Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Twitter Social Good Campaigns: Moving Up The Ladder of Engagement

Here's another Mother's Day Fundraising Campaign on Twitter.  Whole Foods is donating a $1 for each Re-Tweet of this Tweet to support The National Domestic Violence Hotline.   I call this type of fundraising campaign the sponsored Tweet approach where potential donors do not have to open their own check books, but instead re-tweet or use a hashtag to leverage a donation from a corporate sponsor to a charity.  One of the earlier examples of this was the HoneyBees Campaign on Twitter sponsored by Haagen-Daaz Ice Cream. (See Juilos Vasconcellos analysis)

With all fundraising and activist campaigns, I think it is important to think of your conversation and messaging strategies in the context of the Ladder of Engagement - whether you are focusing on one campaign or your fundraising campaigns for the whole year.

Think about all the various ways your organization interacts with different groups of people through its communications and fundraising efforts – through social media or other traditional channels.   You will no doubt discover that some people engage with you lightly and others will engage with you more deeply.  Face it, not every single person your organization touches will have the same level of passion or interest in your program.  And, that is not a problem, it’s just the way it is.

To be successful integrating social media into your fundraising channels, you need to use different techniques, tactics, and tools to map to the person’s level of interest.   You need a portfolio of approaches or maybe even campaigns that meet people where they are at and help get them more engaged with your cause and organization.  

Single Call To Action:  Spread Awareness

The Whole Foods sponsored Re-Tweet donations is focused on a lower level of engagement, simply spreading the message.  This type of campaign is a win-win for sponsors and for nonprofits that need to boost awareness of their issue and have just started dipping toes into the social media waters.  

What is missing is some mechanism for the the nonprofit to reconnect with those who are Re-Tweeting the message and engage and educate them, perhaps getting them to the point of making a donation, volunteering, or signing up for a newsletter.

Integrated Call To Action: Spread Awareness and Donate

My colleague, Geoff Livingston, recently wrote an analysis on Mashable about Twitter's new social good initiative Hope 140.   The first effort was the #EndMalaria campaign that used the TwitPay platform for donations, creating a combined call to action that asked Twitter users to retweet by donating $10. The Case Foundation matched donations with a $25,000 grant.  The effort raised over $11,000.

Ecosystem of Calls To Action:  Spread Awareness, Donate, and Create Content

Another example of this combined called to action comes from Epic Change and its "To Mama With Love" their call to action focuses on donating and user-generated content.  What I think has made this campaign catch on is that it is powered by love or an emotion we feel for our mothers or being a mother.  Also, Tweetsgiving has been building and cultivating a network and has now has a cadre of people who at the highest level of engagement and while to encourage peers to participate.   The campaign also helps us save a universal problem - what should we get our mother's for that special day?

Conclusion

It is important to understand that these levels of engagement are part of an ecosystem.    While fewer people may reach the very highest levels of engagement because of the time commitment, personal connection, or interest, those with lower engagement are important to ecosystem because they spread awareness.   Recognize and appreciate people where they’re at, and work to get more people engaged as you strive to gently nudge them further up the rungs of your ladder.  

This takes a combination of tactics and approaches - from one-on-one relationship building to more broadly spreading your message.  You need also take into account where you are in developing your network at all times and be nurturing those higher levels of engagement outside of campaign mode. You also need metrics and measurement to see what works in terms of moving people up the rungs!

What is your repertoire of engagement techniques to inspire people to move up the ladder?  Are you thinking about it one campaign at a time or an going activity that includes campaigns?  How do you balance your social media strategy so it includes both low and high levels of engagement?

Show Your Mama Some Love (or Facebook Like)

Epic Change has launched a clever social media infused fundraiser for Mother's Day, called To Mama With Love.  Leveraging the emotional connection we feel with our own mothers or our own pride of being a mom, Epic Change is inviting donors to participate in an online collaborative art project to honor moms around the Globe.

The fundraiser's goal to is to raise money for one amazing Mama who dreams of building a home for children in her village in Africa.  The money you donate to this effort will support Mama Lucy Kamptoni, a changemaker in Tanzania who once sold chickens and used her income to build a primary school that now provides a high-quality education to over 400 children in Tanzania.  The money raised from this fundraiser will help build a boarding facility on campus so that every child who attends her school has a place to call home.  To Mama With Love is a project of US 501c3 nonprofit Epic Change.

Here's how it works.  You have to make a donation first.  Then once you've donated, you can create a special heartspace in honor of your mother or a mother you admire.  You are given the option to customize your "heartspace" with photos, video, poems and artwork.   The program creates a mini-web page with a unique URL that declares your love.   

Here's the one I created to honor my mother, Ruth.   Ironically, she isn't on Facebook or Twitter, nor does she have an email address.  So, will have print it out and send via US postal mail.  The heartspace also lets you create an e-card and I sent it to my Dad to share with my mom.  (And, if anyone in my house is reading this blog, this would make a terrific mother's day gift - hint - hint.)

According to Epic Change's founder, Stacey Monk, the web site was created by volunteers that included developers who are students from CMU (where Stacey attended school) and a designer in London whose parents come from a village one hour from Mama Lucy in Tanzania.  I love the design.

To help spread the word, the site has integrated "sharing" your love for your mother and Mama Lucy both on Twitter as well as on Facebook (or should I say sharing your "like").   For Facebook, they're using one of the Facebook social plugins.  

What are you doing to honor your mother on Mother's Day and help change the world?  If you are a mother, how are you celebrating your special day and making the world a better place?

I'm Going To Twestival on March 25th, Are You?

The third Twestival will take place on Thursday, March 25th in cities around the world.  The event was the brainchild of Amanda Rose, who launched the first Twestival in February 2009 that raised money to support Charity:Water.  Thursday's event will support Concern (on Twitter), an organization that seeks to provide education aid to some of the world’s most poorest communities.  My colleague, Geoff Livingston, has a great post about Twestival over at his blog.

You can go to the site and find an event in your community or city.  I'm planning on going to the Palo Alto Twestival - will I see you there?

And, speaking of charity:water, Monday was World Water Day, but that doesn't mean you can't talk about the issue year round.   Randi Zuckerberg suggests these Facebook Fan Pages, Geoff Livingston offers this post on the issue of clean water, and Case Foundation blog points a great way to give water this week:

Become a fan of ITT Watermark on Facebook. For the next week, with every new fan they get, ITT Corporation will donate $1 to Mercy Corps and Water For People-two great non-profits that work to provide safe water solutions to people around the world.

Book Giveaway: Inbound Marketing Book (and some advice)

I'm giving away a copy of "Inbound Marketing" by Brian Halligan (Author), Dharmesh Shah (Author), David Meerman Scott (Foreword). I discovered it because of a charity challenge they're running on Twitter to raise awareness of their book, plus raise some money to help Room To Read.  I'm a fan of Room To Read, so I asked Dharmesh for a copy of the book to give away to nonprofits, and he agreed - so if you want a chance to win, leave a comment on how your nonprofit could benefit from in-bound marketing.  And of course, if you want to help out Room to Read, send this tweet.

