If your non-profit needs to fundraise or bring in donations of goods or services, where do you even
start looking for some help? It can be really hard if you are starting a non-profit or before
you've established any kind of community or group of supporters to know where to begin even looking
for places that could support you so in this video I'm going to talk through 10 websites where you
can start researching and finding opportunities for donations for your non-profit organization.
Welcome back! My name is Amber Melanie Smith. If we haven't met before I'm a non-profit founder and
executive director who makes these videos here on YouTube all about making a social impact whether
that is through starting and growing and leading a non-profit organization or socially conscious
business or supporting other causes that you care about outside of that as well my channel is
all about helping you navigate how to do that as always I hope that you find this video is helpful
to you and useful in your work doing good in the community don't forget to give it a like And
subscribe to my channel for more content like this I also have a website foundertofulltime.com where
I have some online courses and other resources for people starting a non-profit or developing a
sustainable fundraising plan that might be helpful to you so feel free to check those out alright
so let's get into these 10 websites I'm gonna break these down by type of giving so the types
of donations you might expect to find and apply for on each of these sites let's get into it the
first category of website I'm going to talk about is where you might research and find and apply for
in-kind donations if you're not yet familiar with what in-kind donations are it basically
means that instead of receiving Straight Cash you're going to receive donated goods or services
so like let's say your organization needs a specific piece of equipment or some software
or some food or other materials those would be in-kind donations the first website I'm
going to talk about is donatestuff.com and from what I can tell this is a pretty new Venture so
it hasn't expanded to every city just yet but I can tell that if you're interested in receiving
support from donatestuff.com in your city and they're not already serving your area you can
enter in your information let them know that you're interested in them expanding to your
area and they will let you know when they have done so so on this website you're going to find
Opportunities to find different types of donations like clothing or furniture or Electronics
and you'll be able to connect with the individuals or the businesses who are offering those types of
donations the second website I'm going to talk about is a little bit more well-known and it's
Good360. so good360.org this is a website where non-profits can go to find excess goods from
usually businesses that are larger so you might find like excess materials from Walmart or from
Amazon or something like that on this website that they're basically just trying to get rid of in
bulk because they for whatever reason don't have a need for those things anymore so as a non-profit
you can set up an account with good 360 you can browse their catalog of different items you might
see things like toys or personal care hygiene items so if you do a lot of like Outreach for
example to the community experiencing homelessness you might be making hygiene kits stuff like that
so you might find stuff like that I I do want to offer the caveat that in some cases on the site
it wouldn't be a straight up free donation there would be maybe a small cost to perhaps manage the
delivery or even small cost that is well below the market value for the goods themselves but if
that's still an arrangement that works for you it can be a good return on investment the third site
I'm going to talk to you about is the shareway so that's the shareway.com and this one has Goods
like the other sites so you might find food and stuff like that but what I'm really excited about
with this website is it's great for your auctions or your raffle type of fundraisers as well so you
can get on there and determine which businesses offer like gift card donations that you could use
for an auction or to buy items that you need for your organization it could go either way
um you know miscellaneous things like alcohol for example example um and I think this one is really
interesting because you don't know how many times I've tried to have some kind of like a Gala or
fashion show or some kind of fundraising event where the cost to have alcohol for our bar was
just prohibitive and so having um a website that could potentially help you get hooked up with some
you know donated or heavily discounted alcohol for your major fundraising event that sounds pretty
appealing so check them out too The Share Way the next category of website I'm going to talk about
is a combination of it could be either where you might find donors who would give you Financial
gifts or possibly in-kind gifts as well and the disclaimer I want to offer for this section is
to my knowledge and if I'm wrong please correct me there is not a website that exists where just
all the donors are just hanging out and you just go and you're like hey I'm so and so here's my
organization can we have some money and they're like sure um there isn't a website like that so
with donors individual donors and building your donor uh base you're gonna have to do a little bit
more work in relationship building before you can just straight up ask for donations but there are
ways to get in front of donors a little bit more and research who they might be so that you can see
if they might be uh possibly interested in your cause so that's kind of the category of websites
I'm going to talk about next so the fourth website I'm going to talk about is non-profit megaphone
and actually I'm going to link to a specific web page on the non-profit megaphone website
that lists about 77 different businesses who are known to give away grants donate stations and
sometimes those in-kind products that we talked about so this isn't a database per se it's more
like a list that can help you with your research so I will link that in the description below this
video so feel free to check those out and browse those 77 companies to get a head start on some
of your brainstorming around fundraising the fifth website is the million dollar list.org and this is
a project that specifically collects data around who in the United States has given and is giving
a million dollar or more gifts to Charities so it's basically kind of a wealth tracking
mechanism and like I offered in my disclaimer before I started on the section of websites
um this isn't a place where you're not gonna like find a you know Joe billionaires contact
information reach out to him and then you know he's gonna give you a million dollars it's not
gonna be like that the idea here is for you to get a sense of who is giving these types
of gifts if there might be any of these donors in your geographical area or perhaps they have
a history of giving to causes or issues similar to the ones that you're tracking or that you are
supporting rather and then identifying if you have any potential personal connections to these people
to make an introduction and if they are interested sharing more about your cause so in other words
you might call it donor prospecting which is something I talk about in some other videos
