This Tiny Button Could be a Game-Changer for Non-Profits
Last night, I let my warm audience know that I’m co-hosting a donation drive with Creating Coding Careers—an organization that helps underestimated people break into tech in high-paying jobs. This Tuesday morning, we've already reached the $1,000 mark towards our *$30,000 by Friday* goal!
I’m stoked about this for CCC, a non-profit I’ve known about and supported for years. But I think the way we’re raising the funds could also open up doors for thousands of non-profits around the U.S.!
We’re using something called a “Bumpsale” (indie company owned by a Black entrepreneur named Rodney).
This particular pricing mechanism allows you to paste just 3 lines of code onto a landing page and take payments in steadily increasing increments with each purchase. In our case, we set it so that the first donor paid $1, the second paid $2, the third paid $3, and so on.
Because $44 of those were purchased literally overnight, we hit $1,000 pretty quickly, while the donors paid only between $1 and $44. Compare that to 10 donors paying $100 each or 5 donors paying $200, etc.
Not only have we gamified the donation drive by using Bumpsale, I've also donated valuable bonuses for every single person who donates, regardless of the amount. So each person receives more than $1,000 in courses—that I am currently selling—for free.
The way Bumpsale helps us deliver these bonuses to them is two-fold: 1) we’re able to add a redirect url while creating the bumpsale, and 2) we’re able to add a quick message to a receipt email that each person gets.
Our goal is for the donation amount to hit $250 by Friday so that we can reach the $30,000 needed by CCC before end of month. The last I checked, it was at $45 in less than 12 hours. I know between my audience and CCC’s alumni and donors, we have a good chance of making this happen.
I’ve used Bumpsale for 4 years for my for-profit entities (think course launches, digital product bundles, etc), and am currently their customer who has had the most success with the product. Indeed, I’m featured on the website.
But my hope is that every non-profit who sees this gives this a try this week!
Here’s a winning process:
Set up a Bumpsale — it takes about 5mins and Rodney is super responsive if you run into any issues. *You must have a Stripe account to link to it.
If you don’t have a landing page like on Teachable, Wordpress, etc, I have created a free resource called uBump that helps you spin up a simple Bumpsale landing page in moments. I have seen the lack of a landing page as the bottleneck for so many entrepreneurs that I figured out how to make it super simple.
If you can/want, offer a digital gift/bonus for anyone who donates. It could be a simple as writing their name on your website for all to see. Or you could get even more creative and offer a course, video series, or live Zoom meetup just for donors.
Announce it on your website, send out a few emails in a short amount of time, and tell people in-person. If you can make the url really simple or provide a QR code, that helps (I show you how on uBump). Strategize timing around key dates like: “end of the month”, holidays, special occasions like your NP’s anniversary, etc, to build interest and momentum.
Remember that the higher the donation price gets, the more it really starts to sing. Meaning the first 100 donations at a $1 start and $1 increments will be amazing, and will bring in a whopping $5k or so (wow!)…but the next 100 (from 101-200) will bring in $15k! If you’re able to get to the heights of $201-$300, it would bring in another $25k! So the point is, don’t take your foot off of the pedal in those last moments of the raise.
And yes, I know you’re asking if you can do this even if you’re a for-profit. Absolutely! That’s the main use case, in fact. And I’m excited to see what happens when someone with a mailing list of 100,000+ gives this a shot. It would be record-breaking (my current record for one campaign is around $27,000 in a few days!)
But I have heard from so many NPs who are struggling right now…this could unlock a few hundred or even thousand dollars for you quickly, in a way that a straight-forward donation drive may not.
Please spread the word about Bumpsale to all of your friends so that they give it a try, too.
How to donate to Create Coding Careers (and unlock $1k-worth of bonuses):
Make your donation (you’ll see the current Bumpsale amount).
Once you donate, check the redirect link you get and your email for your courses :)
Tip: Make sure you use this green button under Mike's video for the Bumpsale:
This is a great way to share the support of non profits. Some do it with a calendar type of fundraiser, each day is a value. Someone can choose 30th of the month and give 30, one person may pick a week and give the equivalent, but the non profit gets a couple hundred with just a few people! Hopefully I've described it reasonably.
Arlan I’m loving that you shared this with back end info on company. I so appreciate you💕💕