With funding and budget cuts widespread across the nation, public schools are more than ever turning to innovative, online fundraising methods to keep programs – even those as large as the art department – up and running.
Cambridge based charity auction platform BiddingForGood is one such online outlet that schools can turn to. The site connects and facilitates fundraisers (nonprofits that can set up online auctions), businesses (who can donate items for auction and manage philanthropic outreach) and shoppers (over 220,000 in number who are encouraged to “shop for a cause”). Today this niche, innovative charitable ecommerce company released numbers revealing exactly what sort of an impact it has made on schools across the nation.
In the first four months of 2011, 481 schools completed fundraising auctions that totaled $8 million in funds raised. And for the first time ever, the dollars raised in public school auction fundraisers is higher than those raised for private schools – 15 percent higher, to be exact. According to the company public schools are signing up at a 55 percent greater rate than in 2010, and their realized volume of funds raised is 28 percent higher this year to boot.
BiddingForGood has helped schools in particular raise $45 million since it was founded in 2003. This is just over a third of the $121 million it has raised to date for non profits as a whole.
“We believe this is the convergence of two large scale trends- online e-commerce and funding pressure,” says CEO Jon Carson. The growing trend for school fundraising auctions to go online is largely driven by the need to go where the shoppers are. The second trend for schools in all communities is funding pressures and the need for new sources of revenue due to the weak economy. Added Carson, “If it’s for a public school it is for essentials, and if it is for a private school it is for enrichment or to support financial aid needs.”
What could a charity auction on BiddingForGood do for your school? The average school auction raises $16,733, up 20 percent from the average in 2010. And to give you a sense of what’s possible, here are the top 5 most successful public school auctions so far in 2011:
- Hillsborough Schools Foundation, Hillsborough, CA, $96,909
- Franklin Elementary School PTA, Santa Monica, CA, $82,925
- Fairburn Youth Association, Los Angeles, CA, $74,737
- PS 166, Richard Rodgers School, New York, NY, $72,064
- John Baldwin Elementary School, Danville, CA, $64,730
And here are a few examples of some of the items being auctioned:
Online fundraising provides benefits like virality, reach, and lower setup costs than doing more traditional fundraising, such as through direct mail campaigns or in-person fundraisers. It also provides charitable focused consumers a place where they can shop and know their money spent is very much doing good.
BiddingForGood was founded under the name cMarket, and has grown to well over thirty employees here in the Boston area since. The company most recently raised $2.4 million in the fall of 2010, bringing its total financing to $23.5 million. BiddingForGood has been using this additional financing to accumulate donated items from retailers and hotels for the charity auctions it hosts. To give you a sense of BiddingForGood’s scale at on state by state level, currently there are twenty five active auctions here in Massachusetts.
