Fundraising using Social Media: Mashable’s Summer of Social Good Case Study
Posted on 28. Aug, 2009 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Inspired, Social Media Strategies
Another momentous month has flown by.
Amongst a raft of new project developments for Real Fresh TV (more on this on the soon-to-be unveiled new website!), a number of significant developments have taken place in the burgeoning social media industry relating to charity fundraising I feel I most post about.
Regular readers will be aware that I am quite involved in 7 Wonders in 7 Days, a social media-powered round-the-world fundraising trip aiming to raise £777,000 for 7 charities.
The trip, now supporting Comic Relief through the Sport Relief 2010 campaign, now happens in October 2010 and is developing into a number of different social media campaigns for each of the charities involved.
The 7 charities are:
- Alzheimer’s Research Trust
- Diabetes UK
- Open Doors
- Young Minds
- British Red Cross
- Sport Relief 2010
- Feed The Minds
But I must talk about the almost concluded ‘Summer of Social Good’ initiative by popular tech blog Mashable.
The well-designed initiative kicked off in early June with the lofty aim of co-ordinating a massive online charity fundraising campaign for a number of US charities: Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong, WWF, Oxfam America and The Humane Society.
According to the Summer of Social Good website:
Summer of Social Good is the first large scale online charitable campaign to raise funds through the power of Social Media and the Internet. The goal is to use the power of “Social Influence” via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs and other online media to raise an unprecedented amount for our fund benefiting The Humane Society, Livestrong, Oxfam America and WWF from June 1st until August 28th, 2009.
The campaign winds down today with a Social Good Conference, “a one-day educational event celebrating the finale of the Summer of Social Good charitable campaign.”
Mashable’s Summer of Social Good seems to have attracted a lot of support with a number of interesting uses of social media metrics as a starting point for motivating donations.
The United Nations Environmental Programme‘s offer to plant a tree for each new follower of the @UNEPandYou Twitter account on World Environment Day in June is one such example.
Another is Ford’s Social Action Month which saw them offering to donate $1 per view for their Fiesta Movement Agent videos.
These and similar initiatives point to a new way of encouraging donations from people on social networking sites. They double up as a neat way to connect companies with their corporate social responsibility goals via social media.
Keep an eye on the Summer of Social Good website for news on the follow up to its remarkable campaign. There are already a number of ways to keep supporting the campaign.
And if you’re mulling over a social media powered charity fundraising campaign, don’t miss this insightful list of tips for raising funds for charity using social media.
What say you? Can you see this happening in the UK? And how soon?
Related posts:
- Real Fresh TV hosts the UK’s first Facebook Q&A tomorrow, Join Us!
- Isy Suttie from Channel 4’s Peep Show and future Formula 1 Star Jon Lancaster join our Twitter Q&A for Charity
- The Case for Manchester Open Data City and the Joys of Courting Corporate Philanthropy
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