The definition of Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.  You can read a more detailed definition here.  I heard about the challenge because Laura Fitton posted this tweet.  I guess you could say it is an example of in-bound marketing.

Now, a few critical thoughts about their charity challenge.  Here's how it is described:

The Inbound Marketing Challenge

The Challenge:  Get as many people as possible to tweet a link to this article, especially the people in the list below by midnight (ET) on Sunday, February 21 2010.

The Cause:  Room To Read a not-for-profit organization that transforms the lives of millions of children by focusing on literacy.

How It Works:  We will donate $Z to Room To Read (up to a whopping $10,000) based on the following formula:

Z = (Number of people on list below that retweet) x $0.01 x (Total Retweets)

Example:  Lets say 20 people on the list below retweet the article (more on how to make this happen a little later).  Then, each retweet is worth $0.20 ($0.01 x 20).  If the article gets 10,000 retweets, that’s $2,000.  If all 50 people below retweet and we get 20,000 retweets, that’s 50 cents per tweet and 10,000 smackeroos for Room To Read.  Cool, right?

Here’s the diabolical part.  My guess is many of you know a few people on the list below.  Enough to where you can tweet them, and they’ll listen/respond.  I even made it easy for you, just use the convenient link next to each of their names.  (Yes, I’m just a helpful guy).

Do Your Part:  Retweet this article and try to get as many people on the list below to retweet it too.  It takes just a minute for you and them. The more that tweet, the more that hear about and the donation amount goes up.

Before I launch into some of my criticism, I want to applaud Hubspot for experimenting with different ways to promote their book and help a charity.  My criticism below is intended to help such efforts have more impact on the charities. 

I've been reflecting on the importance of authenticity in CSR programs that my business partner at Zoetica Geoff Livingston wrote about the other day.  I think cause-related marketing efforts could use a little bit more authenticity too or at least balance profit motives and altruism.

This charity challenge is more focused on getting the word out on the book than helping the charity.  Why?  I think they've set the bar too high for the number of re-tweets and influencer tweets and bar too low for what they'll donate to the charity.   The should have donated something like $1 per retweet and put a ceiling on it.

There is also no psychological or emotional motivation to re-tweet.  Plus, the influencer list is a not necessarily a list of Room To Read's influencers (and in fact, as of this writing, RoomToRead had not even tweeted about this challenge.)  The influencer list is a list of influencers with reach who may be not the attention stream to look at all the replies where as RoomToRead influencers may have less reach, but more affinity with the charity.

The formula to trigger a donation is complicated.   The amount donated per retweet is based on the number of influencers who retweet the message and the total amount donated is multiplied by the number of retweets.  So, if 20 influencers tweet and there are 1000 re-tweets, they will donate $.20 cents per re-tweet or $200.

As of this writing they had 298 tweets and 11 people on the influencer list retweeted. (According to the TweetMeme Widget on the post - which could be underestimated)  So, let's see - that's 298 x .11 cents = $32.78 donated to the charity.    I guess if they sold one or two books, they're even. 

What can we learn about the right formula from previous efforts?

Tweetsgiving which asked people to retweet a message of gratitude in a 48 hour period over Thanksgiving generated over 21,000 tweets.  I know it is a different animal - a campaign implemented by a charity without a for-profit marketing motive lurking beneath.

But if we look at for-profit companies using the sponsored tweet model (e.g. retweet this message and our company will donate $x to charity), there is a better a benchmark. Take for example the Haagen-Daz  campaign to raise money on TwitCause for honeybee research. 

The fundraising campaign added some extra buzz, a sponsor, Ice cream maker Häagen-Dazs,  willing to pay for any Twitter user who tweets out the support for the cause.  The sponsorship worked liked this: Häagen-Dazs was offering to donate $1 per tweet for the first 500 people that tweet everyday with the hashtag #HelpHoneyBees. The money was donated to UC Davis research project to further look into Colony Collapse Disorder, as well as help fund the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, which aims to teach people about how to create their own honeybee farms.  

I got some of the back story form Julio Vasconcellos, VP for Business Development, for the Experience Project which operates TwitCause.  "I think the #HelpHoneyBees hashtag campaign was very effective and helped
raise $7k for the honey bee research as well as get Häagen-Dazs some great exposure around the contributions they've been making to the cause (and of course, to their brand)."

For those that want the numbers:

• 6,818 tweets sent out during the official week (several more before) by 3,294 unique Twitterers
• Total followers reached was slightly over 5MM (these are non-unique followers, basically a sum of all the followers of each of those 3kTwitterers)
• Total Twitter impressions generated 12.4MM (here an "Twitter impression" is anytime a follower is presented with a tweet - if I have 100 followers and tweet twice, that's 200 "Twitter impressions")
• Häagen-Dazs donated $7,000 to UC Davis for research into colony collapse disorder which is afflicting honey bee populations
• Participation from some celebrities and notables

I know from my 53rd Birthday Campaign  that it is possible to using the Twitter API, to measure impressions. (Julio Vasconcellio  and Kumar  Garapaty were kind enough to do the heavy lifting using the Twitter API to crunch impression numbers.)  So, one could have set up a donation formula based on impressions. 

Here's a few tips that might be useful to companies that want to help nonprofits by small cause-marketing campaigns:

1. Don't set the bar too high in terms of what you'll donate per tweet.  That's not being authentically generous.   Rather, be generous and set a ceiling on the total amount to be donated.
2. Work with the charity/cause so you can leverage their most passionate supporters. It's not just people who are interested in your product, book, or service.
3. Incorporate some emotional or psychological message in your message spread.

Update: Wow, Dharmesh Shah knows how to listen and redesigned the challenge.

Pepsi Refresh Project: An Insider's View - Guest Post by Bonin Bough

Note from Beth:  I've been writing about online contests that use social media and crowdsourcing techniques.  In December, I wrote about Pepsi's  bold move of not spending money on Super Bowl ads for Pepsi beverages but using the money for lethal generosity through its Pepsi Refresh Project.  I called Pepsi out in a post called "What can Pepsi Learn About Crowdourcing for Social Good?"  A representative from Pepsi, Bonin Bough, left a comment and I invited him to write a guest post about they are learning about crowdsourcing for social good. 

As frequent readers of this blog know, many pitfalls of online contests have been discussed here. It’s an honor to have Beth ask me to guest post so I will do my best to live up to the quality readers are used to. With the launch of public voting on the Pepsi Refresh Project, now is a good time to discuss the efforts we’re taking to set the new standard for transparency in online contests.

