Twitter As Charitable Giving Spreader: A Brief History and Meta Analysis of Fundraising With Twitter

Last August, I saw the impact of Twitter's velocity first-hand with a fundraising experiment.  I was able to raise $2,500 in 90 minutes at Gnomedex.   I wondered whether or not those results would be replicable?   Right before Thanksgiving, the TweetsGiving effort and Avi Kaplan helped Epic Change raise over $10,000 in 48 hours to build a classroom in Tanzania.  The campaign used the power of retweeting to spread the message across twitter users. 

As Lucy Bernholz notes, this might be one more sign that fundraising on Twitter is less marginal and moving to the middle.  Lucy points to some implications for organizations to consider:

• Video, blogging, twitter, online payments, viral marketing, instant thank yous, etc as the minimal expected organization infrastructure;
  
• Community building (you can identify other donors, everyone blogs about it), instant infrastructure (giving managed by chip-in, Paypal enables the back office);
• Quick commitment - set a goal, reach it, move on;
• Little gifts - and lots of them - are the holy grail;
  
• Creativity matters - next year you'll need a new twist;
• Anyone at an organization might be the leader of your next campaign;

I would add these points:

• It's not about the reaching a large number at once, but identifying the right six or seven influencers who can re-tweet your message and have their networks respond
• Small gifts, but incorporate some incentives or recognition for larger gifts
• Have universal human theme or tell stories
• Have a reporting page or widget that shows your real-time results
• Incorporate something visual that can also spread across Twitter
• It isn't just about Twitter - remember you need multi-channels - blogger outreach, email, organizing a team of people to reach to their networks, private messaging, phone calls, etc
• Use a hash tag and have that be part of the retweet so your campaign can benefit from extra visibility from the twitter trending
• Don't have your first foray onto Twitter be your campaign ask, build social capital first.
  

I can't stress the importance of community building or rather network building.   You don't go into using a Twitter strategy without having built up a little social capital or as Tara Hunt calls "Whuffie."    Tori Tuncan from Lend4Health mentions the importance of reciprocity as she offers some reflections on why she got involved in the campaign over at the Social Actions blog.  She also raises some questions about cooperation versus competition between nonprofits, what Hilde Gottlieb describes "community benefit centers" and has written about in her soon to be published book.

Let's take a look at the brief history of fundraising on Twitter and lessons learned.  I'm drawing from my experience using Twitter drawing and those of others that have posted case studies and reflections. 

If you know of campaigns and lessons learned that haven't been included, please leave a comment:

August 2007

I launched a campaign to raise money and get t-shirts donated for the Cambodian Bloggers Summit.   I send updates on my progress on Twitter and noticed that everytime I twittered an update (not even a direct ask), I would receive donations.  What seem to work was:

• Some influential people responding publically that they had donated
• My friends responding with public questions about what else was needed or suggesting fundraising strategies
• Private, personalized messages, not mass emails

The last few donations that put this campaign over the top came from Justin Kownack who paid it forward from his own group donation experiment using Twitter as a test of good deeds.

October 2007

This campaign was for $1,000 to send a young Cambodian woman, Leng Sopharath, to college.   Chris Brogan and 81 other Twitter users helped reached this goal with small gifts in 24 hours.  In fact, the campaign went over goal and we able to raise enough money to send another young person to college.   What I learned from this campaign that it is important to get help from influencers on Twitter and that inbetween campaigns if you cultivate your network, the donations will not be a one-time only thing. 

December 2007

On December 2, 2007, the first Frozen Pea Friday Campaign on Twitter Launched.  It raised $3,500 in 15 hours.    This campaign was a community-generated effort - spearheaded by Connie Reece and came from people who knew of Susan Reynolds fight with breast cancer and rallied behind her.   As an outside observer, the lessons that I took away from this effort were:

• Having people change their avatar to a pea photo gave a visual clue to the campaign and helped it spread.
• This was the first time I observed the use of "retweeting" a fundraising message
• The short time period helped build momentum and a forward moving campaign that people wanted to be a part of.
• There were a number of social media influentials who reached out to their networks helping to contributing to a community culture of giving on Twitter

Connie Reece shared some insights in this interview and you find more links to case studies and post campaign reflections here.

January 2008

As the first place winner in the America's Giving Challenge for Global Causes, I use several twitter strategies.  I held a one-day retweet rally during the midpoint of the long campaign to spread the word.  In reflecting on this now, it is important to make sure that your supporters are doing the retweeting and that you're not overdoing it on your Twitter account or you risk annoying people. 

I also learned that one-on-one donor solicitation techniques can also work and some of the challenges of being able to track the velocity or flow of networked donations.   What is missing is some software or features that track the flow of your donations, almost like doing a social network analysis similar to Twitinfluence.

July, 2008

Blogathon Vancouver:  Rebecca Bollwitt reports that Twitter was instrumental in the success of Blogathon Vancouver 2008, raising close to $15,000 in 24 hours through blogging and with a big push from Twitter for traffic. The synergy between twitter and blogging - for traffic, commenting, and participation has been well-documented.

Austin Blood Drive Tweetup:  This was for donations of blood, not money - but twitter got results.  They turned out a record number of first-time blood donors and overwhelmed the Central Texas Blood Bank.

