We are really excited and happy to announce that the Pretty Bird Woman House event surpassed their $25K goal thanks to the generous donations from Daily Kos readers and Chipin users! This event really shows the power of Chipin and group giving to help with urgent needs. If you have a story about how you used Chipin that you want to share, please drop me an email or leave a note in the comments.
I am super psyched to announce that our new Chipin Widget Management System finally went live with our first client today. Dell Computers has launched a computer gift registry at dellunleashed.com. To use the site, you must be a current student, faculty member or incoming student. It is three easy steps. Select the system you want, how much you want to collect and enter in your paypal account. Simple! Just like a chipin.com event. So.. who’s gonna help me buy my first Dell?
The Daily Kos ran a story today about the impending closure of the Pretty Bird Woman’s House. Daily Kos readers have rallied to Chipin money to help save the shelter. Let’s see if we can send them some support from Chipin!
According to a recent Amnesty International report,more than one in three American Indian and Alaska Native women will beraped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Far too often,perpetrators of these crimes go unpunished, and victims have nowhere toturn due to poverty, remote geography and tangled legal jurisdictions.
Inthis dire situation, local domestic violence advocates and women’sshelters can make all the difference in saving women from suchviolence; however these resources are chronically under funded. One ofthese shelters, Zintkala Waste Win Oti (“Pretty Bird Woman Houseâ€), hasrun out of funding and will be forced to close in May if new resourcescan’t be found.
The shelter was founded by Jackie Brown Otterafter the kidnapping, rape and murder of her sister (whose Lakota namewas Pretty Bird Woman) and serves the Standing Rock Indian Reservation,on the border of North and South Dakota. The reservation covers over2.3 million acres, and with a per capita income of only $8,615, it’sone of the most destitute regions in the United States. From January2005 to August 2006, 125 domestic violence cases were filed with theStanding Rock Sioux Tribal Court—15 cases per month. Pretty Bird WomanHouse was involved with most of those cases, and without that program’shelp, many cases would have been ignored or withdrawn. If Pretty BirdWoman House does not receive continued funding, it is a foregoneconclusion that the women and children who would have been served bythe program will have to struggle along on their own. Domestic violenceon the Standing Rock Reservation will not be addressed and families,who constitute the spirit of the Reservation, will be weakened anddisenfranchised once again.
With adequate resources, the shelterwould like to fund a director for the program, two advocates, and achildren’s advocate, food and supplies for the shelter, andtransportation for families who need to go places to find relatedservices or to relocate completely in order to escape the violence intheir lives. However, in the short-term, without a small amount offunding, the shelter will not be able to keep their phone lines openthrough May.
You help can make all the difference in keepingLittle Bird Woman House open. Your help can contribute to stopping theepidemic of violence against American Indian women.
If you would prefer to donate directly (rather than through paypal), checks can be sent to:
Pretty Bird Woman House
P.O. Box 596
McLaughlin SD 57642
We are all committed to creating a company that does well by doing good. While tragedies are always a blow to a person’s view on humanity, it is often times the recovery and healing that helps us move on as people and society. The Virginia Tech shooting is and will continue to be a terrible event for those directly impacted and also spectators like us who can only begin to comprehend the terrible loss, fear, anger, and distress that those closest to the event are going through. Money is not the answer to everything that is wrong, but it is an easy way for people to show their support and help create something great from something so wrong. Chipin is proud to announce, in partnership with Network for Good and United Way, a Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund Widget. Chipin has waived all fees for this campaign and all payments will go directly to the VA Tech Foundation Hokie Spirit Fund.
Please help spread the word by spreading the widget. Just click on the copy tab and then the copy button and paste the code on your blog, website, myspace page, etc …
BYU students have used Chipin to collect over $20K from 533 contributors in just a few days to fund a BYU alternative commencement. What a great way to use the Chipin widget.
This weekend I took Sat afternoon off in celebration of Earth Day. Started the day by helping Amoeba select a College to attend and then headed to the beach around noon for a surf at Courts while Hampig got some BT. I then headed out to meet some friends for drinks before the show. The Kokua Festival is a yearly music festival celebrating environmental education and awareness in Hawaii. It was a great time with Eddie Vedder, Jack and friends all having a great time. Needless to say, we were all having a great time. It is nice to remember that it can’t be all startup all the time. An afternoon off to be with friends and family replenishes the soul.
Of course Sunday we were back at it as Kev, Todd and I put the final touches on our new stealth project.