For those who don’t know, the Pepsi Refresh Project is a new effort to empower individuals to make a positive impact on the world.  We’ve pledged to award more than $20 million to support innovative ideas that move communities forward. Anyone can apply for a grant and the public decides who wins.

Each month, Pepsi will award grants up to $1.3 million to the winning ideas across six categories, including: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education.

We collaborated with organizations that are dedicated to making a positive difference in the world to design and implement the Pepsi Refresh Project. Our partners include GOOD, a leading platform for thought and action revolving around pushing the world forward; Global Giving, an online marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them; and Do Something, the largest non-profit teen charity.

Global Giving will vet contest applications to ensure they meet the requirements — for example, grant proposals may not contain profanity or involve political advocacy for a particular party. Each month, we accept 1,000 submissions, and all of the ideas that comply with our Official Guidelines are then posted online for public vote. We’re doing our part to bring transparency to the process by featuring a monthly leaderboard showing which ideas are getting the most votes.

Pepsi has developed an Advisory Board of leaders of non-profit sectors with extensive experience in each of the six award categories. They’re CEOs, foundation presidents and some of the most innovative thinkers in social good, chosen for their proven track record and commitment to moving the world forward. They are not paid for their efforts and they will not have any influence on the balloting or awarding of grants.

We’ve also compiled a team of Ambassadors, who are emerging leaders in the six award categories. They range from start-up founders to activists to neighborhood advocates. They will work to involve the nonprofit community and cultivate creative and innovative ideas in their category. Ambassadors will identify trends in submissions and invite thought leaders in their field to champion promising and innovative project ideas.

So, what’s different about this contest than other online contests? First, never before has a trusted brand engaged in the work of doing social good with the level of resources behind the Pepsi Refresh Project. Pepsi is giving away an unprecedented $20 million in grants and inviting the public to rank the best ideas in an open vote. And the grants are available in a range of sizes, to foster ideas as small as a community garden and as large as groundbreaking medical research. The Pepsi Refresh Project stands apart from other programs in that it is open to a broad spectrum of ideas, and it will be a sustained year-long effort.

Our theory of social change is that new ideas are born from optimism, a curious mind and a creative spirit. We can make a difference by equipping people with the means to bring their ideas to life.  And, we believe social media and digital engagement can fuel, extend and inform these efforts. 

This focus on social engagement is driven from the highest points of the PepsiCo organization – and you can expect to see great things on this front from PepsiCo over the coming years.  What is at the core of all of our efforts is how can we continue to help and support the space by being an organization that is open to exploring and working with all of the bright minds and emerging technologies that are driving social media forward.  

Through the Pepsi Refresh Project, we’re helping to move people’s ideas from wishful thinking to reality. The results so far have exceeded our expectations. After just 72 hours, we quickly hit our 1,000 submission limit for the first month — including at least one submission from each state. We look forward to tracking the winning ideas and we can’t wait to see what people come up with next.

The lesson is: if you listen to what people have to say and give voice to their perspectives, you can inspire people and empower their ideas to refresh the world.

Bonin Bough is the Global Director Digital and Social Media at PepisCo.

SMS Fundraising Campaign for Breast Cancer

Given the visible success of the Haiti text to give campaigns, SMS is bound to become one of the tools in the an organization's fundraising bag if it isn't already.

Today I heard about Drew Olanoff's latest fundraising campaign, a text to give strategy on behalf of Boarding for Breast Cancer.  Here's how it works:

Every time someone texts “tp4bc” to 60611, the textPlus mobile address, textPlus will donate $1 to Boarding for Breast Cancer, a non-profit, youth-focused education, awareness, and fundraising foundation whose mission is to increase awareness about breast cancer, the importance of early detection and the value of an active lifestyle. 

textPlus, a mobile app, offers users free texting with group text capability.  What's cool is that Drew’s employer GOGII is the mobile app developers behind textPlus a free group texting application available on the iphone and android platforms. 

This is not the first time Drew Olanoff has taken to the social web to fundraise for cancer.  Last May after Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, he launched a charity called blamedrewscancer.com which donated $1 dollar to the LIVESTRONG foundation for every person that followed @DrewFromTV, the twitter handle of comedian Drew Carey.  The charity has raised $15,000 dollars to date and is a great example of personal fundraising that leverages the power of social media.

If you are looking for information about to design and implement an effective sms campaign, Allyson Kapin has a post that includes tips, as well as a description of some of the challenges.  Her tips include:

If your nonprofit is thinking of launching a mobile fundraising campaign, it’s critical that you develop a multi-channel marketing and outreach plan to spread the word and maximize donations. For example:

• Start with emailing your online activists and donors and place your shortcode and keyword front and center. Include a “Forward to a Friend” link and a “Share This” app on the landing page so people can promote it to social networks too. Reinforce this in a follow up thank you email as well.

• Leverage social networks. Tweet the “text to donate” campaign. Ask followers to pass it on. Post it to your Facebook Fanpage and any other social networks your organization is active on. Report back on key milestones. The American Red Cross has done a terrific job in the last 72 hours of reporting how much money they are raising via mobile, the work they are doing on the ground, etc.

• Paid advertising such as banner ads, keywords and text ads are excellent and fast ways to promote your campaign to millions of people and grow your list at the same time.

• Follow up with your donors. Tell them about the progress you have made towards reaching your fundraising goals. Explain how their money is being spent. Share some personal stories by people who have been impacted by their donations.

 

Update: More from Heather Mansfield on mobile marketing best practices here and some

Has your organization incorporated text to give in it is fundraising bag of tricks? What have you learned about implementing these campaigns?  What are the best specific blog posts and resources out there on SMS fundraising?

Resources:

Fundraising with Social Media Reaching a Tipping Point by Allison Fine
Reflections on SMS Fundraising Campaigns by Allison Fine
Few Text Donors Opt In To Receive Updates by Chronicle

 

 

 

 

 

Chase Community Giving Contest Ends With Yet More Controversy

Less than two hours ago, Chase Community Giving made the much anticipated unofficial post on its wall announcing the lucky winner of $1 million dollars and five finalists each receiving $100,000 on its contest Fan Page.

This contest was the culmination of a two-part "vote for me" cause marketing strategy that started in November and has been rife with controversy.  In some ways, it comes as no surprise that the race to the finish line ended with more allegations of dubious behavior by contest participants and those watching them compete.  It's left some nonprofit professionals wondering whether these types of contests are a good idea.

The lucky winner, Invisible Children, has won $1 million, but the Huffington Post is reporting that the second place winner, engaged in voter fraud.  Further Huffington Post reports:

In the contest's last few hours, many newly created profiles voted for The Isha Foundation, some of them with dubious-looking names, including Gdfg Kcjbvkljvb and Sdfj Dfsjlfkddjf. Several other profiles with more realistic names voted for Isha, though these accounts have had few if any friends or activity prior to voting.Though many of the profiles supporting The Isha Foundation appear to be new with little to no activity, it's unclear if that is a violation of the terms and conditions of participating in the contest.

