Christmas has come and gone, and January has been yet another busy month for Piryx. In last month's "Tip of The Month" we covered the "Give a Gift" feature. Feel free to read up on that, and be sure to watch out for new enhancements in the coming weeks!

As part of January's tip of the month, we're going to learn how to embed a Piryx fundraising widget in your facebook fan page. While this might seem difficult, I think you'll find this to be as easy as "Cut and Paste". The entire 5 step process will take you about 5 minutes to set up - then you'll be ready to fundraise through facebook like a pro!

Ok, let's begin.

Step 1: Step 1: Create A CampaignCreate a new campaign within your Piryx account to track donations coming in from Facebook. You'll need to log into your Piryx account to get started. You can either work with an existing "campaign" or you can "create a new campaign". In this use case we're going to use a non-profit organization that I recently started called Texas Ventures, and we'll be launching a new campaign with "FacebookFanPage" as the Piryx tracking code. Allowing you to track all your fan page donations back to this particular fundraising channel. Giving your organization the ability to measure the fundraising success of your Fan Page in comparison with all you other fundraising channels.

Step 2: Create A PageStep 2: Create a page within Facebook if you do not have already have one. If you don't have a Fan Page, all you'll need to do is goto www.facebook.com/pages/ and click on "Create Page". Then, Select your page category. Hint: Non-Profits are listed under "Brand, Product, or Organization". Give your page a name. In this we'll call ours "Texas Ventures". It also might be best not to publish this page just yet, that way you can customize it with your organizations content before driving your friends to it.

Step 3: Add the "Static FBML" app to your Facebook page. After you've created your page, you'll see a link in the upper left Step 3: Add "Static FBML App"hand corner called "Edit Page". Click that, and scroll to the bottom till you see a section called "More Applications". You should see a link for "Static FBML", if not click on "Browse More" and search for "Static FBML". Once one the "Static FBML" application page, you'll see a link on the upper left hand corner that says "Add to my Page". Click that, and select the page you want to add it to. Close that out, and go back to your fan page.

Step 4: Edit The "Static FBML App" TitleStep 4: Edit the title of the Static FBML app to say "Donate". Once you get back to your Fan Page, click on "Edit Page" again, and scroll down to the app that says "Static FBML". Click on edit, and you'll open up the application settings. From there change the title to say "Donate". In this case, we'll say "Donate to Texas Ventures".

Step 5: After changing the title, you're ready to "Cut and Paste"! See, I told you it was that easy. :-) Just paste the following script into the body of the Static FBML app:

<div id="outside_location">

 

Then last but not least, just replace "YOUR DONATION PAGE LINK HERE" with a link to the donation page youStep 5: Add The Script! want to embed in Facebook. Click on save - and you're done! All you have to do now is go back to your fan page, and add that tab to your fan page.

Now that your fan page is complete and you can accept donations. Gather the key members of your organization to tell their friends about it! You can even change it on a regular basis to raise awareness about different issues your organization is looking to support. In addition, you can even add multiple "Static FBML" apps to raise awareness about other issues your organization supports.

All Done!This concludes January's tip of the month! Stay tuned for more news in this department - we have some really incredible features launching in the coming weeks!

 

 

Texas Ventures Facebook Donation Page

 

 

So one of the coolest aspects of my job is traveling around and meeting with hundreds of political organizations and non-profits doing some very interesting things in the social advocacy space. From time to time I come across some of these organizations, and become fascinated with way's they implemented our system into their social advocacy and online fundraising strategy. I've decided to launch a blog series called "Piryx Diaries" to chronicle and tell some of these stories.

So, without further ado I want to introduce you to Charlie Faye. Aside from having an absolutely beautiful voice, she's a local Austin, TX musician who's about to hit the streets on January 1st 2010 for an album tour called "Traveling with Charlie". I stumbled across Charlies tour as I was poking around Youtube. Tired of touring the old way, she plans to live in 10 different towns over the span of 10 months, form a new band with local talent, and perform regionally for an entire month. As Charlie travels, she'll be raising money - mile by mile.

During her first week in each town, she'll be hanging out at coffee shops and playing solo gigs. Then hopefully by week two she'll be forming a new band and performing regionally. Charlie hopes to both learn and teach something in each town she travels to - her way of giving back to the community she's recently bonded with. 

Check out the video she made below discussing this journey, her myspace page, and her micro-fundraising website. Good luck Charlie! Keep us posted on your travels! If you're also doing something cool with Piryx, let us know by sending me a note! I'd love to hear about what you're upto.