Executive Summary

For 50 days—from December 13, 2007 to January 31, 2008—thousands of individuals competed for donors, donations, and matching awards from the Case Foundation for their favorite charitable causes as part of the Foundation’s first-ever Giving Challenge.

Conceived as a way to test the awesome potential of online fundraising, to move people from saying they care about a cause to demonstrating they care about it, and to help people from all backgrounds realize their potential to be philanthropists, the experimental Giving Challenge comprised two events. America’s Giving Challenge in PARADE Magazine and on PARADE.com raised $1,193,024 from 46,044 donors for 2,482 causes. The Causes Giving Challenge on Facebook raised a total of $571,686 from 25,795 unique donors for 3,936 causes. And in both challenges, causes with the highest numbers of unique donors received awards from the Case Foundation.