Invisible Children has also been accused of fraud during the duration of the contest. Change.org reported on January 19 that many users who had not voted for Invisible Children had been tagged in a photo with an image reading "I Voted For Invisible Children," making it appear as though that user had voted for the group.

Voting for the Chase Community Giving contest ended at midnight on January 23, with an official announcement of the winner coming on Monday, January 26. It is unknown whether Chase and Facebook will be verifying the legitimacy of vote counts after the contest has ended.

I'm not surprised.  The contest was tainted during the first round when several nonprofits that had placed in the top 100 were disqualified without reason amidst criticisms about the contest design.  This happened right before the holidays in December and an article by Stephanie Strom in the New York Times reported:

JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities.

At least three nonprofit groups — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All— say they believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.

The groups say that until Chase made changes to the contest, they appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters.

Dubbed the Chase Bank's Online Contest Fail and a firestorm of criticism followed.  The disqualified groups organized a boycott of Chase and probably would have ignited an angry crowd if not a matter of timing.  The events happened right before Christmas when everyone distracted by holiday celebrations.  Chase Bank did not apparently make any formal, public concessions to the disqualified groups and the nonprofits decided to  move on.

All week, I watched the organizations competing in the Chase Community Giving Contest go up and down the leaderboard amid accusations of dubious behavior and tactics by those participating in the contest.

I think the more important question is the debate as to whether these "vote for me" contests are beneficial to nonprofits and social change.   I don't think contests should be banned entirely, they just need to be better designed:

1.)  Contest Design Should Not Promote Scarcity Thinking:  Scarcity thinking assumes no growth and heightened competition.  Contests that are designed to select winners based on popular votes only and huge dollar amounts inspire scarcity thinking.  Much like throwing some fish food into a pond filled with starving Koi fish:

Scarcity thinking also inspires less than honest tactics.  It doesn't promote thoughtfulness or field wide learning. 

Further, for organizations that are pestering their supporters and friends to "vote for me" has the potential of eroding the hard earned social capital.  It does not promote the good kind of relationship building that can really sustain an organization in the long run. It promotes transactional relationships. 

2.  The Role of Experts:   There is a role for expert opinion in crowdsourcing projects to make them more effective. 

Some contests, for example the Knight News Challenge and Case Foundation Make It Your Own, have handled this need for expertise by having a two-tiered process.  The crowd identifies the top contenders, not the winners and a panel of experts selects the winners.    The Brooklyn Museum of Art's Click Exhibition used two crowds - a general crowd and a crowd of curators (Allison Fine and I profiled this project in the chapter on crowdsourcing in our forthcoming book, The Networked Nonprofit)

3.  A Balance of Social Good and Marketing:   Can throwing a lot of money out there for nonprofits to beg for really solve social problems or make the world a better place?  There needs to be a balance of social good and cause marketing or else it might come off as "cause washing."   We know that corporate greed is being replaced by generosity and we know there is potential synergy between financial performance and attention to community and social needs.  But it can't be a pure marketing strategy - there needs to be some theory of change.

The above diagram describes the theory of change for Prizes from a recent report by McKinsey   This type of thinking needs to go hand in hand with marketing strategies to ensure an effective design.

What are the best ways that cause-related marketing campaigns can truly have a social impact? 

Are Online Vote-for-Me Contests A Good Idea?

Note from Beth:  There has been a variety of criticism of contests. Nonprofit consultant Hildy Gottlieb has been a vocal skeptic and is deeply philosophically opposed to online contests as a method of change in the social sector.  Her main objection to "vote me contests" is that it pits one amazing cause against another, perpetuating the scarcity mentality that lives in the hope of a pot of gold.    She also feels that contests have too much of a myopic focus on channeling dollars or click actions rather than engaging people's hearts and minds and souls. 

Earlier this month, I sent out a few tweets asking for the counterpoint to Hildy's view. Jared Paul, the co-founder of a new nonprofit that has a focus on homeless youth and one of the winners of the $25,000 in the first phase of Chase's Giving Community Contest offered to share his thoughts.  While as of this writing, his organization is in the bottom 25% of the leaderboard he shares a few points below about why contests like this can be helpful for small, new nonprofits.

In addition, Andy Amsler, a volunteer for another organization in the bottom 30% of the leaderboard as of this writing, left this comment on a blog post about the value of the contest for their organization.

Now that social media has normalized, can contests like this be a level playing field where organizations with hundreds and thousands of fans and much larger budgets compete along side those smaller organizations?   Nathaniel Whittemore pointed out some further problems with dubious strategies that as he says turns these contests into a farce.

Does these contests really help build capacity of nonprofits and bring innovative solutions for social to the forefront or not?  What do you think?

Guest Post by Jared Paul, A Good Idea

My name is Jared Paul and I’m the founder of a one and a half year old, San Francisco nonprofit called A Good Idea (AGI) that recently made the top 100 in the Chase Community Giving contest. AGI is a vehicle for positive social change ideas that connect people in need with people who want to help. Our largest “good idea” to date will be a fully accredited residential high school for homeless teens in San Francisco, which we will look to replicate in other cities across the country.

As a fairly new nonprofit, this online contest gave us the ability to gain exposure and compete with some more established organizations. The best part was that we won $25,000 and more if we do well in the second phase of the contest (up to $1 million!). Not bad for three weeks work, especially considering that we recently netted $10,000 for 3 MONTHS of planning a fundraiser!

You might ask, how did a less than two year old nonprofit make the top 100 out of 500,000 nonprofits nationwide? Well…sheer hustle, an inspiring video, and a supportive network.

To control spam, Facebook makes it impossible to email more than 20 people at a time, so to email your friend list, you must break your list down into groups of 20. Emailing my list of over 4,000 friends took me a few hours and I helped 40-50 friends through this process, quite time consuming. Chase also created an “activity” page where you could see who was voting for which nonprofit. Everyone had 20 votes to use (and you could only vote once per nonprofit) so people were usually left with 19 extra votes. I began emailing people after they voted, asking them to consider using one of their votes for AGI. While my Thanksgiving wasn’t much of a holiday as I had a laptop on my lap at all times, it was well worth it.

People in New Jersey, Nebraska, and New York who were learning about A Good Idea were emailing me asking how they could start a chapter in their hometown and asking their friends to vote. We started receiving unsolicited donations from people who cried after watching the video on our website and felt the urge to donate money to us. In summary for Round 1, we had our friends vote, we had our friends ask their friends to vote, and we asked total strangers to vote…and it worked!

For Round 2 we came up with a more elaborate marketing strategy including partnering with four other Bay Area nonprofits to support each other, voting parties, the attempt to get celebrities tweeting about us, getting local high schools on board, and much more. So far it hasn’t proven to be enough as we are far behind in the standings, but don’t count us out yet as we’ve got a few tricks still up our sleeves! All in all this process has been an unbelievably strenuous but rewarding process that has left me feeling an enormous amount of gratitude for the opportunity that Chase and Facebook.  Thanks for reading and of course, you can vote for us.

