Chapter 7: Moving Forward

[Founder (Greg Unruh)]

Well…it's been a couple of months or more since my last blog entry, but it doesn't mean there hasn't been anything going on. Let me break this into three parts: 1) Refresher 2) What's new 3) What's to come.

Refresher:

GiveWithoutGiving.org “functionally” operates as a not-for-profit organization. What does this mean? We are operating as though we are a not-for-profit entity, but we have not completed our State filings (in process) to make it official on paper. Once this process is completed, we will be classified as a not-for-profit entity in the State of Missouri. This will do a couple of things:

1. It will allow a supporter's purchase on a qualifying virtual billboard to be tax-deductible. There are a few legal wrinkles we still need to iron out here.

2. It will bring credibility to our organization as a viable and trustworthy fundraising entity.

The basic premise of GiveWithoutGiving.org is to offer FREE virtual billboards to any group or entity needing to raise funds to support their cause or mission. Supporters can purchase space on these virtual billboards to pay tribute to an individual or maybe advertise a business – they can essentially use their space however they want. The proceeds earned from the sell of these spaces are donated to the group or entity a virtual billboard represents. It's truly a win-win scenario for the virtual billboard owners and the respective supporters. The virtual billboard owners have an effective and innovative way in which to raise money for their designated cause or mission, and the supporters have the opportunity to gain visibility through their respective space on a given virtual billboard. The supporter can also claim their space as a charitable tax deduction in some cases.

What's New:

I suppose the most notable thing worth mentioning is our acceptance into a business development program offered through the State and University of Missouri (http://www.missouribusiness.net/). We've been assigned a seasoned business development mentor; and access to legal, marketing, media, and other resources as we prepare ourselves for the next phase in our evolution. I like to think of this as springboard that will take our program to the next level. Many of the enhancements you'll read below were spawned from our involvement in this program.

If you haven't visited GiveWithoutGiving.org in awhile, you'll notice the application has been completely redesigned to improve the overall user experience. No longer do you have to sort through a long list of virtual billboards to find the cause or mission you would like to support. You can perform a simple keyword search to locate the virtual billboard you are interested in. Once you've identified the virtual billboard you would like to support, you can simply click the “Buy Blocks” button right from the same screen to purchase your blocks or space. If you recall in the old version of the application, you had to scroll through a long list of virtual billboards if you wanted to make a purchase. I felt this was redundant and frustrating to the user, and I wanted to consolidate the search and purchase functions into a single view.

We are launching an official pilot program targeting a mix of no more than 20 churches and K-12 schools. The goal of this pilot program is to stage ourselves for a more broad-scale marketing campaign and promotion. We will be intimately involved with the pilot participants to ensure the success of the program. If you are interested in participating in this pilot program, please send your request to [e-mail].

You'll also notice we have made an effort to use more familiar terms throughout the website. We're using terms like “virtual billboard” instead of “pixel grid”, “blocks" or "space” instead of “pixels”. You'll notice we've removed things like the “ALT TAG” field from the purchase process – I'd venture to guess that less than 2% of you know what that actually means. It's no longer there, so it doesn't matter. You'll notice the new “pager” functionality in the keyword search; meaning, if there are more than three items matching your keyword search, you'll see a “page 1, 2, 3, etc.” so you can more easily locate the virtual billboard your are searching for.

Here's a list of some of the other enhancements since my last blog entry:

1. Improved PayPal credit card processing.

2. The default size of a virtual billboard has changed from 50 x 50 blocks to 100 x 50 blocks forming a more rectangular shape that is more symbolic of a roadside billboard.

3. The registered owner of a virtual billboard can now determine the price they want to charge per block; whereas, before it was a fixed rate of $10 per block. $10 is still the default rate, but the registered owner can now specify the rate they would like to charge; hence, influencing the total fundraising potential of their virtual billboard. A virtual billboard with the new default settings now has a gross fundraising potential of $50,000.

4. You'll notice several free virtual billboards we have added when you do a keyword search on the term “FREE” (I.e “FREE Demo Board”, “FREE Kids Board”, FREE Prayer Board”, and FREE Baby Board”. Virtual billboards are always 100% free, but the blocks on these virtual billboards are also FREE. The “FREE Demo Board” is a great place to experience the program before deciding to support a virtual billboard representing an interest you share a special affinity with.

5. We've added a new self-running demo you can watch to familiarize yourself with how to use the program as a supporter.

6. You'll also find a new fundraising potential calculator on the home page and the floating menu. This allows you to change the number of blocks and rate to project the fundraising potential of a given virtual billboard (http://www.givewithoutgiving.org/pixels/calculator.html)

7. You'll notice towards the bottom of every virtual billboard there is a dynamically generated code snippet you can copy and paste into an existing web page. This allows you to display a designated virtual billboard with all the active links directly into an external web page. You can see examples of this by clicking the following link or pointing your web browser to http://www.givewithoutgiving.org/pixels/demo_page.html.

What's to Come:

As with any software application, there are always minor bug fixes to be addressed. Having come from the software industry, I am proud to say that these are very few and far between. If you find a bug in the application, please submit it to [e-mail] so we can resolve it as quickly as possible. We go through a pretty diligent quality assurance process to ensure our code is sound, but sometimes things slip between the cracks.

One of the larger projects we are working on is the ability to introduce reveal code into a virtual billboard. What does this mean? Think of a virtual billboard with a background image that has a layer over the top of it. Each time you purchase space on this virtual billboard, a portion of the image beneath the layer is revealed. The fundraising goal is to reveal the entire picture beneath the layer. The supporter can still attach an image or picture, but it will be displayed in the caption window along with their message text instead of on the virtual billboard. This would be great for a church launching a new building campaign where the background image could be the architectural diagram of the proposed building. Each time a supporter makes a purchase, more of the building is exposed.

We're also working on a code that will actively monitor your fundraising status and present it in a visual format (i.e. traditional fundraising thermometer we're all familiar with).

As always...I appreciate your feedback. I read every email that lands in my Inbox, so please send me your thoughts and suggestions. I'll try not to take so long between blog entries :)