blog.razoo.com

Razoo on the move

Bryan Owen — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:08:39 +0000

You may have noticed that your Razoo bookmarks to www.razoo.com no longer take you to our vibrant community for social good, or that alpha.razoo.com now redirects you to www.razoo.com. That’s because we did a little virtual reorganization to go with our “soft launch” of the new Razoo giving platform– which now calls www.razoo.com home. To make things less confusing to new folks, we’ve moved the original site to community.razoo.com and now refer to this site as “Razoo Community”.

Why does this matter to you? It probably doesn’t, actually– other than the fact that you may need to update your links.

What you might care about, however, are the upgrades we’ve made to Razoo.com– like a brand new “Articles” section with advice, inspiration, and interesting stories written specifically for charitable givers (several of which have been featured in major online outlets like the Huffington Post and Divine Caroline). I could tell you what I think is most interesting in there, but it’s probably easier for you to just browse around and see for yourself.

We also released a few tools to help the people doing the work that we support. Non-profits and supporters can create a simple button (”widget”) to add to their website or blog to collect donations online. And, as with our own donation platform, we pass on 100% of the donation to the organization. It’s a really easy way to take advantage of some of the benefits of Razoo wherever it’s best for you. Go here to get one for yourself or here to see how charities can use Razoo to better serve donors.

And last (but not least), we’ve recently added support for International credit cards for those of you who live outside the US but want to call Razoo your charitable home. Even though all of the charities in our catalog are based in the US, many of them work extensively (or exclusively) Internationally– so in many cases you can actually support local charity work even if you live outside the US. It’s an interesting twist on localized philanthropy.

We’ve added a host of other improvements, but those are the big ones we wanted to mention. Let us know what you think, and thanks for your continuing interest in and support of Razoo!

The Best Non-Profit Search Engine (and other updates)

Bryan Owen — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:00:01 +0000

The last few weeks have been extremely busy for Razoo, and we’re excited about all of the additions and changes we’ve made to the site. Here are a few of the highlights:

The first challenge we tackled with this release was our search engine functionality. With such a big database of giving opportunities, it’s really important that things are easy to find (it doesn’t matter if we have a million organizations available if you can’t get to the one you care about). Our new search engine is ridiculously fast – and it’s fun to play with, too. You can search across our entire database by category, organization income, program scope, location, and rating with just a click or two. If you want to narrow things down even further, select multiple search options. When you type a keyword into the search box, the results come back immediately, making it really easy to find whatever you may be looking for. The technical term for this tool is “parametric search,” which means you can pull a bunch of levers all at once to drill down to the specific item you want. It hasn’t been applied like this in our industry, and we think we can safely claim to have the most powerful non-profit search engine available anywhere. Check it out and let us know what you think – click on the “Organizations” tab to get started.

The second major addition is a newsletter aggregation service that captures email updates from nonprofits, and posts them to the Razoo site. This makes it easy for you to stay in touch with all of the organizations you care about in one place, on your terms – and spares you from unwanted solicitations from aggressive fundraisers. If you’d like us to add a newsletter from a specific organization to our site, simply click on the “Like to add something?” link at the bottom of the “Organizations” page, and tell us the name of the charity. We’ll do what we can to get it up there quickly. One of our goals is to put you in control of your giving relationships, and this is a big step in that direction.

The last major feature we added is for “Type A” givers, who like to carefully plan their charitable giving in advance. You can now schedule donations in the future, even if you haven’t given to the organization before. This is a great way to keep yourself accountable and make sure you stay on top of your charitable giving, even when you’re too busy to spend time thinking about it. It’s like an auto-pilot button for philanthropists!

There are a host of other improvements and new features that we won’t go into just yet, but we think you’ll enjoy (donor testimonials, for example). We really do want to know how we’re doing, so please use the “Feedback” button (at the top of every page) liberally, so we can continue to make our site more useful to givers like you. Many of these new features were the result of direct requests from people using the site, and we’re always eager for more suggestions. We promise that we’ll continue to listen!

The Power of Strategic Giving

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:21:38 +0000

Many of us are not exactly organized when it comes to our charitable giving. We may have our favorite organizations that we give to regularly, but we also support a handful of projects throughout the year that are interesting and worthy. We’d like to think that we are making good decisions and using our resources to help the things that matter the most to us, but without a good plan and some organizational tools it’s hard to know for sure.

Following a plan and tracking your giving is a great way to make your life easier and your giving more effective. Simple budgeting tools will help you make decisions on how much to give (those are in the works), and our reports can help you see who and what you are supporting. This also makes life a little bit easier at tax time when you can go to one place to get all of your receipts.

We make it really easy to give regularly to organizations through Razoo, so you can put some (if not all) of your giving on auto-pilot. Simply tell us who the money goes to, how much, and how often– and we’ll take care of the rest. You’ll get a receipt just like you would if you went to the site to make the transaction. Scheduled giving is a great way to check one thing off the to do list every month without actually doing anything.

