Now that you know how to use your GlobalGiving dashboard, it's time to get fundraising! Over the years, we've found that organizations are most successful when they take the time to set goals, create benchmarks, and make a plan for fundraising success. Use the GlobalGiving Partner Calendar to plan out your year with all of the contests, campaigns, and other opportunities we're offering! Be sure to check out the Planning Your Fundraising Year with GlobalGiving's Partner Campaigns infographic and our Learn Library to find great resources about beginning your crowdfunding journey!
In order to attract new donors, make sure that your project is easily searchable when they visit GlobalGiving.org. GlobalGiving's search ranking algorithm is based on GG Rewards status and points, the frequency of reporting, number of donors, and overall donation volume. This ranking is used to determine the order in which projects appear under each theme and country on the site, as well as the projects that are featured on the homepage. You can find your project's ranking on your dashboard.
Tips to improve your search ranking:
The policies and procedures that help GlobalGiving enforce the community photo standards
GlobalGiving is committed to upholding the Community Photo Standards developed by our nonprofit partners; therefore, we enforce the following policies regarding photos used on GlobalGiving.org. These policies are in place to protect your organization and those you serve.
It is your organization's responsibility to ensure that you have the expressed permission from the photograph subject(s), photographer, and/or owner to use the photo. When you upload images to GlobalGiving, you are certifying that you have obtained appropriate consent from the people photographed, and your organization has all of the relevant rights to any photos or stories that you upload to our website. Once a photo is uploaded to the GlobalGiving website, GlobalGiving shares the copyright with you, according to the terms and conditions agreed upon by all GlobalGiving partners during the application process process.
What does this mean?
Approval procedures for photos uploaded to the GlobalGiving website
GlobalGiving is committed to respecting the opinions and wishes of our partners. Should we have any questions or concerns about a photo that you have posted on GlobalGiving, we will contact you directly. GlobalGiving reserves the right to make final decisions about content on the website and to remove photos or stories that we deem inappropriate or inconsistent with the Community Photo Standards.
GlobalGiving reviews each photo submitted on a project page, project report, or project appeal before it goes live on our website. If a photo is rejected, our team will contact you and encourage you to share a photo that showcases your work, but is more appropriate for our website audience. Our team uses the following criteria when reviewing photos for the site:
Community standards developed by a working group of GlobalGiving's nonprofit partners
For decades, many nonprofits have used photos in their fundraising efforts that elicit pity from donors. These photos typically depict people in extreme poverty, horrific situations, or in very poor health. While these “pity images” may successfully generate cash in the short-term, they perpetuate the misconception that a community cannot solve its own problems. Using pity to manipulate donors preserves the false dynamic of ‘us' giving to ‘them.' It does lasting damage to the people it aims to help, and strips them of their dignity. While they may need external resources to achieve their goals, all people have the power to improve their own communities. Depictions that imply otherwise undermine genuine international aid efforts to drive systemic, long-term change.
At GlobalGiving, we have an obligation and an opportunity to shift how donors perceive people in difficult circumstances—away from pity, and towards empathy—through the language and photos we use. Yes, communities around the world face difficult challenges, and our intention is not to mask their struggle. However, our team cares deeply about portraying these communities sensitively and accurately. We want to give our audiences a realistic glimpse into people's lives while also protecting their dignity and showing them as fully human.
Our hope is that by seeing respectful photographic representations, our donors will give from a place of common humanity rather than guilt. How we portray people is just as important to us as the money we raise to help them.
These Community Photo Standards, which we developed in collaboration with our nonprofit community, aim to provide guidance to anyone in the GlobalGiving community who is choosing or producing imagery for their organizations. Through making conscious and responsible photo choices, together we can create a more accurate and healthy public perception of aid work: one that connects people in communities around the world, and deepens our understanding of each other.
The core standards are:
Download the Community Photo Standards for details. This tool can be a helpful conversation starter and reference for your organization.
GlobalGiving resources:
External resources:
It is critical for your organization to attract new donors, but then what? How do you keep your donors engaged in the work you are doing? GlobalGiving has a number of different ways to keep your existing donors excited and active in supporting your amazing work.
GlobalGiving automatically sends every donor a receipt they donate, but nothing is better than a personal email from you and your team. Donors want their donations to be acknowledged, appreciated, and used well, so try to send a thank you email to each donor within a week of the donation being made.
The easiest way to keep on top of thanking your donors is to write templates and set up automation. By setting up automation rules, you ensure every single donor is thanked on a timeline you decide. Your donations are divided into one of three segments: more than $100, less than $100, or recurring. You can tie each of your thank you note templates to a segment, project, and automation rule.