Updated:  Andy Amsler expanded on his blog comment about why these contests are good for small organizations.  You can read more here.

Haiti Support: Songs, Supplies, and SMS Fundraising Update

helping Haiti -- from the charity: water offices, Monday from charity: water on Vimeo.

The natural human urge is to do something to help.   And, we're seeing this all over the world, all over the social web.   Britt Bravo has a terrific compilation of grassroots efforts underway to help Haiti.  Here's a few more:

1.  Donations of Needed Items

charity:water offices were transformed into a drop off location for needed items in Haiti.  Although they stopped accepting donations of items at 5:00 PM (because the plane leaves on Tuesday), I thought this video is one small example of different grassroots efforts underway to help.  These supplies will be transported by Partners in Health to where they are needed most. Other charity:water partners in Haiti, Concern Worldwide US, are sending supplies from Ireland and still have a pressing need for donations.

charity:water is encouraging online donations to their partners who are in Haiti and working to quickly to deliver disaster relief services.  Partners in Health and Concern Worldwide, US.

Britt Bravo's post summarizes some good advice to those who feel the urge to volunteer or do something:

Joanne Fritz of Joanne Fritz's Nonprofit Blog has a helpful post with Top Three Do's and Don'ts for Helping Haiti. Her advice is: 1. give money, not things; 2. donate safely; 3. don't randomly show up to volunteer.

Idealist.org's post, Helping Hati Things to Consider echoes Fritz's advice about not sending things

2.   A Song for Haiti

This is a call to action or call to sing.  Amy Carol Wolff, a musician, wrote a song this summer and now she is hoping that people will use it for benefit concerts.  More here.

3.   SMS Fundraising Update

The Red Cross text HAITI to 90999 campaign continues to break records in SMS giving in the US.   As of a couple of hours ago, the Red Cross Twitter account retweeted the above from mgive it has raised $21 million in $10 donations.  MobileActive has a detailed report on the fundraising via sms.

4. Embedded Giving to Haiti

We're also seeing more embedded giving opportunities to give to disaster relief efforts. This one comes from Causeworld, an iPhone app that allows users to leverage donations from corporate sponsors by spreading good karma. They are doubling donations to the Red Cross disaster relief effort. 

Chase Community Giving Contest: The Organizations on the Leaderboard Go Up and Down

(Screen capture of Leaderboard as of Monday, Jan. 18th at 10:00 am w/ four days to go in the voting process.)

In November, the Chase Community Giving launched a contest on Facebook.  At the time, it was one of the biggest online contests thus far, open to more than 500,000 charities and offering over $5 million in prizes. (In December, Pepsi topped that amount with its Pepsi Refresh, a contest offering $20 million in prizes and also launching this week.) 

The top 100 "eligible" vote getters were announced in December.  Each organization received $25,000 and the announcement caused some controversy because of the contest eligibility rules and lack of a leaderboard. 

The second round of the contest opened on January 15th and the pre-contest promotion on January 14th on the contest fan page was met with a chorus of "Vote for Haiti."   Chase had, in face, already donated to the relief efforts, although the link to the corporate press release was not posted on the Fan Page all until two days later.

The 100 organizations are now participating in the next round, "The Big Idea" where the 100 charities share their big idea for changing the world and get votes.  The winner gets $1 million and five finalists will receive $100,000 each.  The top 100 included a mix of nonprofits with an operating budget of under $10 million with programs in designated Chase corporate responsibility areas: education, health care, housing, the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare.  

Over the holidays and into early January,  the Chase Community Giving contest quietly implemented a leader board, a scoreboard showing who is winning based on the number of votes.  In other contests, the leaderboard has been updated in real time.  Unlike standard practice for other contests,  this leader board is updated twice a day. 

Having real-time information is very important to the organizations. It helps them motivate supporters to vote as well as helps organizations make real-time adjustments to their strategy.  Real time leaderboards make the contest very transparent.  Nonetheless, you can still click through to each group's project page to see the real-time vote tally and I'm sure all 100 organizations are monitoring how others are doing to get out the vote. 

The platform initially had some technical problems where the voting pages and leaderboard landing pages did not load quickly or at all.  This may be due to heavy voting traffic or whatever,  but contest organizations came up with creative workarounds.  For example. Friendship Circle, has a web contest landing page that provides instructions on how to vote and a direct link to the Facebook app page.  

Some are some quick observations about the strategies the organizations are using as the contest unfolds.

• Explaining the "big idea" succinctly in a few sentences
  

As Farra Trompeter points out in a post about the contest, it is important to explain the big idea in a few sentences.   As I looked up and down the leaderboard, I noticed that Idealist was in the top 15.  Their proposal for "changing the world" is something they've been working on and getting feedback on for the past two years.  The executive director, Ami Dar, has been a thought leader the nonprofit technology sector for many years.   Because I know their work first-hand, they got my vote!

• It's not just the size of the Fan base, but activating them

In watching the scoreboard, the first and second place contenders have been fluid.  Invisible Children had a dramatic lead in the last two days, but was over taken by Twloha which as of this writing had a lead of 10,000 votes or approximately 37,000 votes or roughly 10% of its Facebook fans.   But this isn't about size of a charity's fan page as you can see by looking at the third place contender, Bridge to Turkiye, with almost 20,000 votes and a fan page base of 4,000.

• Organizing Offline and Online
  

There is also the importance of offline/online connection that can't be ignored.  For example, Friendship Circle, had a rallied at a Piston's Game in Detroit (see above video) and organized 3,000 teens to play freeze tag on Facebook to rally the vote.

The Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF) was around 50th on the leaderboard on Saturday and is now a respective #15 with a small but committed fan base of 600 people on Facebook.  The organization made it into the top 100 because passionate and well connected supporter, Teddy Zee, decided to be their champion.  He is organized parties to get hundreds of people to vote and connect through chats to get their friends to vote during the voting week.  According to Deborah Suh, executive director, "Whether we win the next round (we get $100,000 or $1 million), this has been a great way to raise our social networking presence."

Good luck to all the organizations participating in the contest. Here's where you can go vote!

What strategy advice would you offer to the 100 organizations competing in this contest?

The American Cancer Society Wants Your Birthday!

Over the summer, I wrote a post called "Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0:  How To Address Cause Fatigue and Scaling."  As more and more nonprofits and individuals flock to social networks, creating acacophony of fundraising pitches and the subsequent cause fatigue, how can organizations scale?   charity:water was one of the first to create it's own social network for fundraising.

