The SalaamGarage India team that visited Vatsalya.org this past September are in high gear working on their stories, building a book, building multimedia.  To inspire us further, we found out today that Vatsalya bought a new, much needed water buffalo for Udayan through a donation from SalaamGarage’s ’10% of profit to NGO’ policy. So, our travelers bought this little guy! Their small herd helps with farm work and provide the children with training in dairy work, farming, livestock care, and of course isn’t it cool to own and care for water buffalo?  Udayan might someday have enough water buffalo to run a small dairy for income.

Check out Surili and her baby buffalo!

from the original post on her personal blog

passion. commitment. focus. talent. intuition. faith. trust.

many people ask me ‘how do you make your projects happen?’ what people really want to know how on earth i fund them. well, with money of course. but that’s not the real question. anyone can run a credit card. i know several millionaires who are miserable, lost, spent it all, searching, drunk, still working. it doesn’t take money to follow your passion.

it takes having, trusting and following your passion.

that’s the real struggle for most everyone i meet. their initial question ‘how did you/do i fund this’ isn’t the real question. their real question is ‘how do i discover my passion?… how do i know this is my real passion?’ I say if you are asking the question, you are pretty darn close.

at first i charged everything. didn’t dig credit card debt so i discovered grants. i started applying for grants, and was awarded several: The GAP grant, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and The Puffin Foundation, to name a few. i took a fund raising class and learned it’s faster to raise the money myself. i held fundraisers. raised money from my own community who wants to support me. i literally threw parties and made my intentions very clear: ‘this is a fund raising party. I am going to morocco to work on project x, and am looking for financial support. i need to raise x amount of money by x date. this is what i plan to do and this is why it is a good idea.’ then started meeting with universities and now corporations. There are also viral ways to raise money, using the social media tools we are already familiar with. it all works.

amanda working in morocco thanks to her self-taught fundraising skills

its all a collaboration in my eyes, and my work has always been about the greater good. i have found that people want to help. they want to be involved. they too want to get those orphans off the streets in to a legitimate home, put that aids orphan through school, give female, sufi muslim musicians some praise and honor. they just may not know where to start. some people, like me, choose to go to kenya an create these documentaries, these stories. others can help fund it, others can help get it published, get it on tv, in books, on gallery walls, etc. This has all happened for me.

key has been to share the project, and also ask for support. its all a collaboration and once i shared my passion i found they had it too, and were happy to collaborate. then, as if by magic, it all came together. it helps me a lot to be very clear and articulate about my intentions. not only does that help me find support, it helps me pinpoint my vision.

now with SalaamGarage trips people are emailing me asking how to work out the money part.

many of the participants have raised the money on their own, just the way i did. by raising money via blogs, twitter, Facebook, paypal, personal communities, etc., this creates the viral/social media platform and a system of accountability for participants. the people who support them to go on the trip then look forward to seeing results. in turn, this creates goal for the participant to create a project, follow through and share it upon return, which then gets the message of the NGO out there. this also creates a sense of ownership, and also the trip starts when they register vs. when they land in say, Guatemala. helps them pinpoint their vision. (see?)

to break it down it looks like this:

1. discover the passion

2. commit

3. come up with a plan

4. share the passion

5. ask for support

6. get support

7. do the work

8. share the work

9. watch the magic, the whole time.

-Amanda Koster

Center for Investigative Reporting Grants
and
Pulitzer Center Grants

We talk about SalaamGarage team member Daysha Eaton and her grant application with Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and her fundraising efforts here.

Spot.Us is a nonprofit project of the Center for Media Change. Spot.us gets its funding from the Knight Foundation who also fund Printcasting.com, which I write about on this blog. Spot.us is “an open source project, to pioneer ‘community funded reporting.’ Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, the donation is reimbursed.”
If the story you post is not purchased with exclusive rights by a news organization then it is the made available to all through a Creative Commons license. Spot.us calls itself “a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate. Choosing Spot.us to tell your story is probably not the first place a SalaamGarage humanitarian citizen journalist should post their stories. Because we believe the stories created with SalaamGarage need to be read by as many people as possible, one would have to create a story specifically aimed at sale for exclusive rights. But I do recommend Spot.us for independent and personal projects in your community. To read more about Spot.us check out this “Lessons in Crowdfunding” article by Spot.us founder DigiDave

Raise the money with a campaign here:
Kickstarter.com is a very fun very clean way to raise funds for your project, story, or idea. The website is full of musicians, photographers, journalists, activists, and some total nuts!

