Computer Support Blog

In the past, school fundraisers have mostly involved having students sell low-profit items that most people purchased out of a sense of obligation while the school received less than half the money raised.  For a school district to raise money often involves proposing tax increases and waiting half a year for a budget to pass, which seldom does in some places.  EdBacker is a startup that takes advantage of the popularity of crowdfunding and applies it specifically toward PTA group and school fundraising.  In fact, its creator refers to it as “PTA made easy.”  More than just raising money, it is a tool that consolidates volunteer signups and any other business a PTA performs into one platform.  Not only that, it makes the fundraising aspect easier, more social, and more transparent. Read more »

Groups looking to throw a fundraiser need a place to do so, and a restaurant is often a good option.  A launch party or even simple information meeting at a restaurant can help to bring in business during its slower business hours.  An arrangement between a restaurant and a group, particularly one hoping to bring in a large group of people, can take a long time and a lot of work.  This is where GroupRaise comes in, helping them find each other more efficiently than traditional methods.  Its creators tout it as local community networking for groups and restaurants.  Its site will let restaurants post available time slots that groups can request online, and the group earns a percentage of the sales for its cause while restaurants can give back to the community.  The restaurant does not need to offer discounts or coupons, but can give a cause some of its profit that is essentially extra by reaping the benefit of having more customers who would not normally be there at that time. Read more »

One would imagine that fundraising with the Internet would make the process simple and efficient, but for many nonprofits, that simply isn’t the case.  Many fundraising platforms, whether they be locally accessed software or cloud-based services, make things unnecessarily difficult for nonprofits.  Some platforms force donors to redirect to another site before they can input their information to donate.  Others have very rigid rules for the types of fundraising they can support, and a significant number of services take percentages of the donations that their platform processes.  Cool person in technology Roderick Campbell founded CommitChange to be a fundraising technology that actually does make the process more efficient and simpler for nonprofits.  Read more »

Fundraising is a major concern for anyone running a nonprofit, school or community organization.  Large networks of regular donors are essential to keeping any of these organizations both alive and accomplishing goals that are part of their stated missions.  However, fundraising is also a complex and draining process.  Building a network, maintaining contacts, hosting events and converting new donors are all difficult tasks.  Even more problematic for many of these organizations, they are not selling a product or service that directly benefits the people paying them and therefore, converting people into donors becomes far more difficult.  Fortunately, there is a cool product called Kimbia that provides a web platform that nonprofits, schools and other fundraisers can use to both manage and optimize their efforts.  Read more »

Even when people don’t have the money to donate to nonprofits and other causes, they are often willing to do anything they can to help.  Cool person in technology Mike Tang founded Raise5 in order to give people an outlet where they can use their skills to raise money for specific nonprofits and charity organizations.  On Tang’s website, people offer services for a price, but with a twist.  Rather than pay the person who provides a service directly, all money goes instead to a charitable organization of the worker’s choosing.  Users can offer services that cost anywhere between $5 and $50 on Raise5.  “Freelance fundraisers”, as Tang’s website calls them, post whatever service they want to perform on Raise5’s online marketplace.  These service providers advertise what charity they are supporting on each posting so buyers know what cause they are donating money to with each purchase.  Anyone who wants to offer services on the site, but has technical issues while creating a profile or posting, can get help from a professional cloud computer support service. Read more »