Social Media With a Conscience–Check out this Genius Campaign for “Tweetsgiving”
How do you get a group with widely different views from all around the world to help build classrooms in Tanzania? The answer is Twitter. This social media campaign, “Tweetsgiving“, is a stroke of genius, and shows the enormous power social media can have to mobilize people for real world action.
I love this campaign… It has all the elements of a great social media effort. It has levels of involvement. You can merely add a tweet and some video about what you are thankful for, which is a fun and meaningful activity for Thanksgiving week. Chances are you’ll want to share your tweet with your network, which spreads the message in a massively viral way. Or, you can get serious and join an online group to discuss it. Then you can find a “tribe” of local people who can meet locally to raise money or do your own fundraising event. They even have a house party set up where people can put together pre-themed fundraiser events. At the end of the effort, people who have participated can watch videos and tangibly see the results of their donation.
And that’s an important point. How many people have you seen doing marches or going to fundraisers where a great amount of money is raised, yet it seems to go into a black hole labeled “disease research” or “annual budget fund”? It feels good to get all that money together, but then what? It can be a big let down. Yet here, you can watch the buildings going up, see the reactions of the kids, and hear their stories. And best of all, it’s tied to an annual holiday associated with giving back. So next year, everyone will be geared up to do it all again.
There’s some great lessons to be learned for non-profits here, namely:
1) Make it easy for people to gather around your issue, and spread the word
2) Offer levels of involvement. Remember, anyone saying anything good about your effort is a gift, even if a donation is not attached.
3) Show your results–often. In the end, it is your most powerful weapon.
4) Make it cyclical.
It’s a brave new world for fundraising. The cheap communication tools at our command can make us more effective than ever before.
