Unofficial Results for America's Giving Challenge

Published November 06, 2009 @ 01:05PM PT

Sponsored by Causes, Parade Magazine, the Case Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the second annual America's Giving Challenge has come to an end. According to the unofficial results, the Overseas China Education Foundation has absolutely obliterated the competition, raising $188,000 from over 14,000 individual donations and thus winning the $50,000 prize money.

As I wrote last week, there was clearly something in the water of this years competition, as a few of the groups were able to generate a staggeringly higher number of donations than the others. The competition worked by awarding bounty sums of money to groups that were able to generate the greatest number of individual donations (vs. the greatest total amount of money).

The $50,000 prize winner had 14,000+ donations, the two $25,000 winners had 12,000 and 10,000+, and then with only one exception, the nine $10,000 winners had between 1,600 and 2,500 donations.

As you can see there is a huge spread, and that spread was established early. I wonder how the few standout groups performances dampened the competition. I know that I stopped realistically thinking that a number of the groups I was pulling for could win the $50,000 within just a week or two of the conference launching. If others felt like I did, they may not have been very compelled to give.

It's a fascinating case study in online fundraising and the game that goes on between organizations and donors. It's also cool to see $245,000 in resources leveraged to generate about $2,000,000 in additional donations. That 10x leverage is the sort of promise that internet fundraising holds.

Official results will be announced on or before November 20th.

(Photo: tonylanciabeta)

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Author

Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.