Starting today, FundRazr gives you a brand new power to ignite passion and raise money for causes you and your friends care about—right on your Facebook Timeline. For some time now, FundRazr has provided individuals, groups and organizations the ability to create compelling social fundraising campaigns on Facebook. Now, you can simply add the FundRazr app to your Timeline to promote the causes you support and get your friends involved.

Did your FundRazr campaign just receive its first donation? Add the FundRazr app to your Timeline and your friends can see the great news right away. Your best friend just hit their fundraising goal? With FundRazr on their Timeline, you can keep up-to-date with their success.

At FundRazr, we’re happy to be among the first Timeline apps. We know firsthand the immense passion and support for personal and philanthropic causes using FundRazr on Facebook. Now, with the new app for Timeline, it’s even easier for people to discover, monitor, promote, and support the causes they care about. Social fundraising is all about friends helping friends. FundRazr for Facebook Timeline just made that easier. Check it out: https://apps.facebook.com/fundrazr

View the Press Release (pdf)

Starting today you can ignite passion and raise money for causes you and your friends care about—right on your Facebook Timeline.

FundRazr is the New Fundraising Tool in the PayPal iPhone App

Just published on the PayPal Community Help Forum is a detailed description of the PayPal iPhone App and Facebook fundraising campaigns—also known as FundRazr, for the uninitiated.

You can read the entire article here: PayPal Community Help Forum & FundRazr

Thanks again to everyone out there who continues to support us—all the donors, supporters, administrators, organizations, tech-savvy surfers, and everyone at PayPal (among countless others—you know who you are)!

Happy fundraising!

FundRazr Creation Checklist

Creating a new FundRazr is quick and hassle-free, as long as you ensure you have satisfied these requirements:

All FundRazrs

• I have selected Personal because I want to use my FundRazr to raise money for myself, a family member, a friend or a personal cause.
  
  -OR-

• I have selected Organization because I want to use my FundRazr to raise money for a non-profit, school, political or other organization.
• I am using a Premier or Business PayPal account.
• I have verified my PayPal account with PayPal.
• I have validated my PayPal account with FundRazr.
• I am NOT running a raffle, lottery or contest.
• I have planned my FundRazr strategy—I have a concise, personal message, a picture or video, and a way to share my campaign with my social network (and get them to share it with theirs).

Non-Profit Organization FundRazrs

• I have selected Non-Profit because my organization has registered non-profit status with the tax authority in my country.
• I am an authorized representative of the registered non-profit organization.
• I am using the PayPal account of the registered non-profit organization, and this account is registered with PayPal as a Non-Profit account.
• I have a letter of subordination from the organization authorizing me to raise money on their behalf
• I am NOT collecting the money myself which I will give to the organization later or use for their benefit.

And there you have it! Now that you have completed the items in the checklist, your FundRazr should be up-and-running in no time. Happy fundraising!

Put your FundRazr on your website or blog

FundRazr’s development team has been working virtually non-stop over the past few weeks to finalize our latest enhancement to the FundRazr experience—the FundRazr Give Button. Built to be embedded on websites and blogs, the FundRazr Give Button allows your social network to:

• Interact with your FundRazr to see its progress
• Share your FundRazr by using their Facebook and Twitter accounts
• Donate to your FundRazr

In essence, the FundRazr Give Button lets people use the sharing aspects of social media to encourage others to support your cause. Once you embed the FundRazr Give Button on a website or blog that you have administrative control of, people will have access to the full FundRazr experience. With the FundRazr Give Button it’s just that easy to turn your personal web content into a dynamic web application!

How to get the Give Button

Updated October 13, 2011

To get the Give Button widget for your FundRazr, simply login to Facebook, go to your FundRazr admin homepage, and click on the Get the Give Button link as shown below:

After you click the link, a dialog will open containing a short snippet of Javascript and html code which you can copy and paste into your Website or blog. In the future, we’ll provide plug-ins for popular blogging sites to make getting the Give Button even simpler.

Here at FundRazr, we are always looking for ways to give our users the greatest possible value for their money. As such, we have partnered with PayPal to put together a revised fee schedule which is more cost-effective and simplistic than our previous one. Our current fee is now 4.9% + $0.30 USD* on every payment and this fee includes all PayPal and credit card transaction fees.

