Twitter As Gift Community: Cambodia Bloggers Summit Campaign - $552 to go ...

Heading down the home stretch .... but wanted to share a few learnings re: personal fundraising.  For this campaign, I haven't sent out any "email blasts" - except for one to the video blogging community list.  This campaign is mostly being run off of my blog, personal emails, a little Facebook and mostly Twitter.

Twitter as a fundraising tool?!?

So far, twitter has been great.   Yesterday I raised several hundred dollars using Twitter in under an hour and got a few t-shirt donations. (You can see some of the tweets here on my profile.)  I felt like an NPR station during a pledge drive, and except that I asking people to donate the mugs too.  A few things that worked:

• 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 messaging solictations - not mass emails   

Stepping back from this, note that I've been using Twitter now for almost a year, have made friends with people I know and have met face-to-face, plus others that may be blog readers or connected with via Twitter. I follow them and write responses.  So, you can't just go into a web 2.0 site and scream show me the money.

It is also interesting to me, and perhaps some of the addicting quality of twitter, is the checking in regularly and reading what people are doing - following them - even if you don't them.   Here's an example from an email I got from a twitter tweet donor:

You are most welcome! Indeed, we do not know each other from face to face but I have been following your blog for a few months already and you have been doing some incredible piece of work. We are connected in Twitter, indeed, and I am looking forward to the time where we could meet in real life and catch up. Till then, you keep doing such a fine job and get those folks where they need to be. We shall be watching from here how you guys are doing :-D

While I was reading feeds, I saw a tweet about a video at Twitter Headquarters.  I noticed a Twitter sticker on the wall and was wondering whether there any Twitter t-shirts that could go to Cambodia.  I follow this person on Twitter and this guy's blog (we met at Games for Change) - maybe I can get some Twitter stickers and t-shirts for the suitcase?  Who knows maybe Minelli will incorporate Twitter in his next Cambodian guerrilla art project?

A special thanks to these donors!

Sue Wolff
Matthew Saunders
Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson
Sokhodom Pheng
Luis M Suarez Rodriguez
Nina Simmonds

Comments

[Seth Mazow]

Interesting post on what's been working for you. I really enjoy this type of post. When I worked at Interplast *sniffle* I was always looking for this kind of analysis. In the absence of "real" data, folks who want to pitch their superiors about devoting resources to emerging technologies need to point to something to demonstrate success.

[Matthew]

I was glad to help. I hope your trip to Cambodia is fruitful.