Website Spotlight: Deposit-a-Gift

Dana Ostomel is the founder and Chief Gifting Officer of Deposit a Gift, a crowdfunding platform that allows anyone to easily create an online fundraising campaign for an organization, school or personal need. Whether you're a nonprofit or school looking to get into crowdsourced fundraising, or an individual looking to raise money for a personal project, disaster relief or help with medical bills, Deposit a Gift makes it easy. 

I had a chance to interview Dana to learn more about kids and charity, and about Deposit a Gift.

1) Why is it important to raise children with a sense of charity?

Raising children with a sense of charity is important because it teaches empathy and gives them a new perspective is inherently not about them. Finding reasons and ways to give back to the world helps them see beyond their personal situation and surroundings to understand what others are going through. If they are the lead on a charitable initiative, it also teaches accountability and gives a sense of self-worth. With the use of crowdfunding technology it is easier than ever before for kids to launch campaigns that have an impact that reverberates far beyond their initial reach.

2) What are some ways parents can instill a sense of charity in their kids?

I think that a good way to teach a charitable attitude is to live a charitable attitude. Most kids don't want to be told what to do, but they do admire and want to emulate their parents, so getting kids to act in an empathic and charitable way can often be a natural result of simply watching how you treat and talk about others, whether it be taking the time to visit someone who is sick, donating to a cause you care about or defending someone who others are making fun of.

3) What are the advantages of using crowdfunding sites with kids?

Using a crowdfunding site with your kids is great because it is something that you can do together. They can sit at the computer together and determine what they want to say, what kinds of pictures they want to use and what they want the goal to be. When most kids think about fundraising, they think of what they know and have seen, so they often dream up ideas that are physical and local. The nice thing about creating a crowdfunding site with Deposit a Gift is that it allows you to build an online complement to any charitable initiative so that you can broaden your reach. Think of it as creating an "online home" for your fundraising event. The idea of crowdfunding with Deposit a Gift is to expand your meaning of community by being able to tap into your online world of friends and family. So for example, let's say your elementary school-aged kid wanted to have a lemonade stand or a bake sale to raise money for a friend or family member who is sick. They could still have the in-person stand, but they could make it hi-tech by having posters with the campaign site URL on it instructing people to donate right there on their phones (or they could have a computer or ipad present as well). They could take pics of themselves running the stand and then upload it to the site to show their hard work. At that point it's a great time to start blasting it out via email and posting on FB and Twitter to get more people involved. This way your "community" is no longer limited to who comes to the stand. And if it's a really good cause, especially driven by a child, most people won't want anything in exchange; they'll just want a quick and easy way to be able to give, and that's what Deposit a Gift provides with our super-easy-to-use fundraising platform.

4) What are the advantages of Deposit a Gift over other sites?

Deposit a Gift is a way to take your fundraising efforts online in a more engaging, social and creative way. Our platform allows you to create a micro-site for your campaign, so it's more than just a donation page. It has built-in multimedia and social media capabilities that make it easy to tell your story in a way that compels people to give and makes it easy for them to share. The concept is called 'crowdfunding' and it's all about using your social network to reach more people and raise more money than ever before. You want to think of it as a way to expand your meaning of community; with in-person events your reach is limited, but when you take it online, you have the ability to build momentum and connect with all of your networks, and then hopefully have it be passed along to the networks of your contacts. The idea is that when you are fundraising, you want to reach as many people as possible, and you want a site that is set up in a persuasive way so that when people receive it that are less connected to the initiative, they are still drawn–in and want to give. With Deposit a Gift, you can create a totally customizable fundraising site in minutes that does this for you. We've seen people use it for everything from a complement to traditional yearly benefits or to launch a brand new fundraiser online.

Advantages of Deposit a Gift over other sites:

The value of the Deposit a Gift fundraising platform goes way beyond just being a processor of funds, it is essentially a marketing tool that allows you to showcase your work in a personal way and encourage people to get involved — think of it as the online "home" for your campaign. 

• Our site is built for consumers with high touch customer service:
• It is very user friendly so it doesn't feel like another complicated "thing you have to do." As you can imagine, with our roots in registry (and catering to brides), we've established a very hands-on approach to customer service to help with the heavy-lifting and get users set up as quickly and easily as possible.
• It is not 'all or nothing':
• You keep everything that you raise.
• The design is customizable and personal vs the traditional sterile/transactional model — we have the biggest selection of backgrounds to match any brand, mood or situation:
• It's meant to be warm and inviting to engage people to give, especially when passed along. (Though we don't purport that every campaign can go viral, there is something to be said for a site that showcases the cause to increase the likelihood of sharing and raising from secondary and tertiary contacts.)
• Easy to share both on and offline:
• Built in social tools and a custom URL that you choose.
• Competitive pricing:
• In the crowdfunding space we're one of the lowest, if not the lowest. And compared to traditional software options you are familiar with, we are definitely lower. The fees are between 2-4 cents on the dollar for everything you raise.

If you want to learn more, check out the how it works page, like Deposit a Gift, follow @DepositaGift, or visit the Deposit a Gift Pinterest page.