ThePoint.com Easy and Effective Group Action
“Whether you’re raising money, organizing people, or trying to influence change: if you can’t do it alone, you can do it on The Point.”
The great thing about campaigns on The Point and at Kickstarter is that no one is charged for their pledge to your project until the minimum pledge action or financial amount is met or exceded. So people can donate and feel good that their money is going towards the project they are supporting.
Hint: if you are raising funds in different ways like events along with an campaign online keep the Kickstarter or The Point campaign minimum amount lower than your actual ultimate fundraising goal.

Idealist.org run by Action Without Borders
If you take one thing away from Idealist.org, it will likely be that you are not the only one working to cause change in the world.
Action Without Borders runs the website Idealist.org. “Idealist.org is a website that facilitates connections between individuals and institutions that are interested in improving their communities.” This is a great place to build a network around your; cause, community problems, or to find a cause to work for or with. Idealist.org hosts podcasts and a news blog, as well as multiple in-depth forums. I also saw listed about 5,000 jobs, about 18,000 volunteer opportunities, and almost 89,000 organizations listed.

http://www.globalgiving.com/open/

GlobalGiving is an online marketplace that connects people to the causes and countries they care about.
nominate your own project at GlobalGiving
Provide them with details about your organization and your work through the self-recommendation form. If you meet eligibility requirements, you will be invited to participate in an upcoming Open Access Challenge event.

Hold a fundraiser- sell tickets through Eventbrite to look slick and official while keeping track of your benefit’s attendees

Also see the detailed instructions in the previous post “SalaamGarage Funding your Project Guide” where you can learn to create a Sponsor Me page at Facebook and how to start a campaign on WordPress.

-Maggie Soladay
Maggie Soladay | 

http://wootastic.org/funding-your-passion/

SalaamGarage – Funding your Project with WordPress or Facebook Campaigns
You might be reading this because you feel called to participate in a trip with SalaamGarage. I am going to detail a few specific tools and technical resources available to help you with raising funds for your project, but I want to stress that the success of these tools is going to rest first and foremost on your passion. People have a natural desire and attraction to support people in their vision and dreams. Your intention is the fuel that will drive you towards success in your goal.
The two methods for raising awareness and money documented here each have their advantages. Facebook is quicker, easier and does not require any technical background. Hosting your own site and blogging with WordPress is more technical, but it provides more customization options. I would suggest reading through the process to get started with each method and moving forward with which feels the most comfortable, or even developing both.

Facebook
Anyone who has used Facebook knows that one of the greatest aspects of the site is that you can not only reach your friends, but can expand your message into each friend’s own network of friends. If your message resonates with others, it has the potential to grow viraly well beyond the scope of your immediate friends and family. There are a couple of ways to use Facebook to help raise awareness of your SalaamGarage project and help raise money for your trip. I believe the best way is to make use of the Facebook fan pages, the Sponsor-Me application and PayPal.

The combination of these tools will allow you to publish your intentions, share this with friends and families and raise money to help support your desire to experience the trip.
There are several steps required to build the infrastructure. If you already have some of these in place, you can skip the directions for that step and proceed to the next.

Building the infrastructure:
-Create a PayPal Account
-Create a Facebook Account
-Install the Sponsor-Me Facebook application
-Create a Facebook “Fan” page
-Publish and Promote

Creating a PayPal Account
A PayPal account can be created at http://PayPal.com. There will be an option to “Sign Up” for an account. There will be several options for the type of account to create. As of the publish date of this document, the correct option to receive donations is a “Premier” account. The PayPal site itself will
have the latest information and can guide you through completing the registration process. Also take note of the latest fee schedule for PayPal as they will charge a small fee for you receiving payments/donations.
There is no need to create a new PayPal account if you already have one, but you should upgrade it to “Premier” if it is a “Personal” account. A “Business” account is fine if that is what you already have.

