We have good news about December winner International Justice Mission, right after this quick update...
A second lap around our star
Charitocracy was incorporated on Christmas Day, 2015. I'll never understand how it received its stamp on that day. Maybe a computer woke up Christmas morning, like any other day, with our paperwork waiting in its queue of approved documents to watermark with a date and e-signature of North Carolina's Secretary of State. Anyway, here we are cranking away 2 years later, still trying to make the world a little bit better each month.
You may have noticed in the Dashboard the number of donors decreasing and the pot sizes shrinking a bit. I sure have! We only lost about 7% of donors during the first renewal cycle. That's probably better retention than we could have expected, so thanks to everyone for sticking it out! And extra thanks for the extreme generosity of many of your donation upgrades over the past few months. All of these have been matched dollar for dollar, and you'll see those matches in your Giving Trees. That's what got us, at least briefly, into $1500+ territory. Yay!
Our problem isn't retention, and it's not per-donor contributions. It's the slow growth of new donors. If every donor were able to find another donor who, after a minute long elevator pitch, also thought Charitocracy were a great idea, we'd be going gangbusters. Your Giving Trees would be out of control. So this will be my focus for 2018: anything and everything that makes it easy and fun to share Charitocracy with new prospective donors.
December 2017 winner International Justice Mission
On New Years Eve we voted in our 4th cause of Charitocracy's 2nd year. Congratulations to International Justice Mission and to donors Alistair and Rebecca for nominating it! You have 4 more days to further sweeten the pot with a special one-time donation of any amount, which we'll add straight to the check we write to International Justice Mission next week. You can find their web site here.
Make 10 minutes to watch this video and better appreciate the sort of work IJM is doing to help end slavery around the world, and feel good about your part in our collective $1515+ grant to help with this work!
One small boy. One huge lake. Foli was a slave. Immerse yourself in his story.
Thousands of children between the ages of 6 and 18 live in slavery on Lake Volta, working up to 18 hours a day in the fishing industry. For these young children, the only way out of slavery is to drown or be rescued. Children just like Foli.
Have a great January, don't forget to start writing 2018 on your checks, and log into Charitocracy to update your votes or nominate a new cause!