The (non)Giving Season

If you are wondering how the donation season went around here at BECA.org, don't ask.

It sucked.
  
Donations were down at least 50% from holiday season 2009.

The conventional wisdom in the U.S. non-profit universe is that 90% of your donations come in the last two weeks in December. I guess it's a tax deduction thing.

Anyway, if that really is the case, then we are in for a very long year. [gulp]

Not sure why the December fundraising went so poorly.

I thought we had all our bases covered.

We produced a nifty video campaign.

We reached out to all our newsletter subcribers.

We reached out to our previous sponsors.

We bugged our Facebook fans.

I phoned my Mom. (No panic there, she stepped up. Always does.) :)

Maybe we'll send out a poll to find out why people weren't interested in chipping in.

It could be that the peer-to-peer sponsorship model doesn't have any legs and is not sustainable in the longer term. This is a possibility.

Nevertheless, none of this is in the least bit disheartening to me personally. The program here in Nicaragua is going good and we still plan to expand to two more cities.

If it means changing gears and eventually coming up with a different sustainable funding mechanism, so be it.

Rest assured. There is no way in the world I'm giving up that easy.

Besides, I'm having way too much fun.

For those of you who did chip in, thanks a lot. Thanks for believing in what we are doing. Every buck or two really goes a long way here.