Chattarati, First Friday Five

Reinventing First Friday Five

By John Hawbaker on July 3rd, 2009

You may have noticed, we didn’t organize a First Friday Five fundraiser today. Or in June. The local online giving project started out in January with great success, but has since lost steam. Now we’re taking some time to “dream it all up again.”

The original concept was simple: soliciting $5 donations for a local nonprofit, on the first Friday of each month, towards a specific, tangible goal. And while so many of Chattanooga’s charitable organizations do great work, we have found that it can be difficult to quantify it in a way that makes sense for a First Friday Five fundraiser. Coincidentally or not, as the months went on, the goals became less specific and donations dropped.

We still believe First Friday Five has a lot of potential, so we’re looking for new ideas. At the suggestion of one of our editors, this may mean opening it up to include not just nonprofit charitable organizations, but also specific people or project ideas where our community of readers could make a difference.

So we’d like to hear from you: what are your ideas for First Friday Five?

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  • Allison
    I donate to non profitt charity, when I knew the following:

    1- The organization is identified.
    2-The percentage of the organization adminstrative that is deducted for administrative costs, some have 20 to 30%, 5% is acceptable.
    3- Specific purpose
    4-If the organization, makes the outcomes known through a press release.
    5-The organization is current in annual reporting to the State Attorney General's office.
    6-The organization refrains from political activities.

    Transparency in these areas when seeking funds, makes the donors want to give
  • Mary
    It would be really nice if the administrative costs of running a nonprofit were around 5%, but that's just not a reality unless you're an extremely well endowed organization. That means your investments are doing well enough that you can pay overhead on the interest alone. Not likely in this economy.

    There are lots of worthy organizations in the Chattanooga area, and I know of only one which runs this way, and they're really an anomaly.
  • You may be able to get ideas from the Maclellan foundation since that's pretty much what they do.
  • You hit the nail on the head earlier when you said they worked best when people knew they were donating for something specific and the request was small.

    The Community Kitchen and Girls Inc went well because they both had well defined goals (Feed 100 people or send 8 girls to camp) that were both attainable and descriptive -- everyone can identify with feeding someone or going to camp.

    When people raise money, espcially in small increments, they need a "win" and these organizations gave them that.

    Also, in the case of Girls Inc., they supported their First Friday at Five with Tweets, Facebook notices and status updates, news releases, e-mail newsletters, and whatever else they could come up with that would support the fundraiser and drive traffic to their donation page/link.

    Also, Mary is correct. Most nonprofits operate at a 15% overhead. Locally the United Way has an endowment -- and perhaps too the Hunter Museum and Chattanooga Foundation -- but they are all anomalies.
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