So, what do you get for your money? Well, by choosing FundRazr as your social fundraising tool, you will benefit from some key aspects of our application. Unlike the other guys:

• Every FundRazr is FREE to set up.
• We NEVER hold your donations—our fee is deducted from your PayPal account at the same time as the supporter’s funds are deposited. The donations are transferred instantly into your PayPal account.
• We have NO HIDDEN FEES—you pay 4.9% + $0.30 USD* on every payment. Finished. Done. Period.
• You pay the fee, NOT YOUR DONORS—supporters pay only the amount they choose to give and there are no additional fees for anyone. Ever. Full stop.
• We are CONSTANTLY updating and revising our application to better serve our users—check out our new mobile application available in the Apple App Store as part of PayPal’s iPhone app, and our soon-to-be-released FundRazr Give button, which can be embedded on your own webpage.
• We are here to support you Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm, PST. And if there’s enough caffeine flowing through our veins, you might just get a response outside of those hours too!

As you can see, we pride ourselves on our ability to offer the greatest possible value of any social fundraising application on the net. And with FundRazr, you can be confident in knowing that you have partnered with the most cutting-edge social fundraising application available today—so let’s get fundraising!

*Or equivalent in your currency. When supporters and recipients are in different countries, recipients pay an additional 1% on every payment. For more information, check out our fee schedule here.

Read about fundraising success

Here at FundRazr, we are always looking for ways to show people just how powerful a tool our social fundraising application can be. To that end, we have put together a collection of some of the most successful FundRazrs our users have created. These success stories were chosen not necessarily for their total amount of funds raised, but for their adept use of our application to leverage the power of social networking. And further, they represent only a small sample of the variety of causes that people use FundRazr for.

We also want you to know that they were written with the help of the people who created the actual FundRazrs—we couldn’t have done it without them.

If you want to check the FundRazr success stories out, you can find them in the big blue banner on our website homepage. We hope that you enjoy reading them as much as we did writing them—and happy fundraising!

And by the way, if you know of any other FundRazrs that you think are good candidates for our success stories, drop us a line at support@fundrazr.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Julian Assange’s legal defence team has set up a FundRazr to help pay Mr. Assange’s legal expenses.

View the FundRazr at http://julian.fundrazr.com to see the current total raised.

You’ve made your first FundRazr. Now what, you ask? Get ready for takeoff—that’s what! We want your FundRazr to have the best shot at raising money for your cause. Here are 9 hot tips to help make it happen:

~ § ~

1. You’re in the pilot’s seat

Everybody in your social network is a potential supporter of your FundRazr. And every supporter can easily send your FundRazr out to their own network of friends. It’s like a ripple that can spread wider and wider and wider.

It’s up to you to get things started. You need to inspire people with your passion and the worth of your cause. You need to start the ripple in your corner of the online social world. And you need to keep it rolling. We recommend that you start with sharing.

2. Start with sharing

The very first thing you need to do after you’ve made a FundRazr is share it. Sharing is incredibly important for success with FundRazr. And it’s incredibly easy. Here’s how:

1. Login to Facebook.
2. Go to your FundRazr Admin Homepage—http://apps.facebook.com/fundrazr.
3. On the My FundRazrs tab, scroll down to find your FundRazr.
4. Under the heading Spread the word, click Share with friends.
5. In the box that appears, type a personal message.
6. In the bottom right of the box, click Publish.
7. That’s it! You’re FundRazr is rolling!

When you share your FundRazr, it appears on your Facebook Wall and in the News Feed on the Home pages of all your Facebook friends. The News Feed is where most people go to find out what their friends are up to. That’s the power of sharing a FundRazr—you reach your friends on their very own Facebook page. You reach them at their online social home.

3. Follow every path

Your FundRazr Admin Homepage gives you a number of great options to spread the word about your FundRazr. Every option opens another path to success. Our advice? Try them all! If you’re not already on Twitter, this could be just the excuse you’ve been waiting for.

4. Put your FundRazr on your Fan Page

If you have a Facebook Fan page, you’ll find two “Spread the word” options built just for you:

• Publish to a Page posts your FundRazr to the Wall of your Fan page and puts it in the News Feed of all your page’s fans.
• Add to a Tab helps you create a FundRazr app tab at the top of your Fan page.

Look for the Publish to a Page and Add to a Tab options on your FundRazr Admin Homepage.

Note: You can’t add a FundRazr app tab to your Facebook personal profile. Facebook doesn’t allow that.

