outreach.

A lot of you have probably heard about the recent success of a Toronto blogger who combined a fundraising widget from Chip-In with the networking power of Twitter to raise over $14k in about 2 days.

Well, we just heard about another great free widget that you and your organization might want to share with your community. "Ask Your Lawmaker" is a project of the Capitol News Connection, and they sum it up nicely in 3 phrases:

We recently bragged about how the NTEN 501 Tech Club in Austin helped get social media users involved in the Capital Area Food Bank food drive. Now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, they've teamed up with other tech-savvy do-gooders to deploy a 5-day online donation campaign.

Using widgets and friend-to-friend appeals through social networks, they hope to raise $5,000 in 5 days. (Thanks to @SusanReynolds for the heads-up!).

Network for Good has released a new study, "The Wired Fundraiser: How technology is making fundraising 'good to go'" (PDF). Based largely on Network for Good's experience (and data) from offering some of the first charity widgets, the key findings are, in brief:

• When Wired Fundraisers Talk, People Listen: The messenger matters even more than the message.
• Not Every Wired Fundraiser Is a Champion: The successful Wired Fundraiser has a relatively rare combination of true passion and a means to lend a sense of urgency to their cause.
• Technology Makes a Difference: Widgets and social networks make existing personal fundraisers more effective.
• Smart Charities Embrace the Wired Fundraiser: And they find their own, “inner” Wired Fundraiser.

Maplight.org (the winners of the NetSquared project) have released two new projects today: a fundraising widget that lets you track presidential fundraising; and plans for an API that will let you tap into their vast array of FEC (Federal Elections Commission) data.

According to their press release, we have a lot more to look forward to:

The MAPLight.org presidential widget is the first of several more widgets that the organization will release. By September 15, MAPLight.org will release a widget for U.S. Congress, showing total campaign contributions for each candidate for Congress. By September30, MAPLight.org will release its "Money and Votes" widget, revealing correlations between campaign contributions and votes for any bill in U.S. Congress.

The widget is lots of fun, but it's the API I'm really excited about. I can't wait to see what the community is able to do with that data.

Widget fundraising is all rage these days, with some real numbers and case studies making their way into the sector (see our webinar with the talented Peter Dietz for some fascinating stats). Although widget innovation is happening at the fringes, it's no surprise that the larger players in online fundraising are beginning to enter the scene as well. Convio has just announced a new service -- Convio Personal Events -- that allows users to create and RSVP for events, as well as raise money. And, of course, it all integrates with the Convio platform. I'm a woman who hates data silos, so I think this is a nice advancement for Convio users.