Posted by Kristen
Back when I first started Aura’s House I was thinking of the possiblities of how ordinary people could help needy families just by donating a dollar. I envisioned tens of thousands of people all donating a dollar and how much money would eventually be raised, seemingly without much effort.
When the site first launched in the summer of 2004, I was completely unprepared for how much hard work was ahead of me even just to raise the first thousand. I dived into online fundraising resources. I consulted guides, wrote letters, emailed all my friends. I tried to make my site more “sticky” by offering monthly newsletters, a mailing list, a guestmap, and even the now defunct Guatemala weather report. It didn’t occur to me that the masses of people on the internet wouldn’t all necessarily flock to my site, let alone give me (someone they didn’t know or trust yet) a dollar.