Creating a Facebook Account
A Facebook account can be created at http://www.facebook.com. Part of the registration process includes adding Facebook “friends”. There are tools that will assist you in adding friends who are already in your address book. I highly recommend making use of these tools to quickly build your Facebook social network.
Install the Facebook Sponsor-Me Application
Here is where things get fun! The first step is to install the Sponsor-Me application at http://apps.facebook.com/sponsor-me/. From this page there will be an option that states “Click here to add Sponsor-Me”. This will take you to a page where you will be prompted to “Allow” the application to be installed and have access to your profile. Selecting “Allow” will take you to the application page.
From this page there will be an option to “Create a Campaign”. This is similar to creating a group page for Facebook. There are several fields to fill out, including some optional ones. Most of these fields can be edited after you create the Campaign, with the very notable exceptions of the Campaign Title and the PayPal email.
Once you have customized this page with pictures, descriptions, fundraising goals, etc., the next step is to start inviting friends!! There is a limit of 20 friends per day, so make sure you visit every day and send out invites to build your network of support. Of course, you can also always post a link to your campaign via your status, or by adding the link to your profile.

Create a Facebook “Fan” Page
The next step is to create a Facebook “Fan” Page. This step is not required to raise funds via Facebook, but it greatly increases the chances of expanding your audience beyond your current Facebook “friends”.
Begin by navigating to the Facebook “Ads and Pages” application. The quickest way to find the “Ads and Pages” application is to select the “Ads and Pages” icon from the Facebook website. The icon will be bookmarked on the bottom left hand corner of the Facebook navigation tool.
From the “Ads and Pages” application, select to create “Create Facebook Page”. There will be several options for the type of page. To create a “Fan” page, select “Artist, Band or Public Figure”. You are the artist, and should name the page with your name.
A Fan Page is very similar to a user page. You can publish a variety of information about your project and yourself. I would highly recommend that you set your webpage to your “Sponsor Me” page so that people are directed to the location where they can make donations towards your project.
I would highly recommend using the “Edit Page” function (link just below the page picture) to add custom functionality to your page, including setting up and publishing events and video.
Publish and Promote

Your “Fan Page” will not be viewable until you select to “Publish This Page”. Once published, you should start to aggressively promote the page. This includes suggesting the page to your Friends, adding the “Fan Page” to your personal pages ‘favorites’ and publishing regular updates.
Once your page is setup you can always use the “Ads and Pages” application to track views, fans, etc.
Keep the content steady and compelling, and link back often to your Sponsor-Me page. Publish pictures, ideas and other content to keep people visiting the site. You should take advantage of the “Send an Update to Fans” functionality to keep your fans engaged and active. The Events functionality is a great way to inform your fans of fund-raising or other social events related to your project.

Host your own Website and use WordPress
WordPress is a powerful and free tool for managing your blogging website. There is a wealth of free themes and plug-ins that allows you to customize your site and that can be used to help raise funds and automatically provide recognition to your donors.
The directions for setting up your website and WordPress will make use of many external links. The technology and options change quickly and the external websites will have the latest information for installing and using their applications.
It should also be noted that this path is best if you are familiar with web publishing and technologies. Although most of the steps are automated, if there is a problem you will likely have to work with several different sources to troubleshoot (including your host, WordPress and the authors of specific themes and plug-ins). The good news is that the latest version of WordPress provides wonderful tools for customizing your site with a minimal need for using other web management tools including cPanel and an FTP client.

Building the infrastructure:
-Create a PayPal Account
-Find a host and create your website
-Install WordPress on your site-Install the Donate Plus plug-in and activate it on your website
- Using the Donate Plus widget and shortcode
- Play and Publish

Creating a PayPal Account
Creating a new PayPal account is not required if you already have one. Click here to see the directions earlier in this document on creating a PayPal account. IMPORTANT NOTE: Please make sure the email address you associate with PayPal is the same one you use when installing/registering WordPress (during the WordPress install).

Find a Host and create your website
You will need a host for your new website, or use your existing host to install WordPress.
WordPress itself has a list of sites that support the “1-click” installation of WordPress. I would suggest choosing one of these hosts if possible as they all have the required versions of PHP and MySQL.
http://wordpress.org/hosting/
For my testing, I used JustHost.com. The pricing was reasonable, and I was able to quickly build the site.
http://stats.justhost.com
Please follow the directions from whichever host you choose to specify a domain name, and start hosting your site.

