Crowdfunding: a promise land or an avenue of broken dreams and disappointment? Find out if crowdfunding is the right solution for your organization, and how to bring in dollars, grow your supporter list, and make an impact.
Christian Lefer - Moderator
Christian LeFer is CEO of Yippiekiyay Nonprofit Solutions and a board member of Tech4Good Denver. He has raised millions and run dozens of successful campaigns during more than 15 years experience fundraising for both startups and charities – as well as creating & marketing solutions to benefit the nonprofit sector.
Whether expanding civil liberties or as a certified therapeutic foster and adoptive parent and advocate, Christian’s lifelong battles against Simon Bar Sinister evolved into an overriding mission is to empower heroes across the world to make an impact for good.
When he’s not enjoying the outdoors with his family, Christian escapes to Colorado’s beautiful woodlands to hold the throttle of his KTM dirt bike wide open!
Dana Rinderknecht
Dana joined the Community First Foundation staff in December 2007 and serves the organization as its director of online giving. After she joined Community First Foundation, she helped launch ColoradoGives.org, a year-round, online giving website featuring nearly 1,900 Colorado nonprofit organizations. Three years later, she was the driving force behind the introduction of Colorado Gives Day, the state’s largest online giving day. Through these two programs, more than $155 million has been raised online for Colorado nonprofits.
Dana Rinderknecht Presentation
Ray Burrasca
Ray Burrasca is currently founder and organizer of Colorado Crowdfunding, the largest crowdfunding group in Colorado dedicated exclusively to the subject of crowdfunding. He also services as managing director for full-service, Denver-based investment banking/financial advisory services firm Windom Peaks Capital, LLC. Ray is a finance and legal executive with more than 40 years of success in corporate finance-related positions and has a deep background in manufacturing, distribution and services businesses across varied industry segments. He is experienced in international business including travel to Western Europe (U.K., France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland), as well as Latin America (Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama) to conduct business. Ray has led legal and financial/accounting initiatives for both small (start-up) companies, as well as large manufacturing companies with revenues in excess of $5 billion per annum.
Mia Fill
Mia Fill runs the CU-Boulder Crowdfunding program (www.colorado.edu/crowdfunding), a resource for CU-Boulder students, faculty, and staff to raise money for academic initiatives. Responsible for training and overseeing all campaign teams from development to execution to close, Mia has trained and advised over 150 members of the CU Boulder campus to raise nearly $100,000 for nineteen projects since arriving at the University in June 2015. Prior to this position, Mia worked in the Advancement Communications sector of a fundraising consulting firm in Chicago, IL, managing 30+ clients in the nonprofit fields of higher education, academic medical, national and global charities, and arts and culture with campaign goals ranging between $50M and $1.3B. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Illinois, and is currently pursuing her MBA at the Leeds School of Business.
To capitalize on the momentum from the July forum, we chose mobile donations as the topic for the September forum.
Donations on the Go: Mobile Tools to Enhance Giving
To capitalize on the momentum from the July forum, we chose mobile donations as the topic for the September forum. It was broken down into three main categories:
- Text-to-give & mobile apps: Angela gave an overview of how text-to-give and text-to-donate works, as well as key reasons to always capture donor phone numbers. She also touched on the pros and cons of spending time and money developing an app.
- Mobile donation pages: Mark talked about best practices for donation pages, as well as how to keep your brand consistent between website and mobile. Mark’s takeaway is to think about what people are coming to your site to do, and then make it easy. Have others test your site!
- Giving tools: Dana outlined what Colorado Gives looks like for 2015: donations are up from last year! She also shared her wisdom on crowdfunding and peer to peer best practices, as well as mobile strategy.
See our expert’s amazing PowerPoint presentations below!
It was a great event thanks to our attendees and expert panelists:
Angela Whaley, Client Experience Director at mGive
Angela is an expert at maximizing results for thousands of U.S. mobile giving and engagement campaigns for nonprofits. She has orchestrated the most successful mobile fundraising campaigns in history, including the Haiti Earthquake Response with the American Red Cross. She holds a BS in Business Management from Colorado State University and an Entrepreneurship Certificate.
Angela’s presentation
Mark Mitton, President of Carbon8
As President of Carbon8, Mark offers his creative passion and strategic branding and digital marketing experience to Carbon8’s clients. He has appeared on MSNBC’s Business Makeover as a digital marketing expert. Mark has an MBA in international business from the University of South Carolina. He also serves as President of the Board for the Parkinson Association of the Rockies.
Mark’s presentation
Dana Rinderknecht, Director of Online Giving at Community First Foundation
Dana joined the Foundation in December 2007 after serving on the staff and board of several nonprofits, including director of resource development at Dental Aid, Inc., executive director at Family Pathways of Colorado, and development officer at Work Options for Women. Dana holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Denver and bachelor’s of science in applied math from Colorado State University.
Dana’s presentation