Walking Through the Web

In the ‘90s, regional AIDS walks were among the most successful charity events in the country. Corporate sponsorship was plentiful, and businesses sent teams in the hundreds to participate.

But all that has changed, according to AIDS Project Rhode Island, which saw a downturn in corporate involvement for its annual AIDS Walk as early as 2000.

“Historically, local corporations were the backbone of our annual walk,” AIDS Project Rhode Island Executive Director Chris Butler recalls. “With corporate downsizing and mergers, we were suddenly forced to depend on unaffiliated, individual fundraisers to raise more funds than ever before.”

AIDS Walk Rhode Island felt that pain most sharply while planning its June 2005 walk. Corporate sponsorships, matched gifts and walk teams from companies that previously had been responsible for 25 percent of walk funds no longer could be factored into the fundraising bottom line. For a walk netting approximately $100,000 annually, it was a significant loss.

For the first time since the walk’s inception, AIDS Project Rhode Island faced a fundraising challenge: how to get a smaller number of walk participants to raise more money. In previous years, walkers raised $130 on average. To make up for the 2005 walk’s fundraising divide caused by the lack of corporate support, that average would have had to at least double.

Butler turned to the Internet to identify new methods to bridge the gap and discovered services that would allow event participants to create personalized Web pages to raise money online.

A new source
“We hoped that online personal fundraising would allow us to get a handful of walkers creating personal fundraising Web pages,” she says. “We had heard from other AIDS organizations that walkers with personal Web pages raised significantly more than walkers fundraising in traditional methods, like pledge forms, since they were so easy for walkers to use.”

The organization started to heavily promote its new feature, including information about online personal fundraising in brochures, team leader kits and print ads.

“We knew that this technology would only work if our walkers knew about its availability,” she explains. “Since we expected a learning curve for our walkers to adopt this method for fundraising, we wanted to encourage its use as much as possible.”

But no one was prepared for the results: “Over 80 of our 700 walkers went online to create personal fundraising pages. In just a few weeks, [they] raised an average of $277, which was 63 percent more than last year’s average. By creating personal appeals through their own Web pages, [they] were able to reach more donors in less time and collect donations directly over the Internet.”

Butler says that 75 percent of the walkers that created fundraising pages were returning participants who, in 2004, raised a total of $14,500. In 2005, the same group raised an additional 20 percent.

The other 25 percent of the users were first-time walkers who, Butler believes, were attracted to the event by the online-fundraising option.

By the day of the walk, AIDS Project Rhode Island had raised $121,000, which is 15 percent higher than last year’s total. Of those funds, more than $23,000 came from personal fundraising pages, Butler says.

“The walk is now over and we’re still seeing dollars coming in through our [personal fundraising] pages,” she adds. “This fundraising technology … allows us to depend less on corporate support and easily empower our event participants to raise more.

Dana Hagenbuch is on staff at Justgiving, a Web-based service that helps nonprofits and individuals raise money online.