The American Cancer Society Wants Your Birthday!

Over the summer, I wrote a post called "Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0:  How To Address Cause Fatigue and Scaling."  As more and more nonprofits and individuals flock to social networks, creating acacophony of fundraising pitches and the subsequent cause fatigue, how can organizations scale?   charity:water was one of the first to create it's own social network for fundraising.

Now we have the American Cancer Society scaling the concept of the birthday fundraiser.    It's birthday fundraising on steroids with the creation of their  birthday fundraising platform and accompanying social media presence.  They want to create a world with more birthdays!  And, they want you to declare your birthday to cancer (not the year, but the month, date and more importantly your email address)

The American Cancer Society campaign,  called "More Birthdays," is aimed at creating a "birthday movement."    The message is that if there is less cancer, there are more birthdays.   They are encouraging people to declare their birthday to cancer (and adopt a healthy lifestyle). 

The campaign caught my attention because their Twitter branded account was wishing people happy birthday on Twitter, including me.  (They're searching on the term "happy birthday" and tweeting a birthday greeting with a pointer to their More Birthdays Site.)

The campaign web site incorporates a person-to-person fundraising platform where you can set up a personal fundraising birthday page and raise money from your friends for the American Cancer Society.   Think Relay for Life fundraising pages with a different theme.  The web site has additional content, for example tips on how to celebrate your birthday in a healthy way as well as how to use it as an excuse to donate to the American Cancer Society.   There's also a cake contest.

This multi-channel campaign includes a Facebook App and even an iPhone app.  When you download the Facebook app, you are asked for your contact information, but when you skip past that and the other ways that the American Cancer Society wants you to promote their cause on Facebook.  You finally arrive in the birthday center, where you can see a list of people's birthdays, including your friends.  And you can easily "celebrate" their birthday with one click, sending a birthday greeting to their Facebook profile. 

Comments

[Laurie Creasy]

This is incredibly creative! Thanks, Beth and the American Cancer Society, for jump-starting my brain this morning.

[Johnhaydon]

Is someone's Birthday coming up?

[Beth Kanter]

ah, yes .. and I'm in real trouble if our cause gets up to $28,000 because I'll have to donate $53 for each year! Yikes, that $2809 -

[Vic]

thanks for this, very helpful, I am thinking if you can join earth cancer society, because I noticed that you are interested in cancer topics, maybe you can give some advice to the believers. I call cancer patients believers, because I want them to believe that they overcome this challenge.

[Jonathan Barnes]

There is no doubt that Social Media Marketing can be extremely efficient for fundraising initatives. Mainly because non-profit movements usually stimulate an emotion and it is this emotion that triggers people to share it with friends thus creative a movement.

Great article and a very creative campaign! Good work!

I've written an article about a similar (but smaller) online movement for Haiti - please have a read - http://bit.ly/8zXEVj

Thanks,

All the best,

Jon