While the majority of your donors can be thanked using automation, you may still want to thank some donors with a custom note. These donations will show in Highlighted Donations (instead of a segment within Other Donations) so you can write a new note.
This video explainer will help you get started.
Here are some tips on how to make your thank you notes great:
Tribute cards are a way for your donors to make a donation as a gift or in honor of someone. Your donors can buy tribute cards for birthdays, weddings, and holidays to support your projects. GlobalGiving makes it possible for your donors to make a donation to your project as a gift or in honor of someone special. This is a great way to promote giving to your organization for holidays, birthdays, and special occasions! Tribute cards are available by email or print-at-home, and you can choose between several different designs.
GlobalGiving makes it easy for you to turn your organization's supporters into active advocates. Supporters can create fundraisers to set their own fundraising goals and reach out to their own networks on your behalf!
GlobalGiving fundraisers are great for any occasion — a celebration, tribute, athletic event, disaster relief — or simply to generate support for projects like yours. The fundraiser will choose what project they would like to support for their special occasion. They can then reach out to family and friends with the link, driving donations to your project. Encourage your networks and advocates to begin their fundraisers here!
GlobalGiving makes it easy for supporters to make monthly recurring donations to your project. By signing up for a recurring donation, GlobalGiving deducts the donation amount from the donor's preferred payment method every month. Not only are recurring donations hassle free for your donors, but they provide your organization with a consistent, reliable, and long-term source of income.
Tips for acquiring new recurring donors:
Promote your project on your organization's website or blog using GlobalGiving's widget. A widget is a tool that enables you to perform a function, which in this case is to share your GlobalGiving page on your nonprofit's website! Just copy and paste the code provided on your project page under the Share tab into your website's code. One click takes donors directly to your project page so they can donate immediately.
GlobalGiving disburses funds at the end of the month after donations are received. For example, if a donation is made in January, funds will be disbursed at the end of February. Our disbursement team aims to get funds out the door by the 25th of the month, although it can take longer depending on your organization's disbursement method. For international organizations, we only disburse after you have raised $250 or more to reduce the overall cost of wire fees and because of the limitations placed on us by FXecute.
GlobalGiving waits until the month after donations are received to reconcile donations to ensure financial security and make sure there are no reverse charges. This ensures that the money you receive the following month has been vetted and is ready to go toward your organization's work!
GlobalGiving offers four ways for you to receive funds, depending on your location and preference:
Disbursements are accompanied by a Disbursement Report which provides a complete list of all donations made during the disbursement period, including the donor name (unless anonymous), date of donation, and donation amount. This report also includes GlobalGiving-driven funds and your Effective Fee rate!
The report breaks down the donation amount in the following way:
Disbursement reports are sent a few days after disbursements leave our office. To download your disbursement report:
You do not have to pay any fees to join GlobalGiving. In fact, GlobalGiving has no setup, monthly, or annual fees! We do this because we believe in the power of great ideas that can come from anyone, anywhere, anytime. Therefore, no matter how big or small your organization is, you will have the same opportunity as everyone else to raise funds on our platform.
Instead, there is a fee on each donation. If your organization is registered in the US or the UK, GlobalGiving will retain a 5% nonprofit support fee (+ 3% third party processing fee). If your organization is registered outside the US or the UK, GlobalGiving will retain a 7% nonprofit support fee (+ 3% third party processing fee).
You can read more about our fee structure and get all your questions answered in our Help section!
We have worked with more than 200 companies to offer employee giving, cause marketing, grant management, and more. Here are just a few of the ways that we work with corporate partners:
The GlobalGiving API allows some of our corporate partners, including Benevity, to
integrate project information, organization data, and donation options in their website by giving
direct access to the information in our database. You can learn more about our API platform here.
For a more technical look into the program, you can go here:
https://www.globalgiving.org/api.
If you have a public project posted on our site, then your project is already eligible to be pulled into the systems! To make the most of this partnership, we encourage you to make sure your project title is succinct and clear and your photo is engaging and positive in order to attract the most donors to your page. If you do receive donations from this platform, you will see "GlobalGiving API" in the traffic source of your donation manager.
By following the rules and recommendations on GlobalGiving, your project will comply with fundraising best practices around the world. That being said, we are required to note that all projects should adhere to the Code of Fundraising published by the Fundraising Regulator. The prompts inside of the Dashboard system will make sure that you enter all of the necessary information to support your compliance with these and other regulations. If you have any questions, please contact us.
