Fundraising with an Eye Catching Domain Name

As you know, I am riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge to raise funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. When people ask how to donate to my fundraiser, I give them the link, which is profile.pmc.org/es0223. It is easy enough to share the link via email or in a blog post, but it is not so easy when I mention the PMC ride to people in passing.

Domain investors know a complicated domain name or web link can make it difficult for people to directly navigate to a website. It is one of the biggest reasons why many major companies own domain names they use for forwarding. Customers can easily navigate to a business website with a memorable descriptive, call to action, brand match, or acronym domain name.

Earlier this year, I won CancerStinks.com in a GoDaddy expiry auction. I began forwarding the domain name to my PMC fundraising page. I am sure there was very little existing type-in traffic to the domain name, but using it for forwarding makes it easy for people to find my fundraising page when I tell them about it.

My wife and I have friends who live on a property that abuts a popular pass through street for commuters. Hundreds of cars pass their property each day on the way to and from work. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a revered institution in our region, and the PMC is a well-known event. To raise funds for DFCI via my Pan-Mass Challenge ride, I created two fundraising banners with the CancerStinks.com domain name highlighted. I put them on the edge of our friend’s property yesterday evening.

I’ve always talked about the benefits of using a memorable domain name for marketing purposes. I thought doing it myself would be a good way to see the impact a domain name can have, but more importantly, it was a fun way to support Dana-Farber.