An Interview With Katina Bishop, Development Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation

FS: Can you describe a recent successful fundraising effort?
KB: In testimony to the benefits of partnership and relationship cultivation, EFF recently partnered with five independent game developers that released a "bundle" of five of their popular video games and encouraged people to "pay what they wanted" for the games. They also allowed people to distribute their donations between the game developers, EFF and one other charity. We publicized the promotion through our website, blog, newsletter, Facebook page and Twitter feed. The promotion was a run-away success, surprising everyone involved and raising over $170,000 for EFF in a single week (and over $1 million in total).

FS: What advice would you give to organizations similar to yours, in size and annual operating budget?
KB: Diversify your funding sources. EFF is a unique organization in terms of our funding history. Instead of being overly dependent on foundation and/or government grants for funding, like so many organizations, the majority of our money came from the generous contributions of a small group of major donors. We learned the hard way that if even one of those sizable contributions became unavailable for any reason, it put the organization at risk. We've spent the past seven years putting considerable effort into diversifying our funding streams and are a more stable organization now for doing so.