I've been tracking the Pretty Bird Woman House ChipIn page. At this rate, we will miss our fundraising goal.
nbier has done a great job organizing Kossacks in an effort to save Pretty Bird Woman House.
Pretty Bird Woman House is a women's shelter serving the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Without help, the shelter will close due to lack of funds. This diary is about a project to provide the shelter with emergency funding to remain open, and to provide long term support to help the shelter become self-sustaining. Please give what you can, if you can.
Unfortunately, I have been tracking the fundraiser's progress, and I can say with confidence we will miss our goal of $25,000.
I analyzed the progress of the fundraiser based on posted updates (nbier's and my own):
4/27: $6123
4/29: $8320
4/30: $12,550
5/4: $13,940
I then projected the results using Excel in a graph. The dark blue line is our progress. There is a prominent inflection in the curve; this is typical of low-profile DailyKos fundraisers. There is always an initial burst of giving (especially if a cause is frontpaged), which steadily tails off as attention wanes and those who will give will have already done so. (Day 3 is essentially the "Hubbert's Peak" of on-line fundraisers.)
The thick black line is a logarithmic projection of what we will raise on-line as of the end of this month; the bright blue line is a linear extension of of our current progress. As you can see, we are not on track to raise $25,000. In fact, we won't even raise $20,000. Furthermore, both projections are optimistic, because without constant frontpage exposure, any DailyKos-based fundraiser continues to lose momentum.
I understand many people are still exhausted from last election (and bracing for impact in 2008). I also am aware that many people sent checks. That said, I seriously doubt these are the reasons we have lost so much momentum. As of this diary, the ChipIn page has only 319 contributors. Even if half of all donors mailed a check, that is a very low rate for a site with 100,000 registered users. I'd bet it's because most Kossacks didn't see it when it was frontpaged over a week ago.
One last surge of frontpage exposure could probably put us over the top. C'mon, Kossacks! We work miracles every day!