Install WordPress on your site
WordPress 2.8 was released on June 11, 2009. There are a number of enhancements in this version, including the ability to install Themes without having to upload to your site via FTP.
The latest version can be found at http://wordpress.org/
If you selected a host that supports “1-Click” install, please login to the web sites admin tool and run the tool. For example, if you are using JustHost.com: Simply navigate to your site name and append /cpanel to the URL (yoursite.com/cpanel) and enter your username and password (provided to you by your host when you signed up). Under “Popular Choices”, select “WordPress”. Then follow the directions to install “WordPress” to your site.
If you chose a host that does not support 1-click install or you wish to custom install WordPress to your site, please visit the WordPress site (http://wordpress.org/download/) and refer to your website documentation for details on installing WordPress in that environment.
NOTE: As WordPress 2.8 is a recent release, the 1-step install process may install an older version of WordPress. Simply navigate to the WordPress admin page and select to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress page (http://yoursite.com/wp-admin) before moving on to the next step. If you do not see the option to upgrade on the WP-Admin main dashboard, simply select “Tools, Upgrade” from the menu options on the left sidebar.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please make sure the email address you use when registering WordPress is the same as the email address associated with PayPal.

Install the Donate Plus plug-in and activate it on your website
Installing WordPress plug-ins has greatly been simplified in the latest versions. Simply navigate to your sites WordPress admin page (http://yoursite.com/wp-admin). Click on the “Plug-Ins” option on the left menu, and choose “Add New”. There are several options for searching and choosing Plug-Ins, but the simplest is to simply search for the term “Donate Plus”. You may get a message stating that the Plug-in has not been tested with the latest version of WordPress, but I have confirmed that it works with 2.8
Once the Donate Plus plug-in is installed you can activate it by navigating to the Plug-ins section of the WP-Admin tool and choosing to “Activate” the plug-in.
If you are running an older version of WordPress that does not support installation of the Plug-in via the WP-Admin tool, you will have to manually install the plug-in via FTP. Please refer to your website host
for details on authenticating to FTP, and review the installation instructions below for information on uploading/installing plug-ins to your WordPress site.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/donate-plus/installation/
http://www.village-idiot.org/archives/2008/06/19/how-to-upload-a-wordpress-plugin/

Using the Donate Plus Widget and shortcode
Once the Donate Plus Plug-in is installed and activated, you can start to add the functionality to your site. The first step is to navigate to the Appearance, Widgets section of the WP-Admin tool. Installing Donate Plus will have added several widgets that you can drag to various sections of your blog page. Experiment by dragging either the “Donate Plus Total” widget, “Donate Plus Wall” widget or “Donate Plus Form” widget to one of the sidebar or footer sections. Once done, you can select to “Visit Site” to see how each widget looks when added to different sections of your site.
Each of these features can also be used directly in your blog posts or pages by using “shortcode”. For example, I created a separate page for people to send donations and simply added

Play and Publish
WordPress has a wealth of customization options available via themes and plug-ins. Many of these tools are available for free and allow you to create some incredibly professional looking sites. http://wordpress.org/showcase/ is a good place to review some WordPress sites and get inspiration for creating your own site.
Experiment and play with themes and plug-ins to find the right mix to showcase your project goals. Look ahead to determine how WordPress can be the avenue for publishing your project when you complete your trip. Visit the http://wordpress.org site and view the docs section for information on getting started, and the forums section to request assistance with specific issues or functionality.

-Michael Armijo

Blue Earth Alliance

Collective Lens: “promotes social change with your photos. Upload a photo and help bring awareness to important issues around the world. You can inspire others to become involved.”

FeatureShoot

FiftyCrows: They get social documentary work out there. Distributing it in new and original ways to build awareness, start conversations, and provide networking and financial support to help documentary photographers cause social change.

Fotovision: Their “mission is to advance documentary photography and storytelling. … through education, dialogue and community. … to inspire and enable positive change by creating a global photographic community that gives voice to the human condition.” They teach workshops in San Francisco Bay Area.
Photocrati.com: Sponsors of the Photocrati Fund, a nonprofit that provides grants to photographers working on important environmental and humanitarian projects. Also a online community for photographers

socialdocumentary.net

The Digital Journalist: Online journalism. Photographers are writers and photographers. Reporting from around the world.

-Maggie Soladay