How to Use Squidoo to Raise Money (and engage your volunteers)

You use our tools, for free, to build a page like this one. It can include links to websites, to Amazon books, to eBay auctions, to Google maps, to whatever interesting thing you can find on the web. You can post pictures and articles and links to your cause.

Every time someone clicks on an ad, every time someone buys a book, every time someone wins an auction, every time someone buys anything at all from Amazon, Squidoo gets paid.

And then we pay half of that--no deductions, no hassles, no fees--to your charity directly by PayPal.

If a Squidoo page sells a copy of Harry Potter, that's about 40 cents. Not much. Unless you have 100 different pages, selling a few books a day. Unless you have 250 donors each building and maintaining a few dozen pages.

In fact, Squidoo has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity in the last year.

Here's how you apply.

There are 4 simple steps.

It's easy and very worth it. We hope you do it.

The real win for your non-profit comes when you mobilize the people who already care.

You can't ask them for more money. They're tapped out, you've asked before, and asking again won't help.

But each one of the tens or thousands (or tens of thousands) of people who support you have the skill necessary to build Squidoo pages.

We make it easy for them to do just that.

And if every page they build is organized to raise money for you (a nickel, a penny, a dollar, a dime), then every single day you're going to be putting the web to work to raise money.

And that scales. That decreases your dependence on grants or donations, because your legions of supporters are each building a long term asset for you.

It also gives those active people a new way to engage in your mission--in their mission--every day, for free, from home, in a proven, safe, smart way that works.

Wow, the $80,000 for charity went fast. Over 40,000 do-gooders rushed to Squidoo to vote for their favorite cause. When you have a big chunk of cash dangling in front of you, it's easy to get excited. You can see it, you can feel it, and you know the value of it. It is what it is. It's harder to get excited about 1000 of your volunteers (the same people who went to bat for you in the polls) creating lenses to support you. After all, you never know if each lens will make $8 or eight cents. It can feel like a shot in the dark.

But let me tell you a story. Last year I created a lens to solve a problem. My dog goes crazy over tennis balls. Give her one, and *snap* it's in tiny pieces within minutes. So I created a lens with a few eBay modules that directed readers to good places for bulk tennis ball sales. It was kind of a stupid idea, really. After all, who goes out of their way to look up tennis balls online?

The first month the lens was live it made $6.87. Then $22.13. Then $32.37. In just over a year this goofy lens has generated over $127 for the Humane Society by selling stuff people were already looking for. Sure, some months are better than others, but what would it mean to you if just 100 people sent you $127 a year? Could you put it to good use? Of course you could.

It's a little easier to get excited about 1000 lenses pulling for you now, isn't it?