‘Give’ With A Little Help From Your Friends
Daniel Neville
With this month’s brief coming straight from the amazing guys over at WWF we thought that you might need a bit of inspiration to help get those ideas spilling onto the page. Social Media gives us a huge opportunity to get the message about charities, social/political and environmental causes out there and, as a result, there are some great fundraising tools and mechanics out there that use social media to harness these networks gigantic user bases to spread the word. Here are a couple of my favorites.
Save the Reef Facebook Application
In this application users get their very own reef that they must tend to. You receive coins every time you log into the app and can use your coins to ensure that your reef stays in tip top condition.
Through tending your reef one learns what is harmful to a reef and what needs to be done to keep a reef clean and alive. It is a social application that encourages interaction with your friends by sending and receiving fish. Again the application is more about learning than actual monetary donations. Any money that is raised is donated to the Center for Ecosystem Survival. This application has 600,059 active monthly users. The popularity of this application is due to the social factor as well as the word of mouth spread through the sending and receiving of fish!
Save the Planet Facebook Application
The “Save the Planet” application donates real money to real charities. The idea goes that small donations can make a big change. When you sign up you get “lunch money” which you can distribute as you wish. With your “lunch money” you can buy grain to end world hunger or buy blankets to help the homeless.
In all there are 9 causes that you can contribute to. Regardless of wither you choose to donate your “lunch money” or real money, the game is aimed at awareness and the donations are a side order. The Application has 207,011 active monthly users, which is high, but considering Facebook has over 200 million active users I’m sure there is room for a more popular planet changing idea.
Mashable’s Summer of Social Good
The Summer of Social Good is the first large scale online campaign to raise funds strictly online through Social Media. The aim of the campaign is to harness the power of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogs and other online media to raise money for The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, Oxfam America and WWF.
This initiative is running from 1st June to the 28th August. 100% of the money raised will be split equally among the charities highlighted. The idea works on social currency; when one donates money to the fund you can tell all your friends by tweeting about it. So far $3611 has been raised.
Last year Charity:Water hosted a Twestival, which was in essence a drive to raise funds for the charity by harnessing the power of Twitter. Their goal was to raise $1 Million, however they only managed to raise $250 000. This year they are back, bigger, better and more organised, determined to reach their 1 million dollar goal!
The Twestival starts on the 12th September 2009 and lasts until the 4th February 2010 and aims to bring twitter communities in over 202 countries together. Again 100% of the money raised will be used to provide safe drinking water to those in need.
AidsAction Viral
After searching YouTube for over an hour looking for a charitable viral, it became clear to me that this approach is one that has not been widely used by charities. I finally found this viral for AidsAction through Net Squared. It’s about finding the world’s most generous person. This viral is fairly young so it’s hard to measure its success. My initial feeling is that it doesn't quite fit the charity, but over and above that I think it has potential. Also see Cannes Young Lions Entries on GottaQuirk for a few more charity viral attempts.
That should give you enough juice to lubricate those brain cogs... So come on, submit an idea and save the world.
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