I’ve come across many selfless people while working here at Firstgiving.com. Not just in my experience with donors but with co-workers as well. The most surprising thing I’ve seen thus far has been people honoring their favorite cause by accepting donations in lieu of birthday (or wedding) gifts.
You can easily setup a firstgiving.com page in honor of a family member, friend or celebrity. A while back Bon Jovi had a site set up for his birthday. A fan set up a firstgiving.com birthday page for him and donated to his favorite charity. Bon Jovi fans raised a total of $874 that was donated to Habitat for Humanity. More recently, a fan of Laurel Holloman also created a firstgiving.com page to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. She has raised over $18,000! That is actually what inspired our fellow Firstgiving birthday boy to celebrate his birthday this way; and I hope it has inspired you.
Both the young and old have taken part in this new way to give. Little Cassidy took it upon herself to create a page so that people can donate to help scientists searching for a cure for food allergies. She has been allergic to peanuts her whole life and that is all she wanted for her 7th birthday, simply a cure. There is also Aaron and Allie, brother and sister, who have the neurodegenerative disease Friedreich’s ataxia. With high hopes for a cure, they are wishing to raise $10,000 for their birthday. They passed the halfway point in just two months! Even one of our very own Firstgiving employees, who shall remain nameless, is turning 29 for the 10th time this month and he is buying dinner for his friends so long as they donate to the American Heart Association through his fundraising page. All for the sake of giving, in celebration of their birthday.
The great thing about these birthday fundraising pages is not just that it’s selfless act that people are exuding to support charities they care about or people they love but the fact that the giving extends far past their actual birth date. Months after these pages are created and birthdays have passed, people are still donating. This trend is slowly, but surely, catching on.
Agree that giving to a charity is a great gift for a birthday. One option that ties well into birthdays is a donation to Cheerful Givers where funds are used to purchase toys that go into birthday gift bags and are given to less fortunate parents to give to their child on their birthday. Visit http://www.cheerfulgivers.org for more info.
This isn’t a new idea–we had our wedding gifts donated to The Hunger Project in 1975–but the technology makes it fresh and new. I suspect the Vietnam generation as well as our kids and grandkids will make good target market for this type of fundraising, especially if they are recognized and appreciated on line.
[...] them. Several of my favorite creative firstgiving.com pages that we’ve noted were reallocating birthday and wedding gifts towards a cause or charity, the gift of Symmetry and Alex’s Lemonade Stand. Obviously the ideas do [...]