A Bold Experiment in Micro Donations: $2 from 12, 500 Twitter Users To Fund Clean Water

Laura Fitton (aka @pistachio) or otherwise known as the maven of Twitter asks:

1. What can $2 do?
2. How can I thank and honor clients and friends of Pistachio Consulting this year?
3. What do I want most of all for Christmas?

Laura wants to save the lives of children, but she knows it's been very difficult year, especially for charitable giving.   She also knows that her friends may be looking into their wallets and crying.   So, she's come up with this micro donation campaign:

I don’t want to ask much of any one person. I realized just $2 from each of my Twitter readers would be $25,000. If everyone who reads this - YOU - gives just $2, Charity: Water can build an entire water project for a school or hospital in Africa. Betaworks and Tipjoy liked my idea and will 1) waive ALL fees for their “micropayments via Twitter” tool, and 2) match up to $10,000. Donate NOW just by tweeting:

p $2 @wellwishes for (your message here) via @tipjoy

If you follow the link to Laura's blog post and want to use tipjoy, you can type in your Twitter name and password and it automatically posts the tweet and your pledge.  The minimum transaction amount is $5 to minimize the overhead, so when you pay you have to pay in advance for $3 worth of tips.   You have an option to pay your pledge right there using your paypal account.  Once I paid my $2 pledge, I saw the progress report on the campaign - there was over $500 raised so far from 88 people.  I figured, I go back and donate the remaining $3 .... it's a good cause I know respect and applaud Laura for doing this - and figured would help the match go a little bit further.

Let the micro fundraising begin!

Comments

[Dan Taylor]

Brilliant idea! Micro donations is a path that I've been advising NPO's to follow for quite a long time. The usual push back I get is the 'We're more interested in long term committed givers" (as we can forecast budgets and harvest marketing data from them).

Maybe NPO's have never seen a sizable contribution come via micro donations, but this kind of 'I have a large audience, I want to do something good' social media mobilization will open a few more eyeballs to the attractiveness of micro donations.

[Laura "Pistachio" Fitton]

Thanks SO much for donating AND for blogging about it. I know that structuring it this way - with a tiny ask amount and a whole new service to administer the payments - makes it inherently tougher. But I have a vision for a world where mobile social networks have an easy built-in currency for in-the-moment giving, (with low overhead fees!) and this is a step towards that.

Imagine it for public radio: hear something great on the drive to work? What if you could effortlessly tip a dollar or two in appreciation? Or tweeting your order & payment ahead to your coffee shop? Or donating to a cause during a presentation or speech that motivated the giver?

In tough economic times anything that can spread the load more evenly, reduce friction and make giving more spontaneous could go a long way towards making up some of the pinch nonprofits are feeling in this downturn.

That's my passionate vision, anyhow...

Thanks again Beth.

[Jody Steinhauer]

I just had a challenge. Run a donation program for the homeless and my only financial donor backed out 4 weeks ago. Crisis hit and we sent emails around to all and got in almost $30K so far. I am new at this but have been told we need to talk\meet. PLease contact me Beth.

thanks
jody
[email protected]