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.
In the end, after only four months of fundraising, I did reach my goal of $4500 to buy a new brick home for Aura and her family. After I raised the first thousand, “strangers” started coming on board. The first “stranger” to donate to the site, Anastasia Yecke is now one of my trusty partners who helps run Aura’s House. About a year later I met Mike Epler while volunteering in Tanzania. After donating generously to our first Honduras House project (#2 on the site) he eventually came onboard as a partner a few months later. Finally, one of my ex-web students from William Paterson University, Christina Sidoti constistantly helped me update the site. For over a year she put so much time, energy, and passion into the site, we eventually asked her to become a partner as well. We have no regrets since. It’s nice to no longer be alone with my little website.
Now that the site has a history and has shown people exactly where their money goes through photos and updates…the site runs a little more smoothly. Though time and time again I think of retiring the site due to my busy full time job teaching at The American University of Rome…another stranger makes a random donation and our little pots of money for our various projects continue to grow.
It’s thanks to these enthusiastic few as well as my partners that the site continues to run. I’m glad I didn’t realize what an uphill battle it would be to launch and run Aura’s House. As the poet Virgil once said, “They can because they think they can.”
anastasia76 said,
October 9, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I agree that it’s a lot of work to run the site, and poor Kristen does the bulk of it! I think some people envision starting up a site like ours, then sitting back as the donations roll in…that is definitely not the case. Aura’s House requires constant updates/maintenance, plus we have to keep track of donations, thank donors, upload pictures once projects are completed, solicit new donors, send out newsletters to keep folks updated, and much MUCH more! Plus we all work full-time. But hey, that’s why we call it “a labor of love.” And it’s true that every single donation helps, even a dollar…having visited Bolivia a few weeks ago, I can testify just how far one US Dollar can go in a third-world country.
One of the things we try to avoid at Aura’s House is “donor fatigue” – you can only ask your friends for money so many times (that’s why we love it when people use the “Tell a Friend” feature on our site: http://www.aurashouse.com/tellafriend.html). Hint hint!
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