Now we have the American Cancer Society scaling the concept of the birthday fundraiser.    It's birthday fundraising on steroids with the creation of their  birthday fundraising platform and accompanying social media presence.  They want to create a world with more birthdays!  And, they want you to declare your birthday to cancer (not the year, but the month, date and more importantly your email address)

The American Cancer Society campaign,  called "More Birthdays," is aimed at creating a "birthday movement."    The message is that if there is less cancer, there are more birthdays.   They are encouraging people to declare their birthday to cancer (and adopt a healthy lifestyle). 

The campaign caught my attention because their Twitter branded account was wishing people happy birthday on Twitter, including me.  (They're searching on the term "happy birthday" and tweeting a birthday greeting with a pointer to their More Birthdays Site.)

The campaign web site incorporates a person-to-person fundraising platform where you can set up a personal fundraising birthday page and raise money from your friends for the American Cancer Society.   Think Relay for Life fundraising pages with a different theme.  The web site has additional content, for example tips on how to celebrate your birthday in a healthy way as well as how to use it as an excuse to donate to the American Cancer Society.   There's also a cake contest.

This multi-channel campaign includes a Facebook App and even an iPhone app.  When you download the Facebook app, you are asked for your contact information, but when you skip past that and the other ways that the American Cancer Society wants you to promote their cause on Facebook.  You finally arrive in the birthday center, where you can see a list of people's birthdays, including your friends.  And you can easily "celebrate" their birthday with one click, sending a birthday greeting to their Facebook profile. 

Pepsi Refresh Project: An Insider's View - Guest Post by Bonin Bough

Note from Beth:  I've been writing about online contests that use social media and crowdsourcing techniques.  In December, I wrote about Pepsi's  bold move of not spending money on Super Bowl ads for Pepsi beverages but using the money for lethal generosity through its Pepsi Refresh Project.  I called Pepsi out in a post called "What can Pepsi Learn About Crowdourcing for Social Good?"  A representative from Pepsi, Bonin Bough, left a comment and I invited him to write a guest post about they are learning about crowdsourcing for social good. 

As frequent readers of this blog know, many pitfalls of online contests have been discussed here. It’s an honor to have Beth ask me to guest post so I will do my best to live up to the quality readers are used to. With the launch of public voting on the Pepsi Refresh Project, now is a good time to discuss the efforts we’re taking to set the new standard for transparency in online contests.

For those who don’t know, the Pepsi Refresh Project is a new effort to empower individuals to make a positive impact on the world.  We’ve pledged to award more than $20 million to support innovative ideas that move communities forward. Anyone can apply for a grant and the public decides who wins.

Each month, Pepsi will award grants up to $1.3 million to the winning ideas across six categories, including: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education.

We collaborated with organizations that are dedicated to making a positive difference in the world to design and implement the Pepsi Refresh Project. Our partners include GOOD, a leading platform for thought and action revolving around pushing the world forward; Global Giving, an online marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them; and Do Something, the largest non-profit teen charity.

Global Giving will vet contest applications to ensure they meet the requirements — for example, grant proposals may not contain profanity or involve political advocacy for a particular party. Each month, we accept 1,000 submissions, and all of the ideas that comply with our Official Guidelines are then posted online for public vote. We’re doing our part to bring transparency to the process by featuring a monthly leaderboard showing which ideas are getting the most votes.

Pepsi has developed an Advisory Board of leaders of non-profit sectors with extensive experience in each of the six award categories. They’re CEOs, foundation presidents and some of the most innovative thinkers in social good, chosen for their proven track record and commitment to moving the world forward. They are not paid for their efforts and they will not have any influence on the balloting or awarding of grants.

We’ve also compiled a team of Ambassadors, who are emerging leaders in the six award categories. They range from start-up founders to activists to neighborhood advocates. They will work to involve the nonprofit community and cultivate creative and innovative ideas in their category. Ambassadors will identify trends in submissions and invite thought leaders in their field to champion promising and innovative project ideas.

So, what’s different about this contest than other online contests? First, never before has a trusted brand engaged in the work of doing social good with the level of resources behind the Pepsi Refresh Project. Pepsi is giving away an unprecedented $20 million in grants and inviting the public to rank the best ideas in an open vote. And the grants are available in a range of sizes, to foster ideas as small as a community garden and as large as groundbreaking medical research. The Pepsi Refresh Project stands apart from other programs in that it is open to a broad spectrum of ideas, and it will be a sustained year-long effort.

Our theory of social change is that new ideas are born from optimism, a curious mind and a creative spirit. We can make a difference by equipping people with the means to bring their ideas to life.  And, we believe social media and digital engagement can fuel, extend and inform these efforts. 

This focus on social engagement is driven from the highest points of the PepsiCo organization – and you can expect to see great things on this front from PepsiCo over the coming years.  What is at the core of all of our efforts is how can we continue to help and support the space by being an organization that is open to exploring and working with all of the bright minds and emerging technologies that are driving social media forward.                     

Through the Pepsi Refresh Project, we’re helping to move people’s ideas from wishful thinking to reality. The results so far have exceeded our expectations. After just 72 hours, we quickly hit our 1,000 submission limit for the first month — including at least one submission from each state. We look forward to tracking the winning ideas and we can’t wait to see what people come up with next.

The lesson is: if you listen to what people have to say and give voice to their perspectives, you can inspire people and empower their ideas to refresh the world.

Bonin Bough is the Global Director Digital and Social Media at PepisCo.

Foot Traffic Philanthropy: Location Based Mobile Application - CauseWorld

Last month I made a prediction that we might see fundraisers with FourSquare or some other location-based mobile social network with gaming element.  Looks like my observation of  fundraising 2.0 trends of 2009  and  my 2010 predictions are right on.   Today, TechCrunch wrote about a new mobile application called CauseWorld

Here's how it works:

CauseWorld app users earn “karma points” when they walk into stores and check in with their cell phone. No purchase is required at any store, and karma points can be redeemed nine predefined good causes. Big brands like Kraft Foods and Citi (both are on board) then turn the karmas into real dollar donations to those causes. Food for poor families, water in Sudan, trees in the Amazon, etc. are examples of the causes.

Like foursquare and gowalla, you open the application on your phone and see local businesses (instead of showing everything around you, CauseWorld only shows businesses that you can check into for karmas). Enter the store, check in, and get the karma points offered to you. Once you’ve collected enough karmas you can donate them to a variety of causes. And, of course, you get badges for various activities.

The causes that are supported are listed here a good mix of wildlife conservation, hunger, and others.  This idea is really cool for a couple of reasons.  The user doesn't have to donate, but they're leveraging a corporate donation.   Sort of like embedded giving that Lucy Bernholz talks about, I think.    The application is well designed and is fun.  

It doesn't have a social element where you can see how many karma points your friends have within the app itself, although it uses Facebook Connect and you could opt to have your good deeds streamed on your wall. It might get more motivated if it had the leaderboard design that FourSquare has.