5. Start a conversation

Can you start a conversation with your supporters on Facebook or Twitter? If you have a blog or Web site, can you continue the conversation there? Let people know how things are going. Have you hit a milestone—or maybe a roadblock? Send out thanks, a progress report, or an appeal for feedback. Get people involved and build a sense of community. Chances are you’ll be rewarded and your cause will prosper.

6. Let your light shine

One of the best things you can do for your cause is to put your personality and passion into your FundRazr message. People want to see who you are. They want to know the importance of your cause and feel your passion for it. Let your light shine through in your words and pictures. Look your supporters in the eye (as it were) and give them the straight goods on why your FundRazr matters to you—and why it should matter to them too.

Here’s a little tip:
Always, always, always use a picture in your FundRazr. People love pictures. Pictures attract the eye and trigger the imagination. Pictures of a face (human or animal!) are particularly effective. The human mind finds it almost impossible to ignore a face—real or otherwise.

7. Think like a donor

Have you ever wondered why people make charitable donations? They’re giving away money for goodness sakes. That’s slightly odd behaviour, isn’t it?

Look at your own Fundrazr from a donor’s point of view. What do you see? What do you feel? Does your passion for your cause come through? Would you donate? Or does your FundRazr need a tune-up? Can you add a more compelling message, a more attractive picture, a memorable video? It doesn’t need to be pro. It needs to be YOU! Remember, you’re in the pilot’s seat.

And in case you’re wondering, here’s why we think people give away their money: happiness. It’s the happiness of being involved in a cause that matters and part of a community that cares. That’s not so odd after all, is it?

~ § ~

8. Pump up the volume

In social fundraising, you need to reach out to people—the more, the better. If you don’t have bazillions of Facebook friends, don’t despair. Ultimately, almost every fundraising effort starts off with just one person—a person who has the conviction that things can be better and the energy to make it happen.

There’s great help available to make your social network grow. Marketing researchers have put a lot of thought into the subject. If it works for marketers, chances are it can work for you. Here are two resources that we really like:

• The Facebook Marketing Bible by Inside Facebook
  http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/12/09/inside-facebook-marketing-bible-24-ways-to-market-your-brand-company-product-or-service-in-facebook/
• The Nonprofit Facebook Guy
  http://www.nonprofitfacebookguy.com/

9. Get help fast

We’ve got your help needs covered 24–7–365. Visit our search-able Support page for answers to over 100 common questions and support requests—or to post a new topic. You can expect a quick response.

• FundRazr Support page on Facebook
  http://www.facebook.com/FundRazr?v=app_227698805184

Last night, on the eve of our first six months, FundRazr passed a huge landmark – over $1 Million of donations! Wow! We’re totally stoked. That’s $1 Million of generosity shared from friend to friend through FundRazr, $1 Million in support of the causes that you’ve sent out into the social world to nourish and grow.

Congratulations to you!

Congratulations are in order – for you. You’re the real heroes here. You’re the ones who saw a need, who reached out for support, who extended your hand and heart to help. Here at FundRazr, it’s been both a humbling experience and a great honor to be part of your generosity and success. Thank you. We’ll continue to build new and even better ways to help.

In the past half year since we launched FundRazr, we have been truly humbled by the immense generosity of people using the application. Your stories, your successes, and your sharing from friend to friend to friend have opened our eyes to the incredible power of giving. It’s a revelation that carries heightened meaning for us in this season of exchanging gifts with family and friends. Thank you.

We’re taking a little holiday

Some of us here at FundRazr HQ will take a break during the holidays. From December 24, 2010 – January 3, 2011 we may not be able to respond to your email messages as quickly as normal. Rest assured that we’ll get back to you just as soon as we can. And it’ll be full speed ahead again right after we finish the eggnog and take down the mistletoe. We have big plans for the coming year!

Are you waiting to get your new FundRazr going?

If you’ve signed up for FundRazr and you haven’t heard back from us yet, please be assured that we haven’t forgotten you! All your sign ups have been received safe and sound. And some of us here will be working through the holidays to get you running as quickly as possible. We hope you can hang in just a bit longer. We’ve been absolutely amazed at how many of you have a need for FundRazr. In the New Year, we’ll be bringing in new help to speed things up. Thank you all for your wonderful support and patience.

Don’t worry, we have your support needs covered

While some of us are out of the office for a few days, you’ll find quick answers to many questions about FundRazr on our Facebook Support tab. It’s available 24-7 365 days a year:
http://www.facebook.com/FundRazr?v=app_227698805184 .

Wishing you a very happy festive season and a great New Year,
All of us here at FundRazr