GiveMN raises over $5.5 million

Posted at 1:39 PM on November 17, 2009 by Marianne Combs (14 Comments)
Filed under: Funding

As I write this, the ticker at GiveMN states $5,532,363 has been give since 8am to 2,206 Minnesota non-profits. Now that's a great day by any standards, so congratulations the folks at GiveMN, and their supporters.

However I'm a little concerned that people still think that if they give money to a non-profit on the GiveMN site today, their donation will be "matched" - i.e. a $25 pledge will earn the non-profit $50. This is simply not the case.

As I wrote yesterday, a group of foundations gave GiveMN $500,000 in to use as "matching funds" to inspire people's generosity. That set amount is being spread out over all the donations made today.

So as of 1:30pm, that $500,000 equals approximately ten cents on the dollar. As the number of donations accumulate, that ratio will drop further. Yet the main page on GiveMN continues to state that "all donations will be matched!"

You have to scroll down and look at the detailed writing to find these words:

Every donation made on Give to the Max Day will receive a portion of a $500,000 match. The exact amount matched per dollar donated will be determined after Give to the Max Day concludes, and the $500,000 in matching funds will be divided by the total donation amount raised over the 24-hour period.

It should also be noted that while Executive Director Dana Nelson says she hopes GiveMN will always be free to participating non-profits, that depends entirely on funding. In addition to relying on its funding partners, GiveMN is soliciting donations today right along with all the other non-profits.

A couple of people have asked me "so does this mean that foundations are paying for credit card transactions with money that would have gone directly to non-profits?" I put the question to Dana Nelson. Her response? Minnesota foundations view GiveMN as a lucrative investment that will inspire more people to give more generously to more non-profits. They're thinking of it as seed money, and as such, money well spent.

Nelson says she's overwhelmed by the response that's come in so far today. Her hope is that word continues to spread about the generosity of Minnesotans, and even more are inspired to join in.

GiveMN: More questions, more answers

Posted at 4:35 PM on November 17, 2009 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Funding

Earlier this afternoon I took a look at the top ten ranking for non-profits in GiveMN's "Give to the Max Day." 1st place: Second Harvest Heartland. 2nd place: Animal Humane Society. 3rd place: Desiring God Ministries.

Now the first two I'd heard of, but the third didn't ring a bell. My colleague Bob Collins brought me up to speed. It turns out the man at the pulpit of Desiring God Ministries, John Piper, is pretty adamant when it comes to homosexuality. Here's an excerpt from one of his sermons:

We want to be a church where homosexual people can either overcome their sexual disorder, or find the faith and courage and help and love and power to live a triumphant, joyful, celibate life with the disorder.

My immediate reaction was "do Minnesota foundations realize they are supporting this sort of worldview with the GiveMN site? And that this organization may end up winning an extra $1,000 for generating so many donations today?"

I called the Bush Foundation to find out its stance, and was connected with C. Scott Cooper, Director of Engagement and Communications. He said situations like this are bound to come up.

This is democracy in action - it's people deciding for themselves where to put their dollars and our focus has really been on making sure that it's as easy as possible for people to make their contributions when non-profits are providing all sorts of critical services in the community and are suffering because of the economy.

Certainly there are non-profits that do all kinds of different things, some of which we may love or we may hate, but the idea behind GiveMN is to make it as easy as possible for people to give and have their dollars go farther.

Fair enough - so some people may give to Desiring God Ministries, while others may give to Planned Parenthood.

Meanwhile, as I write this, GiveMN's total donations ticker registers $8,583,342. Only the non-profits themselves know how much they've made today - that information is not readily available to other users. So I can't tell you who's making the most off of this.

However I can calculate that non-profits stand to gain less than six cents on the dollar in todays "match." I asked Cooper about the confusion surrounding the match, and how some donors, and some arts organizations were expecting at least a 50 cent match on the dollar for every donation made. Cooper says it's unfortunate that some people didn't get the message clearly.

The initial plan had been to give away this five hundred thousand dollars in matching money to the first million dollars in contributions during the day. But then some concerns were raised about the volume of traffic that would happen at 8 oclock in the morning and so the decision was made to spread the money throughout the day and the amount of the match would depend on the amount of contributions made in the course of the day.

Cooper says the irony is that Minnesota's generosity is what's caused the value of the matching funds to go down.

Because it's going so well, a huge amount has been contributed - it is going to be a smaller amount per contribution. It's actually a great problem to have. When you think about it, the combination of these things, the covering of the transaction costs, and the partial match means instead of making a contribution and having 95 cents of your dollar get to the organization, this organization is getting maybe 1.08 for every dollar you give, which seems like a good thing and a good reason to give today.

"Give to the Max Day" ends at 8am tomorrow morning.