And it gets you way from your computer - you can get exercise!

And, of course, there is the trade-off - the fact that you're trading in your shopping habits data for corporate donors.  That doesn't bother me personally - it's for a good cause.   There is a scaling system for Karma points - for example supporting a classroom is five points while sending a book to a library in a developing country is 100.  It would be interesting to see the data on who saves up versus who gives away their Karma points and what the pay off is for the charity.  The number of karma points doesn't necessarily synch up with real world impact.

I just downloaded and got ten karma points and was able to support a classroom without doing anything - not even getting up from computer.   I'm off to do some last minute shopping and give it a test drive.

Update:  Some quick testing notes ..

• The design seems to encourage me to translate my Karma to donations every time I earn them.  This would take some real discipline to save enough Karma if I wanted to help some of the other groups.  Without a leaderboard, peer pressure, or something else in the game design - I'm tempted to donate as much as possible.

• When you donate, there are cute animations and graphics.  It reminds of a pinball machine when you score.   Anyway, it might be cool to be able to add on more information about the charity, more ways to engage and educate me.

• Once you visit a place, it gets checked out - so you're not being rewarded in Karma points for repeat visits.   Thus, I'm not building a habit of checking myself into the location.  I'm not sure why this is part of the design unless it has something to do with the design of research they're collecting about me.

All in all, this a lot of fun - and takes some of the ideas of an app like FourSquare to leverage corporate donations.   I wonder though, how much this could be designed to help the organizations build their network of supporters for longer relationships.

Deconstructing An Angry Crowd: What Can We Learn?

Should online contests be redesigned or just go away?  That's the question that Kari Dunn Saratovsky asks in a post over at the Case Foundation blog, one of many blog posts and tweets about the controversy surrounding how the Chase Bank handled its  online contest to give away $5 million dollars this holiday season.  The conversation provides a lot of good lessons for companies wanting to embrace selfish giving without cause washing.

The design is very important.  I think there are some good lessons and perhaps some best practices about how to manage an angry crowd before it escalates or goes viral.

Here's a summary and chronology of blog posts and Facebook and Twitter chatter.  I'm sure I've missed something.

11/16/09: Chase launched the online competition in November.   I blogged about it on November 16 as part of a trend of focusing online competitions on regional and local givings.  Many other nonprofit and do good bloggers helped promote the contest.   The press release from Chase describes the two-step process:

• In Round One of the Chase Community Giving program, Facebook users will vote for non-profit organizations they think should receive a portion of Chase's philanthropy funds. To reinforce the local focus of this program, 501( c)(3) non profits with an operating budget of $10 million or less will be eligible. Facebook users will be able to nominate non profits that serve the general public in the following areas: education, healthcare, housing, the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare. The Chase Community Giving Advisory Board will review the top vote-getters to help ensure compliance with the program's rules. On December 15, the top 100 qualified vote-getters will be announced to receive $25,000 each, and will move on to the next round.

• In Round Two, the top 100 organizations will have the option to submit a Million Dollar Grant proposal to Facebook users, detailing the difference they would make in their local community with the significant extra resources. Facebook users will vote starting January 15, and on February 1, the qualified organization receiving the most votes will be announced as the winner of a Million Dollar Grant from Chase. The next five organizations with the most votes will receive $100,000 each. Additionally, the Advisory Board will donate $1 million to the nominated charities of its choice.

12/16:  Chase announces the top 100 winners on its Facebook Fan Page and in this press release

12/17: The Dark Side of Online Contests.  Kjerstin Erickson over at Skoll Foundation's Social Edge wrote an insightful post about the contest design, pointing out how not having a leaderboard was problem and the need to balance social good and marketing objectives.   Her post was summarized on the Chronicle of Philanthropy blog on that same day.

12/17:  SSDP and other groups were disqualified from the contest. If you look at the posts on the SSDP Facebook Fan Page, you'll how the open organizing took place.  They asked contest sponsors for an explanation.  Without a response, they escalated their organizing efforts reaching out on Facebook, the blogosphere, and main stream media.  They start organizing boycotts and asking their fans to post on the Chase Fan Page (which at that time was opened for comments)

12/19: NY Times, Stephanie Strom writes "Charities Criticize Online Fundraising Contest by Chase".   That I afternoon after reading the article, I wrote a post summarizing Stephanie's piece and adding my own two cents about the lack of transparency and contest design.  The post got retweeted over 160 times. Later that evening, Nathanial Whittemore over at Change.Org wrote a scathing open letter to Chase.  According to the metrics on the blog, the post got almost 7500 views and 114 retweets.

12/20:  I wrote a follow up post expanding on design lessons learned in light of other, larger, crowdsource charity contests coming up which was also retweeted 140 times.

12/21:   The Chronicle of Philanthropy continues its round up coverage.  Blog posts continue to summarize and dissect the controversy focusing on transparency, design, and social good.   

2009 The Year of Perpetual Online Contests: Case Foundation Blog.  Kari Dunn Saratovsky recaps the conversation and lets us know that the Case Foundation is planning host an online forum to make room for a discussion about online contest designs.   The conversation starter, "Do you think that a redesign of online contests could help salvage this concept of online citizen participation while maintaining some level of transparency?  Would you prefer these contests simply go away in 2010 – if so, what might replace them?"

Marsha Stepanek discusses the transparency (or lack of) and damage to the brand.   Scott Henderson points out the issue of control and crowds and John Haydon raises concerns about the Fan Page lock down.  Marc Pitman wonders what can be learned? Stephanie writes about the importance of contests for small nonprofits.  Some hashtags start appearing, including #chasefail and other hashtags.

Chase Facebook Fan Page removes fans comments on the wall and fan commenting ability.

12/22:  Disqualified groups continue to share their frustration about a lack of response on their blogs as well as Facebook Fan Pages.  SSDP sets up a protest site called "Chase Boycott"

We don't know where this will go next.   Maybe this will all fade away with the holiday upon us and all will be forgotten by the opening round for the top 100 organizations to compete for the six and seven figure grants in January.  Or maybe it will fester.  

Source: Slideshare Deck - The Bottom Line on Facebook and Twitter

It's unclear how much damage this has done to their brand, if at all - and if damage could have been reduced if they were more responsive earlier on.

If anything, it provides lots of learning which is the heart of success of social media and potential for constructive discussion and debate about social media, online giving, transparency, and more.  Should the folks at Chase wish to respond, they are more than welcomed to write a guest post on this blog.

Update:  Ami Dar makes a great point that we should acknowledge Chase for trying something new.  I agree, but I think they're missing a fantastic teachable moment about learning, experimentation, and a conversation about online contests, transparency, and reshaping philanthropy.

Facebook and Google Donate To Charities In Lieu of Parties and Gifts

My twitter friend, Joey Leslie, and I traded some back and forth tweets about Chase Bank and Pepsi's Crowdsourcing for Social Good efforts.  Joey (I think) coined a new term, "cause washing."  His definition:

"Hiding a brand behind a cause for corporate benefit."

