Flickr: Si1veryEarlier this summer, our 501 Tech Club friends in Austin, TX helped organize a Tweet-up blood drive with the Austin Social Media Club with great success: new folks made their way to donate blood after hearing about it through Twitter.
They're at it again this month -- September is Hunger Action Month -- helping to organize education and donation opportunities for the Austin community in the first ever Ham-Up Tweet-up.
NTEN Member David Neff, from the American Cancer Society in Austin, Texas produced this video to document a recent Tweet Up Blood Drive he helped organize through his local 501 Tech Club and Social Media Club.
I came across a blog post today that made me smile (and not just because of thejustgiving.com great vocabulary used across the Pond). It's a simple and straight-forward example of how easy it is for someone to use free, fast, online tools to raise money for his or her favorite cause. Here's an excerpt:
"I've just had a rather intense week of trying to use social media to raise funds and by and large succeeding. Inevitably this story involves blogging and tweeting and people I don't know very well being incredibly generous...."
David Harte, Digital Central project manager at Birmingham City University and contributor to the Birmingham Post's Business Blog, decided to try a spur-of-the-moment fundraising campaign one week before he ran in the London Marathon. He didn't have to raise money for a charity, but he decided he wanted to try to help his favorite, St. Mary's Hospice. His goal was £495, and he ended up raising over £300 (and he's still raising money for his cause online).
> Of course, most nonprofits aren't trying to win an election, but many of the fundraising and organizational principals remain the same. And while there's been a lot of buzz about the death of social networking -- be sure the check out Slate's "The Facebook Philanthropos" -- Beth Kanter assures us that the reports are overblown. We just need to think more strategically about how we're using all the new toys.
Justin Perkins, Heather Holdridge, & James O’Malley, Care2
It's happening.
A few small nonprofits with distributed networks of volunteers are swamping social networks and raising thousands of dollars for orphans in China and other worthy causes. Obama, Edwards and Ron Paul have seen droves of new donors come out of the woodwork with surprising speed.
Though the tried and true one-to-many broadcast model is still working, plenty of examples confirm the notion that loose distributed networks with very little centralized oversight or control can rally together around a common goal in support of an organization -- both nonprofits and political candidates.
bigmouthmediaI've heard a lot of buzz today about the apparent bursting of the social media bubble for campaign purposes.
Just as I was forming my own thoughts around this, coming up with the example of Barack Obama's grassroots online fundraising success, I came across this article in Slate, which also points to the Obama campaign as an example of success.
The article refers to the recent Case Foundation fundraising contests (which we've blogged about here), skeptically asserting:
"The amounts involved show that Case understands these endeavors are more social experiment than nonprofit sweepstakes. Sure, prizes of $50,000 matter for the winning organizations, as do the overall dollars raised... But the denominations of the donations remain small, and it's not clear that one-off contests will lead to more. Any fund-raising professional knows that most nonprofit organizations secure the bulk of their money from a relatively small number of large contributions, either from wealthy individuals or institutional sources. Those gifts demand personal cultivation, and an online nudge doesn't usually do it."
But what about Barack Obama's stunning fundraising model of reaching out to many online donors online, asking them to contribute small amounts?
Flickr: Si1veryEarlier this summer, our 501 Tech Club friends in Austin, TX helped organize a Tweet-up blood drive with the Austin Social Media Club with great success: new folks made their way to donate blood after hearing about it through Twitter.
Justin Perkins, Heather Holdridge, & James O’Malley, 