Connection Café: Being brave at the top of the slide

	Being brave at the top of the slide
	Posted by Jennifer Darrouzet at Feb 20, 2009 05:10 PM CST Categories: Fundraising, Nonprofit Trends, Technology

View-atop-the-slide Roberta Sladovnik was brave as a child - she's an alum of (and now a fundraiser at) the Colorado Childrens’ Chorale where she took the stage and sang at an early age. But I was first alerted to her bravery by the posting she made (excerpted below) in an online community, where I saw her answering Jessica Curtiss' question about creating new donation forms.

I love the collaborative way that non-profits work together. Jessica spends her energy working to eliminate the disease of substance addiction at the SAMA Foundation. Roberta's organization changes the lives of children through the choral arts. While I believe that children who are "locally grown, globally loved" (as the Chorale describes their kids) are put on a path less likely to struggle with addiction, there's no clear overlap in the two organizations. Yet here was Roberta sharing her expertise in exchange for no direct benefit to herself or her organization.

*******************Roberta's post*********************

Jessica:

I created a new donation form by using my original donation form (done by Convio), copying it and then editing it. It was pretty easy to do and it's working. You just need to make sure that if it's for a special campaign, separate/different from your "standard" donations, you create a separate campaign for it.

I went to Fundraising and then to the Donation Management page. There, you can create a new campaign. If you click on the "All Donation Forms" tab, you can see your donation forms and then simply copy the one you want to use and then save with a different name. The editor walks you through each step chronologically and you don't have to publish anything right away. It also lets you test your form. I found that I just had to be brave and play with it. The key, though, is to COPY the form, not edit it. Otherwise, you end up changing the form that Convio set up for you.

Don't know if that's helpful or not, but I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Both of my forms are working and my new form has its own campaign that is tracking correctly for me. If you want to see what I've done, here are links to the forms:

https://secure3.convio.net/cochrl/site/Donation2?idb=1637233917&df_id=1220&1220.donation=form1 -- this is my original Convio form
https://secure3.convio.net/cochrl/site/Donation2?idb=1775077442&df_id=1260&1260.donation=form1 - this is the new form that I created by copying the original form

Roberta
[This is re-posted with Roberta's permission. Note that Roberta also included her phone number for other members of her online community, but I've omitted it here on this public blog.]

*******************************************************

And the tone is so encouraging and helpful. She admits she has to muster some bravery. She gives herself permission to play. She provides examples and click-by-click instructions.

And her input is truly appreciated. I called Jessica last week and asked her about her experience with online collaboration between peers. Jessica said it had indeed been very helpful, especially seeing how other organizations were using the tools she shared. Real-world examples are the most valuable. And hearing strategic marketing advice from my coworkers chiming in has made a difference, too.

Launching a donation form online that's compelling and complete, secure and reliable can be scary, just like hitting "send" on an email bound for thousands of donors. But I also really like the way Roberta said she let herself "play". Because that's the feeling at the top of a water-slide, too. You can't see the endpoint. But with the cost difference between one donation form and 500 donation forms being nothing, this ride has infinite possibilities.

When the cost difference between a little computer memory and a lot of computer memory became negligible, we got the Mac OS and Windows to replace "the command line". And when the cost difference between downloading a little data and downloading unlimited data went away, we all got YouTube. I'm excited to see what Roberta and Jessica and many others do with online fundraising, one brave act at a time, encouraged by each other.

Being brave at the top of the slide

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