be sure to to check out some of my other videos about how do you even start building a donor base
and stuff like that in my fundraising playlist on the rest of my channel the sixth website
um similarly to the one I just talked about the million dollar list
um it's not gonna be a place where you just find a donor's email address and reach out and
then they give you money it's going to be another one of those excuse me donor Prospect prospecting
websites and it is fec.org or I'm sorry.gov um or the Federal Election Commission this is where
you can find who is in your area who's giving donations to political campaigns and you can use
this information in a couple of different ways you can see how much they're giving Which can give you
a sense of donor capacity and interest in those particular issues that they're donating to and it
also gives you a sense of just who they are and what um what types of of uh interests they might
have so um you would be able to identify the names of the donors which they are required to
collect to protect election Integrity um and see who they are if they're in your city if they're in
your ZIP code even you can get pretty granular with that data so that's one way of doing some
potential donor prospecting as well the next two websites that I'm going to talk about fall into
the category of matching donations and what this means is um it's businesses or places that will
donate usually an equal amount to a donation that you already have so let's say your existing donor
Mary says I will donate fifty dollars and she works at um just making up a company here um Cisco
and Cisco says well since Mary works for us part of our program uh to offer employee benefits is
that we're going to match any donations she makes to charity um up to a certain amount so then Cisco
also gives you an additional fifty dollars and now you've turned a 50 donation into a hundred dollar
donation so that's an example of how matching gifts work if you are not already familiar it's
also really great incentive for donors because they of course are donating because they want to
make the biggest impact possible for your cause so if the donor knows that if they donate their
company is going to match it that might be an even bigger incentive to give so the seventh
website is double the donation so that's double the donation.com and on double the donation you
can search for companies to see if they have a matching gifts program and if they do then
you can identify any donors or people you know who might work for that company and let them
know you know hey you work for this company did you know that they have a matching gift program
so if you give us a donation they're going to match it and that expands your impactor doubles
your impact in this particular case so it's a really great tool for you to start researching
and making a list of all of those companies that might be offering those matching gifts the eighth
website is Benevity so that's bonavity.com this one works a little bit differently in that it
is mostly a tool for companies to manage their corporate and employee giving programs so you want
your non-profit to be in Benevity's database so that when companies who have these matching gift
programs are searching for Charities to donate to the employees are searching for Charities you want
to make sure your organization is an option that they can see so what you can do is you can go to
Benevity and register for an account and make sure that your organization's information is in there
and that it's up to date and that you're showcasing all of your best impacts for
possible donors the final two websites I'm going to talk about today are also about getting your
organization discovered by donors in different ways so website number nine is giving compass
and this one has a little bit of a longer link because I'm going to link you directly to the
organization submission page so be sure to look for that in the description below this video too
this is basically a website that is designed to help inform potential donors where to give and so
just like the website I just talked about before this you want to make sure your organization is in
this database that its information is correct and up to date so that potential donors can
find you the 10th and final website I'm going to share with you today is the Stanford University's
philanthropist resource directory and this is a little bit of an interesting case once again this
link is longer so I'm going to list it in the description below but basically what this is is
this is a website that's designed for an audience of philanthropists so like I said it's for donors
possibly major donors who are trying to learn more educate themselves and connect themselves
to resources where they can determine where to give their money to make the biggest impact
now in looking at it from the perspective of a non-profit leader here's what I see I see that on
this website there are many different categories of resources there's educational resources Etc
but there's also um a couple of resources where the donors can connect to giving intermediaries
which might be foundations or Donor advised funds or other organizations in their local
communities that are basically advising them on where to give so you want to make sure that your
organization is known by and connected to all of those giving intermediary organizations donors
can't give to your cause if they don't know it exists and these are kind of like the Brokers
of the non-profit fundraising world right they're going to be advising those High net worth donors
on where to give so you want to get in front of them so what I would do is I would look at this
website and I would identify who are all these giving intermediaries in my area or near my area
or wherever my organization serves of make a list of them I would find contact information for them
I would reach out and I would ask how can my non-profit get on your radar get on the radar
of the donors that you're talking to is there a place I can submit my information can we
meet can we have a chat I would be building a relationship with these people because if they
know your organization like I said then they can recommend you to those High net worth donors all
right so at this point I'd love to hear what do you think uh have you tried any of these websites
already have you gotten any success from them share your thoughts share your comments uh Below
in the in the comment section also if you know of other websites that you think would be helpful to
the change maker Community here share those as well um let us grow this list of resources for
everyone out there trying to raise money to make an impact as I mentioned before if you're in the
process of starting a non-profit or developing a sustainable fundraising plan for your non-profit
or you need some other resources check out my website founder to fulltime.com where I have
those online courses that may be able to assist you I also have a newsletter for change makers
and non-profit leaders that you can subscribe to I send out news and information and sometimes
funding opportunities that I come across so be sure to get on that as well finally I have a group
on Facebook called Change the World or Bust - we have over 4 000 people in there from around the
world all trying to make an impact and we hope that you can join us over there too! So that's
all I've got for you today. Once again I'm Amber Melanie Smith and I hope to see you next time bye!