I'm a charity; how can Six Degrees help me?

Six Degrees, a site created by Kevin Bacon in partnership with Network for Good, is a way to engage your supporters in fundraising for you with their own friends and family online with charity badges, which are fundraising widgets. This approach of person-to-person fundraising is often called "viral fundraising," and it's a new way your most loyal donors can help you. Because Six Degrees gives you a tool to fundraise anywhere online, it's a great approach to getting bloggers involved in your cause and for tappinginto your supporters to integrate into social networks like MySpace. Consider it a creative, easy, and low-cost supplement to the fundraising you already do via your website and email.

Your charity can create a badge for your supporters - or you can ask your supporters to create their own. Here's how it works:

-You go to SixDegrees.org and click on "create a badge"
-Create a badge for your charity by uploading photo and text and generating a Donate button for your organization - this takes about 5-10 minutes
-We give you the code to display the badge on your website and share it with your supporters
-The badge tracks in real time the number and amount of donations
-You can create as many badges as you want, and you can invite your supporters to create their own badges if they'd rather design their own, instead of using yours
-Any badge created at Six Degrees during our matching grants campaign is eligible for the matching grants (details)
-There's no charge for creating badges. The only fees invovled with the program are the Network for Good transaction processing fees, which are 4.75% of transactions. We give donors the choice of covering that fee for the charity or deducting it from the donation (details)
-You can log in to your Network for Good Donation Tracking Report at any time to obtain information on the donors that have supported you through the badges

We've had hundreds of nonprofits participate in Six Degrees, and their organizations and supporters have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can read about some of them here.

If you are looking for some additional information, below is a white paper on this topic and a link to teleconference with best practices.

>The Wired Fundraiser

>11 Steps to Success with Social Networking