Showing Donors What Their Gifts Will Do Helps Fundraising Grow 75%

Read Global’s year-end fundraising innovation: Showing donors the number of people they could help by making gifts of certain sizes. For instance, a $50 gift would provide a woman in the developing world with a year of leadership training; $5,000 would finance a year of training for anyone in a village who is interested.

What happened: The literacy and economic-development charity asked donors to select whether they wanted to help one person, one family, or many people at a time. It also alerted its supporters to a $50,000 matching gift for their donations.

Growing support: The number of people donating to the charity last year rose 72 percent over supporters in 2012. The charity achieved that in part by attracting more donors who gave online and contributed up to $100—positive signs for a group that seeks to increase its younger donors and decrease its reliance on wealthy contributors, said Tina Sciabica, executive director. As of last week, the organization had raised $46,000, but Ms. Sciabica said she was optimistic about hitting the $50,000 goal because checks were still coming in.

The social-media factor: The campaign got a boost when Upworthy, a site that aggregates viral content and boasts a viewership of 5 million, pointed people to a video about a 47-year-old Nepalese woman who learned to read because of the organization’s literacy services and then started a group to help other women do the same.

2013 results: Individuals donated $449,000, which was 75 percent more than in 2012, helped by the charity’s appeals for supporters to ask friends, relatives, and others to give and its aggressive use of social media.

Approach it will use in 2014: Encouraging supporters to do even more in asking friends and relatives to help the charity.