Crowdsourced fundraising that works

The observant ones amongst you may have noticed a few of the guys at Yoomee sporting moustaches of late, and it's no coincidence. For traditionalists, we've just come to the end of November, however to others it is now well and truly the end of 'Movember'.

For those unfamiliar with the Movember concept it's a month-long awareness and fundraising campaign for prostate cancer. Participants grow a moustache over the course of the month and raise money to go to The Prostate Cancer Charity.

I'm particularly keen on Movember for two reasons. The first is personal, my Father suffered from prostate cancer, but happily lived to tell the tale. The second is down to the fact that the campaign is a good example of using the crowd-sourced fundraising model. That is, people can create their own webpage (catchily called a 'Mo-space') to publicise their mustachios' progress, and the charity provides online tools for individuals to gather donations and run the campaign themselves.

So far this year Movember attracted over 111,000 online campaigners in the UK who signed up to grow, resulting in £7.5 million raised using the social media tools. I believe the total worldwide is over £32 million. That's the way to do it!

Over the coming months, Yoomee will be developing an online platform for crowd-sourced fundraising that even the smallest charities can use. This will push the boundaries even further, tapping into social media and gamification - and re-inventing online donor management and CRM as we know it. If you'd like a demo, please do get in touch.

By the way, at Yoomee, we've raised nearly £700 for Movember - which isn't bad considering only me and Ian were man enough to follow the challenge through! Rich tried, but bottled it after a week of bum fluff. Si was reluctant to be photographed with his newborn whilst sporting dodgy facial hair, and Matt already has a growth of sorts to which he's attached.

Credit: Photo by Luke Avery as part of the Sheffield 365 Project

Editor's note: Feel free to comment on Andy's tache below...