Giving planning and management on Razoo happens in your pesonalized portfolio section (under the red tabs after you login). You’ll see organizations you’ve given to in the past as well as those you want to keep track of for the future. Simply click on “Add to portfolio” when viewing the detail page of any organization to send it to your portfolio– organizations you’ve given to in the past show up automatically. More budgeting and planning tools are on the way, and we’ll let you know when they become available.

Learn more at the Razoo Giving Marketplace.

Serving the “committed giver”

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:20:45 +0000

Sometimes giving to charity is more complicated than it should be. It can be intimidating to sort through all the choices and see through the marketing speak to figure out which organizations are really making a difference.

If you agree with this, you’ve come to the right place.

We’re here to make giving enjoyable and rewarding. At Razoo you’ll find a wealth of information on the site to help you through the process, and we also have real people who want to help if you get stuck. Whether you need help finding a place to donate, don’t understand the ratings system, or the site just isn’t working as you would expect– please email us anytime.

We’d also love to hear what you like about the site or what we can do to make it better. There’s a feedback link at the top of every page on the site and you can email us anytime.

Learn more at the Razoo Giving Marketplace.

Over 1.4 Million Giving Opportunities (on Razoo)

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:19:20 +0000

There is certainly no shortage of great projects and organizations to give to, and we want to provide you with opportunities to support the ones you care about most. From your local church to International relief organizations such as the American Red Cross, our catalog includes over 1.4 million giving opportunities for just about any interest– and we’re constantly expanding. Through partnerships with local, national, and international organizations, we’ll be adding organizations and individual projects to our catalog to provide you with an unparalleled giving experience.

Why obsess over a huge catalog? It’s pretty simple, actually. Lots of opportunities, combined with information on your unique interests, helps us do a better job of personalizing your experience and introducing you to organizations working in areas you care about. It also helps givers who want to support less popular causes by providing a place where they can give as well. Do you care deeply about the psychological well-being of the South American Horned Frog? There may be someone out there looking for your support (and we’ll help you find them).

We have a few ways to find an organization in our catalog. To find by name, enter all or part of the name in the search box at the top of any page and you should find it in the search results. You can also browse charities that have been evaluated by Charity Navigator by clicking the blue “Rated Charities” tab– you can then filter results based on the location of the organization, their geographic focus (regional, national, or international), size, rating, and category. Finally, we put together several Giving Guides to introduce you to a theme and highlight a few exceptional organizations working to further that cause. Organizations that make this list have proven to be innovative and effective, so they might be worth a look.

Learn more at the Razoo Giving Marketplace.

Helping your charitable giving go farther

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:17:09 +0000

Money is one of the most powerful assets we have at our disposal, so every dollar eaten up by fees represents a missed opportunity to help someone in need. Nearly every transaction costs money– even those that are processed automatically over the web using inexpensive hardware and software. Most sites that accept donations take anywhere from 4 to 10% off the top to cover bank fees and other costs (often including a portion to cover their own operating expenses)– and some take out more than that. For the committed giver, these costs can add up quickly.

We want to help givers make the biggest impact with their charitable donations, and waiving all transaction fees is one way we’re doing that. Whenever you give through Razoo, 100% of your gift is passed onto the organization you have selected. We don’t take out anything. We’re also working on some creative matching and sponsorship programs with some generous partners to try to reverse that equasion– so your donation of $100 could actually result in $110 (or more) going to your selected charity or project. Now that’s good math!

Learn more at the Razoo Giving Marketplace.

Protecting your privacy and security

Bryan Owen — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:13:20 +0000

We obsess over security and we’re very careful to ensure that your personal and financial information is protected. Here’s what happens when you make a donation. As soon as you hit “Submit”, we encrypt your information to make it unreadable by anyone who might try to access it (and it’s nearly impossible to get to that information anyway). Then we send it to our partner, Network4Good, over a secure connection to process the transaction. If you choose to set up a recurring transaction, Network4Good will store your credit card information to make future donations automatically (we don’t store your credit card information on our system). Once the credit card is charged, Network4Good sends us a simple message that lets us know that everything went through fine. Nobody at Razoo ever sees your financial information.

We also encrypt your personal information (name, email, password, etc.) when you create an account on Razoo and then store that information securely in our database. And that’s where it stays– the only information we share with anyone else is the info Network4Good needs to process the transaction.

Of course all of this doesn’t matter much if our partner drops the ball, so we made sure that Network4Good is obsessive about security as well. For more information on their policies, please visit their site: http://www.network4good.com/ (look for a link at the bottom of the page).

We feel really good about our privacy and security– in fact all of our staff members use Razoo to make their charitable donations–and most of us are obsessive about online security. If you have any other questions about this stuff, please ask.

Find out more at the Razoo Giving Marketplace.