cut and pasted and passed along through emails, messenger, blogs, or online communities. Whoever had their own BFC fan page could use the downloadable project widget to spread the word. As soon as one phase of the project was completed, the project managers documented the accomplishments with photos and blogposts on betterplace.org. This transparency motivated new donors: “There’s something going on, and I want to be a part of it!”

The community of donors on betterplace.org soon outgrew the boundaries of the playground project, reaching out to other supporters and even members of other football clubs– an astonishing effect. In one online community for active football fans, a user remarked on a common solidarity: “Separated by our colors, united by our cause.” The success story of the new BFC playground illustrates more and more the preferred mode of action for social engagement on betterplace.org. Instead of the more-costly and less-efficient conventional fundraising practice to cover all bases in every direction, a project could be specifically targeted, spread and concluded all via betterplace.org. Tailoring messages specifically within one’s own target groups and networks can optimise the donor potential for the organisation.

Plagiarism is emphatically recommended!