While your nonprofit may be in the final sprint of planning its year-end fundraising campaigns, you may want to carve out extra time raising even more money by participating in the 3rd annual Crowdrise Holiday Challenge. The Holiday Challenge, which launched last Monday, has already raised over $677,000. Over 500 nonprofits have registered to participate. Not to worry, there is still time to register. There is also an informative charity toolkit here.
The Challenge, with support from Craig Newmark of craigslist and craigconnects, The Huffington Post, and other philanthropists will run through January 9th. Grand prize donations to the three charities that raise the most money include; a $100K for first place, $40K for second place and $20K for third place. Charities will also have the opportunity to win thousands of dollars more in prizes during weekly Bonus Challenges.
Celebrities such as Will Ferrell, Conan O’Brien, Kristen Bell, Sean Penn, Ian Somerhalder. Christy Turlington, Seth Rogen, and more are joining this year’s Challenge to help raise money for the causes they are most passionate about with prizes, including two tickets to the Anchorman 2 movie premiere at the Beacon Theater in New York City and a feature article in The Huffington Post about your favorite charity. Pretty cool.
The Holiday Charity Challenge on CrowdRise is expected to raise well over $1M this year and break last year’s record of $1.1 million in small donations.
“Our supreme focus at CrowdRise is to make giving back fun,” said CrowdRise cofounder and CEO Robert Wolfe. “And we’re relentless about finding awesome and notable ways for people and organizations to be so, so psyched to raise money for their favorite causes. The CrowdRise Holiday Challenge creates ‘that moment’…a moment that isn’t a dinner or disaster. The CrowdRise Holiday Challenge is just a cool and fun way to rally your friends to engage and give back and drive some kick ass impact.”
Newmark, who has seen nonprofits raise a lot of donations via social fundraising campaigns says he finds these types of campaigns appealing because “I figure people should give each other a break, and my take is that this will be an effective way for people to help people who get the job done.”
*Disclosure: My firm Rad Campaign works with Craig Newmark and is working on the Crowdrise Holiday Challenge.
** Article was updated December 5, 2013 to relfect the amount raised to date.
COMMENTS