By Maud Lyon, CultureSource

It was 2 a.m. on a Thursday night, and a night owl on the CultureSource team happened to check our newly christened Southeast Michigan power2give.org site. She was amazed. The site had launched at midnight, and in the first two hours donors already were laying down their credit cards to support the 31 projects — to the tune of about $20,000. And they never quit giving. About 35 hours after its launch, our power2give site had brought in more than $120,000 in funding for Southeast Michigan nonprofit arts and culture organizations — half from donations and half from a $60,000 matching grant from the Ford Foundation. Southeast Michigan set a launch-day donation record for the power2give system, which is in 17 other communities around the country.

To say the least, we are once again impressed by our region’s generosity, and our local nonprofits’ ability to rally their troops for a good cause. This outpouring of support was leveraged by a $25,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to bring the program here for CultureSource — a professional association of 115-pus organizations serving Southeastern Michigan as nonprofit enterprises for arts and culture.

Power2give was created in 2011 by the Arts and Sciences Council of Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) with the support of the Knight Foundation. It is an online crowd-funding platform — like Kickstarter or indiegogo, but just for nonprofit arts and culture groups and with the incentive of a possible matching grant. Crowd-funding websites like power2give connect donors directly to projects they care about.

Across the country, power2give has raised nearly $2 million with over 8,600 donations for more than 1,000 projects — and counting. In just a couple weeks, Southeast Michigan has had 486 donors use our power2give site to fund projects like these:

• The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn raised $10,000 for its ACCESS youth photography program.
• The Janice Charach Gallery in West Bloomfield raised $10,000 to purchase new display pedestals.
• Grosse Pointe Symphony Orchestra raised $8,000 to hire a conductor.
• Arts & Scraps in Detroit has raised nearly $6,000 to build a new website.
• The Sphinx Organization has raised $7,000 to put violins in the hands of underserved children.

CultureSource and our member organizations are hoping other donors will step up to offer more matching funds and will continue to support these awesome projects. There are about 34 projects awaiting donors still, and more are added almost every day!