Xio Kikauka, Co-founder and Executive Director of Charity Science, an organization focused on looking into science for good, thought fundraising would ruin her connections with people. However, this is not how her story ends. During her fundraising campaign, she tested this idea that claims ‘if you ask for money you will ruin your friendships’ and she raised $12,000 with a goal of $10,000 and best of all, her friendships remain intact.
Let’s hear what else she has to say.
What’s your organization about?
At Charity Science, we look into the science for doing good. There are tons of studies out there about ‘what works’ and ‘what doesn’t’ so we translate it into people-language and then promote nonprofits who are implementing evidence-based practice and cost-effective approaches to their work. This is so that scientifically minded donors and supporters know if a nonprofit is worth their donation. Some like to call this evidence-based giving.
What’s a fundraising tip that emerged from your story?
We learned the power of matching funds in real-time! A week before our main fundraising event called The Walk we had a match going on. We thought maybe it was a good idea to match donations in real-time instead of a lump sum to encourage people. It made all the difference! It made everybody’s personal fundraising page go up even faster. This spike in giving didn’t happen until the last few days of our campaign. Until that last week, we’d thought we had failed.
What were your fears going in about trying to fundraise?
I had one big fear. I worried that asking people for money would hurt my relationships and that they would see us as pushy, slimy people. Surprisingly, that didn’t happen! People were happy to give. We had quite the opposite reaction. It was as if people were waiting to be asked to help, so we were happy to afford them the opportunity!
How did CauseVox’s platform help you achieve your goal?
The Impact metric
– it was a key feature for us. Being able to write down how many people you’ve helped is really handy!
Up to $5000 is free!
That is huge. We had another fundraising organization trying to get us to go with them and we frankly said, ‘but can we raise $5000 without any fees being taken out?’ They quickly said no and let us go. We couldn’t beat getting $5000 for no fees with CauseVox.
If you could do it over what would you do differently?
Make it easy for people to say “no” so they don’t feel embarrassed or pressured. People should really talk about how fundraising can potentially hurt your connections.
Early on I almost damaged a few relationships by pressuring close friends to be individual fundraisers or to give a donation, but I quickly learned that it wasn’t the best way to go about it.
Some fundraisers say, “Don’t make it easy for them to get out,” but I don’t think that’s true. You want long-term relationships with your supporters. Going forward I will have easy-to-get-out asks because people should only give out of freedom and not obligation.
