America’s Giving Challenge - Beth Wins Again
by Michael HoffmanFriday, February 22nd, 2008
Once again Beth Kanter and her friends at the Sharing Foundation won the latest philanthropy competition. (If you didn’t help Beth win, you can still give $10 or more to the Sharing Foundation online and help kids in Cambodia.)
The whole giving competition thing is complicated and I am not sure it’s healthy. There is a mad scramble to get donations in a certain time period. Organizations push on their network, “Give now!” “We need you!” “We want to win.” But unless you are an expert like Beth, you don’t usually have much of a chance.
Beth has written about her win and here is the response I left for her. You can read more about it on Beth’s blog.
Beth, you are really great at this. Mazal Tov yet again on a job well done.
This whole competition thing has been a good model for your strengths, and I have given to this worthy cause every time you asked.
But I wonder about all the orgs who went down this road because of the publicity but were so less equipped than you to be successful. I saw lots of questions about this on the PX list and elsewhere and thought to myself, these poor suckers, they are going to spend lots of time putting this together, will get little response, and people like Beth — with big and active networks — will eat their lunch. They don’t have a chance.
I also wonder if this whole competition thing is sustainable. How many of these could you do before you create fatigue in your network? And, is there a way to get the folks who gave with the urgency of this campaign to have a deeper engagement with the Sharing Foundation?
Would love your thoughts on all of this in another post.
Michael
