Peter Deitz has written an overview of a promising fundraising tool on his site, First-of-its-kind. ChipIn lets activists set up fundraising campaigns without having a merchant account or going through a traditional fundraising vendor. The company can host the campaign completely for those without their own web pages. ChipIn is also trying to optimize its service for viral spread, creating a web widget that campaign organizers can embed in their own websites, MySpace pages or blogs and that other supporters can use to promote the fundraising effort. I couldn’t find anything on the site about the transaction percentage that they charge, however (update: see Peter’s comment below). Still, this kind of easy online fundraising tool could make a huge difference, particularly for small campaigns or individual people trying to raise money for an issue or cause.
– cpd
Regarding the cost of using ChipIn’s system, they do not currently charge a commssion beyond the inevitable credit card processing fee of roughly 2.5%.
The company’s founder said that a small commission of 1-2% will be applied to large campaigns beginning in a few months.
[…] ChipIn is a really killer tool not just for personal collection of money, but also for institutions to “blograise” We are currently tracking some conversations in the NPO fundraising community and also working with several donorware companies to see how they can easily integrate our fundraising widget. E.politics ran a short story on us […]
I put up a ChipIn widget on my blog in order to try and raise money for a website redesign. I’ve been shocked that visitors have actually been using the tool. WIthin the first week I’ve raised $125 toward my goal of $250.
PlayPumps International recently launched our ChipIn widget to collect funds through social networking opportunities. The ChipIn goal is to raise $14,000 to fund one PlayPump water system.