Sometimes, the greatest marketing starts out as so much more.
In Colorado, like all states, there are a lot of smaller non-profit organizations out there who could use some help collecting donations. Enter Colorado Gives, an online donation platform run by the Community First Foundation in Arvada, Colorado.
What Is Colorado Gives?
I first heard about Colorado Gives Day when my kids were in elementary school. The school PTO did incredibly good fundraising and the result was the ability for our school to be able to do a lot of important things beyond what could be paid for by the standard funds that came from the school district.
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Of course, there were all the usual fundraisers. There were things sold, things bought, Box Tops collected, and donations sought. In the end though, the only way you can do things like pay for additional paraprofessional support in classrooms is with cash.
Enter Colorado Gives. Rather than a volunteer group of parents creating, running, and securing some sort of online donation website, the PTO signed up with Colorado Gives.
The Colorado Gives platform is open to non-profit organizations in Colorado. There are no setup or monthly fees charged to the non-profit, which is important when many of the smaller organizations, like school PTOs, don’t necessarily have a lot of predictable incoming donations.
Colorado Gives Day Benefits
Colorado Gives Day happens in December every year. It has turned into a massive thing. Every media outlet in Denver (Colorado?) covers it. It is marketed by non-profits across the state, and if you’re a member, or ever donated to an organization, you can be sure to get an email, or newsletter mention, or some communication imploring you to donate on Colorado Gives Day.
So, what is the benefit of donating on Colorado Gives Day?
Well, that changed somewhere along the line. The first time I heard of Colorado Gives Day, the point of donation on that day, and not another day, was that the processing fees for your donation were waived on Colorado Gives Day. Unfortunately, processing a credit card isn’t free, even for non-profits. So, Colorado Gives charges 2% of every donation made.
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You donate $100 to your PTO, they get $98. That’s a very low fee (the website claims it’s one of the lowest in the country) and no one should have any complaints considering the rest of the service is free. Colorado Gives also offers donors the opportunity to pay for the fees, effectively turning your $100 donation into a $102 donation, or something like that.
Colorado Gives Donation Fees
However, that waived fee part of Colorado Gives Day has gone away. What remains is the “incentive fund.” The incentive fund is an interesting gimmick in that there is a $1.6 million pool for 2021.
Each non-profit that participates in Colorado Gives Day gets a piece of that pool equivalent to the percentage of the overall donations that were made to their organization.
This year Colorado Gives reports a total of $39.6 million donated on Colorado Gives Day. So, if your particular non-profit organization raised $396,000 on Colorado Gives Day (1%), then you would also get 1 percent of the $1.5 million pool, or $15,000. Of course, most non-profits will raise much less, and their incentive pool amount would be tens of dollars.
The main benefit for donors is that ability to donate without giving away your personal information directly to the charity, thereby sparing yourself the possible, non-stop, follow-up charity fundraising phone calls.
Colorado Gives Donations Any Day
There is nothing wrong with Colorado Gives Day. In fact, now that fees are no longer waived, its biggest value lies in getting people to act.
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Unlike every other day of the year, Colorado Gives Day eventually comes NOW. For a lot of non-profits, the trick to fundraising is not finding people that want to give; it’s getting them TO GIVE. It is far too easy to read the PTO newsletter on Thursday night while waiting for your kid’s basketball practice to start, and think, “Oh yeah. I need to donate to the school,” and then get busy and forget to do it.
But, thanks to Colorado Gives Day, parents know that December 8th is the day. It can’t wait.
Of course, it can wait, or it can happen earlier. The great thing is any day can be your Colorado Gives Day.
But, for Colorado Gives, Colorado Gives Day is the marketing gold that gets millions of new donors to sign up, all without costing a cent.