Ever since Firstgiving got going, we’ve been on a mission to connect people to the causes they care about in a very tangible way–enabling people to raise money for non-profits doing good work all over the US and all over the world.

Last week Limeduck pointed me to a story about how his friend Hillary connected to two causes she cares about in another tangible and meaningful way: donating a kidney.  Coincidentally, her causes (disease prevention and animal rights) are two of the most popular causes among Firstgiving fundraisers. You can read the whole story here; it’s posted on the Girlie Girl Army Blog, where I also discovered what laparoscopic means.  Here’s an excerpt:

Once I saw the matching donors ads, I knew I would have to donate – how can you turn someone away when you’ve seen their face and heard their desperate story? In fact, I wished I had a thousand extra kidneys to donate. But I only had one, so how to choose?

Lots of the people self-identified as animal lovers, with some including photos of themselves with their companion animals in their ads. As a vegan and animal/veg activist I knew I would definitely want to donate to one of them. And then I came across an ad without a picture that included this text:

“I am a retired Veterinarian from Colorado. My wife and I started a no-kill animal shelter 20 years ago to give animals a second chance at life. I would like a second chance too. We have invested everything to help save the animals.”

My kidney starting singing sweet songs of love, having found its dream recipient. His name is Bill Suro, and the shelter he and his wife Nanci started in Denver is called MaxFund.

Fortunately for Bill, Nancy and Hillary, this story has a very happy ending.  I was particularly drawn to the part about how Hillary was inclined to donate to someone who shared her passion for animal rights.  And here’s the part that’s so intuitive that you might have missed the importance of it at first glance: Bill’s personal story immediately stuck out to her and helped her put her plan into action.

This is the same proverbial story that we see over and over again from our successful fundraisers.  When people use their fundraising pages to tell their personal stories, they are helping to connect their networks to causes in a powerful way.  Some donors will make a donation because they themselves are invested in the cause, some because they are invested in the fundraiser’s effort, and some for both reasons.  For some good examples of pages with personal stories, take a look at Lindsey, Sarah, and Rick’s fundraising pages.

And we can’t say it enough-tell your story and share it for fundraising success.