Giving Thanks for Giving

Posted by courtney on May 6, 2010 in Blog | 8 comments

We get asked a lot what happens if someone wants to donate MORE than the $25 per month membership contribution to Austin Involved.  (Not that any of the curious folk have OFFERED, mind you).  ;)

We’re grateful for any generous contributions, but the founding board of directors had a serious discussion about membership right at the beginning, and we decided that there would be no membership levels.  No one right at the top who gave a mint, with their name in large font under “Platinum Sponsors”, with the bulk of people on a long, microscope-worthy list.  None of our members are more important than any other, and every member gets a single vote on the Charity of Choice each month.  We wanted there to be one space that young professionals could feel that their donation was equal to everyone else’s rather than a little post-script tacked on the end of an enormous fundraising campaign.

And that’s where the rest of the power of the $25-a-month comes in: we’ll never ask for more than that monthly contribution.  That’s it.  You make your membership donation, and you can feel confident that you’ll never get a letter in the mail saying “Thanks for you donation… now can we have another?”  Because, let’s face it – we see that a lot.  As young people, we tend to give a lot of first-time gifts to nonprofits.  Maybe our friend is running a charity marathon, and we make our $20 gift out of friendship to hem.  Or a friend invites us to a fundraiser benefit, so we buy our $50 ticket.  What happens three weeks later?  We get a letter in the mail thanking us for being a donor, and asking us to contribute again.  But we never even really got introduced to that nonprofit in the first place!

At Austin Involved, we not only want to thank you for your hard work and donations with no strings attached, but we actually want to show you the fruits of your labor by taking you to the nonprofits who accepted your help.  And we’ll never, ever come back to you for more.  Your monthly contribution is what we need.  It’s a good way to get introduced to how nonprofits use your money, and get you prepared for the day you DO want to give more to a specific cause.