About donors and project managers

When you check the about betterplace.org page you will find one of our key ideas: „On our platform people who want to help meet people, who are in need of support.“

We believe that betterplace.org is a great opportunity for project managers, especially from small projects around the world, to introduce their idea to make the world a better place to the community. We even encourage project managers over and over again to spread the word about their projects. By now we have about 4.000 projects listed on betterplace.org, so if you don’t raise your voice, nobody will ever find your project or donate for your cause.

We also believe that betterplace.org makes it easier for donors to find a project they want to support. Some people register to browse projects to find the one that looks just right to them. Some people sign up only because they want to support one specific project that they know from before.

Lately there has been several donors contacting me because they were receiving messages from project managers asking for financial support. This causes mixed feelings for the donors: On the one hand they want to help, on the other hand they most likely have given something already. Sometimes one donor gets several messages, all asking for financial support – it is simply not possible to support all of them. Often this resulted in so much frustration that users decided to leave betterplace.org.

So, this is my call to you, the donors: Please don’t get mad when a project manager wants to introduce you to a project. The decision, whether you want to support the project or not, ist totally up to you. Nobody wants to push you to do anything. If you have the impression that one project manager is really spamming you with messages, report him/her.

And this is my call to the project managers: Please try to keep it to a minimum with messages to people you don’t know. Contacting people you have some sort of a relationship to is much more fruitful. Is there any family member, a collegue or a friend out there that does not know about your betterplace.org-page yet? Besides asking them for financial support, you can also ask them to help you to reach out to more people by forwarding your message to their friends.

What is your opinion about it? Have you ever been contacted by a project manager in need of financial support? Are you a project manager who wants to share his point of view about it?
Let’s discuss in the comments below, and feel free to send tweets to @betterplace_org to join the conversation!