August, 2008

Using Twitter and other channels, I raised $2,500 in 90 minutes at Gnomedex.   The experiment was to test Twitter's speed.  What could happen if you had a lot of hyper-connected geeks who are comfortable using Twitter in room to retweet in a concentrated amount of amount?  In the analysis, one thing I learned was the importance of instant thank yous - not only via Twitter, but other way channels.  It generated some valuable insights from donors.   One metric for me in measuring success, was I able to inspire other people to take action? (at least thre that I know of Pam Mandel,  Duncan Riley and Dave Delaney)

Tyson Foods and the Austin Social Media Club organized a HAM TweetUp to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank.  They used twitter to drive comments to the blog - each comment would generated 100 pound donation.  They got enough comments in two hours to fill a truck.  Lessons learned is to know your twitter followers and who are the the ones passionate about your cause and have responsive networks.

FlowerDust, a blogger, raised $4,000 - $1800 of it in 18 hours for Compassion's Global Food Crisis Fund using her Twitter presence.

September, 2008

Dr. Mani, a heart surgeon in India - and Web 2.0 expert, launches The Heart Kids Tweet-A-Thon  On September 12, he spent 24 hours tweeting about his cause to help raise awareness and donations.  His Tweet-a-thon raised over $5,000 for his charity on Twitter.

Social Media Roadblock Campaign launched by Red Cross in September marks an experiment from a large nonprofit institution in using Twitter connected to a fundraising campaign.  More here.

The Well That Twitter Built:  On September 18th, Mashable's Twitter followers donated $3,536 to Charity:Water, an initative to build wells in Ethiopia.  Paul Young raised an addition $637 through Twitter and shared some of his reflections.

October, 2008

We see one of our first examples of using Twitter to fundraise in connection with a holiday.  This one was very creative, dubbed "Trick or Tweet" focused on retweeting, incorporated a contested, and was cooked up by the good folks at FutureNow.   The takeaway here is the retweet message shouldn't necessarily be the ask, but something fun or related to the theme of the campaign.  It also has to be a universally human theme that many people can related too.  Who can't relate to Trick or Treat?

Laura Fitton (aka @pistachio) has launched the Twitter for Dummies site where folks are contributing ideas and tips to help write the book.   I'm sure there will be a lively chapter about nonprofits and twitter.

How will Twitter be using for fundraising for good causes and by nonprofits in 2009?  What are some your takeaways from these experiments?  Is your organization considering using Twitter for fundraising sometime in 2009?  What questions are you asking?   Are there other examples previous campaigns missing from the list?

Comments

[Gregory Ng]

For the first contest of my new review site, I decided to give away a Flip Mino camera to a lucky reader. But instead of having them subscribe to my site, I wanted them to promote EpicChange.org in a tweet, a blog post, or by adding a donation widget to their website.

Here is a link to the contest including a video of me explaining why I decided to base a contest off EpicChange instead of just promoting my website.

http://www.freezerburns.com/wordpress/2008/11/26/win-a-flip-mino-from-freezerburnscom/

[Jesse Stay]

One more for your list - earlier this year (May) we were able to raise $10,000 in just about a month or two mostly through Twitter for the Serenity Burns family. Serenity was diagnosed with Leukemia this year, and the family, with 10 kids, was very grateful for the contributions. All funds were donated through Chipin, and deposited into their Paypal account. The promotion was via Twitter, FriendFeed, and my blog. Her site (where you can donate more) is at http://liftingupserenity.com

[Beth]

Steve Bridger's contribution to London TweetUp re: fundraising project in Kenya using Twitter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mexicanwave/3058495203/in/photostream/

[Connie Reece]

This is a very helpful review, Beth. One project you might want to add -- a project that included non-cash donations -- is the Austin Tweet-up Blood Drive. We turned out a record number of first-time blood donors and overwhelmed the folks at the Central Texas Blood Bank. Here is a short video that aired on our local Channel 24's Docubloggers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DdkLMGtQnM and a blog post that described the results: http://everydotconnects.com/2008/07/03/think-twitter-is-silly-look-what-it-just-did/

Thanks for being such a great resource, Beth.

[Gradon]

It's wonderful to see so many uses of microsharing for fund raising.

For our first Social Media for Social Change event in October of this year, we used Twitter as the primary conversation tool to build awareness, and ultimately raised over $20k for Jane Doe Inc, a Boston-based anti-domestic violence organization.

Beth, thanks for the wonderful writeup. I look forward to meeting you at a social media event in the near future!

[Rebecca]

It's encouraging to see so much going on - thank you for compiling all of this, it's a great resource!

[John Haydon]

Beth,

Great post - and thanks for listing so many examples. Twitter is a powerful fundraising too precisely because of it's low "cost" to the user:

*Quick commitment - set a goal, reach it, move on
*Little gifts - and lots of them - are the holy grail

Tweetsgiving was easy. $10 and then pass hit the "RT" button in Tweetdeck.

Just stumbled.

John

[Mary]

Hello Beth,
I found a blog on twitter blog about some of your ideas. I was going to make sure to copy your url to give you credit, when I decided to also copy some of your posts. www.squidoo.com/twitfund . If you have concerns (I like your thinking and want to promote you in the page) let me know. I would delete the page if you don't like what I did. Great work,
Mary MacIntyre
www.about-albuquerquenm.com

[Farhan Rehman]

Great Post Beth!
Really well written, and is a total inspiration, for helping communicate to others the value of using these tools for real fundraising :)

[cashback]

Good read very interesting.