Woke up pre-dawn hoping to go for a quick surf and get wet. It has been weeks. Just another typical Thurs. Phone started ringing around 6 a.m. with a couple business partnerships we are working on (sheesh.. more soon on that), followup conversations to use Chipin to create a speical memorial fund for VA Tech, calls with investors, revise presentation, get ready for Justin and Todd to come in for a working weekend of meetings, and well, the list goes on. Just another typical day in startup land. But you know what… I love it! There’s a fat smile on my face when I realize everything that we can do with Chipin to help people. I am also excited with our new stealth project that Kevin and Olin are leading on and to top it off, Rob should be done with the new Chipin.com site very soon. We are already playing around with the alpha version.
Had a great trip to D.C. and totally wore myself out. Hardly can keep my head up, but must stay awake until tonight. Kev’s Chipin design was just selected as the top nonprofit site design. Lots of interesting conversations that will definitely shape the future of Chipin. More soon!
I’m off to NTEN in the morning and Lani is whipping up some flyers and postcards for our table while Justin is filming a new demo movie of the Chipin white label system. Rob is trying to get a “preview” version of the new chipin.com site up and running. The engineers are starting the next two week iteration to add some features and polish a couple others on the white label. The team is cranking. This is a big month.
In the spirit of the Widget panel I am going to be on, I’ll use this box.net widget to upload our files for the conference.
Pretty neat Wall Street Journal article about online fundraising and Chipin today. You need a WSJ account to read the article, so here’s the text…
Virtuous Reality
How Online Networks Can Boost Good Causes
March 30, 2007
JAKARTA, Indonesia — When Beth Kanter added a few lines of computer code to a Web site in December she proved a simple truth: All the fancy social-networking, Web 2.0 stuff we keep hearing about can have a useful purpose.
The computer code was what is called a Web widget. Think of it as a mini Web page within a larger Web page, a panel where the data come from a different source from the rest of the stuff on that page. Widgets are increasingly popular as a way of delivering little slices of information or content to Web logs (blogs) or other Web pages. Usually, it’s geeky stuff like a clock or a piece of music or video. But in Ms. Kanter’s case it’s about raising money for charity.
Ms. Kanter, a 50-year-old Massachusetts-based consultant to nonprofit organizations, wasn’t new to computers. So when in November Honolulu-based ChipIn launched its fund-raising widget, which allows users to contribute money and also displays how much money has been raised and how much still needs to be raised, she took the plunge; she placed the code on her Web page (sharingfoundation.chipin.com/sharing-foundation) and set a goal — raising a modest $750 to fund Cambodian orphan Leng Sopharath to go to college — and a deadline of a month. She then raided address books, instant-messaging buddy lists and networking sites for people who might be interested. ChipIn handled the donations. She raised $882 in 26 days. (You can find details of her campaign at widgetfundraising.wikispaces.com.)
Raising money online isn’t new. But what’s interesting about Ms. Kanter’s case is that the panel she used taps into something else: the growing trend of social networking online. Web sites, Web services and blogs all thrive on the ability to reach others and build informal, ad hoc networks of people with similar interests and goals. What Ms. Kanter proved is that it’s possible to use these networks to raise money, quickly, without a lot of back-office stuff. As Michael Stein, California-based nonprofit strategist and author of a book on online fund raising, puts it: “Everyone talks about Web 2.0, viral marketing…Beth sat down one afternoon and wanted to make it work for her.”
Ms. Kanter, says ChipIn founder and Chief Executive Carnet Williams, is not alone. Since November, ChipIn widgets have been used for 3,000 events, raising more than $500,000 for them.
Expect to see this kind of thing grow. Peer-to-peer fund raising, or personal fund raising, or distributed fund raising may appear more authentic and appealing to people fatigued by overexposure to TV, newspaper and magazine appeals. “People want to know where their $10 is going and how it is helping,” Mr. Williams says.
The system isn’t perfect. One area ChipIn and other similar services have yet to master is money: While it’s easy to donate via their widgets if you’re a user of online payment service PayPal, this doesn’t work in all currencies and in all countries.
And it remains to be seen whether this is just a fad. After all, donor fatigue is just as likely to kick in online as offline. If every Web site and blog we visit is festooned with tip jars, donate badges and fund-raising bars, we may just switch off. But on the other hand we read the people we trust and we trust the people we know, so it’s more likely that we’ll give to a charity they believe in. That we’re able to monitor what’s happened to our cash just may end up making us more discerning, generous givers.
Widgets may not herald the end of the big, mainstream charities, says Ms. Kanter, but they are here to stay. “Organizations that think it is a fad,” she says, “will be left out.”
