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« SMS Fundraising Campaign for Breast Cancer | Main | Guest Post by Tom Dawkins: Ashoka’s use of Twitter »

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Awareness Home Funding

Thanks for the ideas. We have just started to uncover all the avenues social media can take our organization and know there is so much more to learn. Keep sharing!

TFrankfurt

great post!

Elena S.

Wow! This seems like such a boon for the nonprofit world and its donors. Corporations can not only donate to their favorite nonprofit now, but can get some tangible publicity in return. Are corporations/brands social media savvy enough to realize the benefits of this model?

Irit Epelbaum

Thanks for the great post. I am a fan of TwitCause, since I believe it is an interesting model for ‘giving’ in this day and age. They have a really promising product that can make a HUGE impact since it is highly-visible and it makes it easy for people like you and me to help others and engage with causes.

Rich Greif

Everybody Wins! USA was a featured TwitCause last fall in partnership with the Lionsgate Films movie Precious. They were easy to collaborate with and enlisted celebrities like Shannon Elizabeth and Alyssa Milano. In just one week, the TwitCause campaign generated millions of impressions, over 600 new Twitter followers and articles in the Chronicle of Philanthropy and Huffington Post. Social media efforts like TwitCause are an extremely important awareness and relationship-building strategy for us. It enables us to demonstrate that we are both a leading voice on the importance of reading to children, and a vibrant, growing national organization that is an ideal partner.

Simon Mainwaring

Thanks Julio,

A great post, especially with regard to the role that brands can play to enable social change. I work both with large brands and non-profits and the ways in which their mutuals interests can be served are only just starting to merge. Fundamental to brands is the realization that goodwill is readily earned when contribution is made to the greater good. Fundamental to the non-profit world is an adoption of a for profit mentality that empowers them to leverage the dynamics of the private sector for the greater good. Congratulations on enabling both of these with TwitCause. Truly meaningful and inspiring work.

Best, Simon Mainwaring

Beth Oppenheim

Hello! I really loved this post. As a nonprofit fundraiser in DC, I have thought a lot about what to expect from people when looking at and using social media as a way to raise awareness.
I think you are 100% right when you say NOT to expect money. it is an important component to your strategy, and ultimately to the success of your program to have REALISTIC expectations of your donors. I really love your work and commend you!

Daniel Wiser

Attune Foods partnered with Experience Project and Twitcause to leverage our partnership with the Celiac Disease Foundation and help raise awareness of and funding to support Celiac Disease.

The promotion was a great success for Attune in reaching our target for the promotion (Celiacs) who rallied around the promotion to support a cause near and dear to them. Attune and CDF reached thousands of celiacs and over a million Celiac supporters in support of better digestive health.

Our conclusion was that Twitcause can be an incredible platform for brands to authentically leverage non-profit partnerships through social media. Attune is a small brand, but we're very passionate about trying to deliver better digestive health to consumers. This cause aligned perfectly with the CDF - and Twitcause making for a really great partnership.

jennifer aaker

Great post - expectations of who will pay (brands, not people) - and why they would pay also sheds light on which brands may want to get into the game. Those that align their giving/social good with their business model. http://bit.ly/6dnb6b Great job.

Julio Vasconcellos

Thanks all for the supporting comments (nice to see some friends in the thread!).

One interesting theme I'm reading here is the relationship between brands and causes. First off, I think that brands are starting to realize the power that aligning themselves with a cause can have, as long as that alignment is genuine and authentic. It can be a great positive for employees that can be proud of their company doing good things, and it can also help to generate goodwill with consumers if done correctly.

We are very conscious of issues around "cause washing" and try to foster an interaction that is genuine for all. We want to find brands that truly support the causes that they are sponsoring - for example, in Attune's example above, their product helps those with Celiac Disease (and more broadly looking to improve digestive health) and therefore having a close tie to organizations that represent those constituents can be mutually beneficial. Häagen-Dazs also donated nearly $10k through TwitCause and Experience Project to research into Colony Collapse Disorder - a phenomenon that is threatening the honey bee population. Häagen-Dazs depends on honey bees for some of its ingredients and thus has a true interest in this kind of environmental research (in fact they had previously already donated $500k to research).

Currently one of our priorities is getting in front of socially responsible brands that want to support causes through TwitCause. We're able to reach nearly 2 million people through our network of TwitCause Stars, so that's a pretty compelling value proposition both for the nonprofits and the brands! We're very optimistic and trying to learn as we grow.

Thanks for the comments and feedback!

Bev Freeman

Hi. I want to clarify, per Beth's comment about Kiva, that the photo of a goat herder might be the person you are helping, but it's very unlikely. A recent NYT article about Kiva clarified that funds are pooled and invested and eventually distributed to qualifying projects as KIVA sees fit. This is a piece of transparency that is important to all of us who give to organizations like this. Also, if you care only about goat herders, there is no way to specify this so that your funds only go to them. Feedback? I would be happy to see further clarification.

Rebecca

Julio, thanks for this article. It's an incredibly valuable outlet, and one that bears consideration when outlining a marketing campaign strategy for a brand. This is a great way of leveraging social media for the good of both a cause and the funding company, though your comment on authenticity is an absolutely required component to make it both worthwhile and effective.

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