Joey pointed out that Facebook's donation to Donors Choose in lieu of holiday party and Google's $20 million donation to selected charities in lieu of holiday gifts to Adsense and Adwords products is not cause washing.

As a board member of Ushahidi and an advisor to Global Voices - very pleased to see them on the list of recipients which also included those listed below. (Since Google didn't include a link on the page, I've included a list with links below) I'm curious how they came up with the list - a small committee within Google or did they crowdsource names internally?

Feeding America
Boys and Girls Clubs
Smile Train
CARE, Mothers Matter
World Wildlife Fund, Natural Capital Project
Mobile Creches
Prajwala
HEAL Africa
African Institute for Mathematical Sciences
The Mango Tree
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Harlem Children's Zone
Save the Children, Latin America focus
Reporters Without Borders
Witness
Loud Against Nazis
Global Voices
Ushahidi
Save the Children, Middle East and Eurasia focus
Grupo Cultural Afro Reaggae
Ashesi University College, Ghana
Pratham
Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience
Shin Shin Educational Foundation
Tzu Chi Foundation

What Lessons Will Pepsi Learn About Crowdsourcing for Social Good from Chase Bank Contest Fail?

Pepsi is taking a bold move.  It's not spending money on Super Bowl ads for Pepsi beverages. Instead, Pepsi is using the money for lethal generosity through its Pepsi Refresh Project, a crowdsourced cause marketing effort to give away $20 million in grants to help revamp communities.  

Rather than donating the money to nonprofits through a traditional corporate responsibility grant program, Pepsi will jump on the online contest bandwagon.  Pepsi will invite "applicants" to submit big ideas to change the world and then ask a crowd of Pepsi Fans to vote on them. Pepsi will have contests every month for 10 months beginning Jan. 13.   

According to a post in GigaOm, The Pepsi Refresh Project will award $5,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $250,000 to individuals and organizations that turn good ideas into projects that make a difference.  The grant categories will be:

• Health
• Arts & Culture
• Food & Shelter
• The Planet
• Neighborhoods
• Education

Right now you can give your email to Pepsi to be alerted about details.   I was relieved to see that they at least, presumably, respect our privacy and had this disclaimer:

Notice: Pepsi will send a one-time reminder about the Pepsi "Refresh Project" to the email address you provide. It will not be collected or used by Pepsi-Cola Company for any marketing purposes.

Let's hope they learn from the recent Chase Bank's Online Contest Fail, other studies on these crowdsourcing contests, and countless examples of crowding sourcing for social change.  I hope they avoid going to the dark side and waste money on projects and processes that don't have impact as well as many nonprofits' most valuable resource: their time.

The Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook is one of the biggest online contests before Pepsi announced their contest, open to more than  500,000 charities.  As of this writing, 1,027,398 people joined Chase’s fan page to cast votes for their favorite charities.   The top 100 "eligible" vote getters, announced a few days ago, received $25,000. They are going to participate in the next round, "The Big Idea" where the 100 charities share their big idea for changing the world and get votes.    The winner gets $1 million and five finalists will receive $100,000.

The top 100 included a mix of nonprofits with an operating budget of under $10 million with programs in designated Chase corporate responsibility areas: education, healthcare, housing, the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare.  (Very interesting to see the American Cancer Society was on the list as its budget - according to a 2005 annual report linked on their Guidestar Profile is well over $10 million)

Several groups who were in the top 100 (before Chase removed the vote tallies on individual profiles), were not on the final list, apparently disqualified.  Here's what Stephanie Strom, New York Times reported:

JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities.

At least three nonprofit groups — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All— say they believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.

The groups say that until Chase made changes to the contest, they appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters.

What can Pepsi learn so its contest can truly make a difference in local communities, help them sell more soda, and avoid having its brand get tarnished? 

1.  Open or Closed Set of Participants:  Contest sponsors need to decide ahead of time how open to be in terms of who can participate.  It's more than the basic eligibility requirements -- nonprofit versus individual or for-profit or particular interest areas or even the legal language.

With some contests, the contest sponsor vets a list of participants before letting the crowd vote.  This is how Target ran its contest and more recently PayPal's FruitCake Challenge.  This way, the contest sponsor's dollars are donated to a known set of organizations that have been selected based on corporate values, goals, or philanthropic strategy.  There's a cost here - the cost of not getting the absolute best idea because the person who thought it up wasn't eligible to participate.

But there are some things to think about with a completely open contest, one where anyone one submit an idea and the crowd votes on the best idea and the one with the most votes wins.  The sponsor needs to ask if they are truly committed to the idea that gets the most votes, no matter who suggests it?  

With the recent Chase Online Giving Contest, there were last stage disqualifications.  And although they had a disclaimer in the contest official rules "... or organizations otherwise not in alignment with Sponsor's corporate social responsibility guidelines.  Any organization determined to be ineligible at any time will be disqualified. Sponsor retains the right at its sole discretion to determine eligibility and reserves the right to disqualify any Charity for any reason whatsoever"   this disqualification made them, as Nathaniel Whittemore said, look like jerks - not to mention inspiring a chasesucks hashtag and causing some negative reactions.

2.  Leader board or Open Voting Records:   The big mistake that the Chase Online Giving Contest made was not providing a leader board, that tracked participants progress.  Leader boards and dynamic vote counts help make a contestant's job of getting out the vote easier.  With the Chase Bank Online Contest, the lack of a leader board created a lot of extra work for the nonprofits.  They had to spend time combing through pages of other organization's voting records.  Also, it doesn't make for a clear call to action message.

A leader board can also keeps the sponsor honest.

3.  The Role of Experts:   Pepsi has a list of some difficult social change problems to solve!  And it's great that they're going to use social media to crowdsource ideas and redirect their Super Bowl advertising budget to provide money for implementation.  Nonetheless, there is a role for subject matter experts and maybe even the people in the local communities who know the most about the problem and may be affected by the problem (and solution.) 

Some contests, for example the Knight News Challenge and Case Foundation Make It Your Own, have handled this need for expertise by having a two-tiered process.  The crowd identifies the top contenders, not the winners and a panel of experts selects the winners.    The Brooklyn Museum of Art's Click Exhibition used two crowds - a general crowd and a crowd of curators (Allison Fine and I profiled this project in the chapter on crowdsourcing in our forthcoming book, The Networked Nonprofit)

It appears that Pepsi is partnering with some folks who have some experience so this may not be a popularity contest.

4.  A Balance of Social Good and Marketing:   Is Pepsi really committed to solving social problems in its communities or does it think that redirecting its SuperBowl advertising budget and using social media to promote its generosity can sell more soda?   We know that corporate greed is being replaced by generosity and we know there is potential synergy between financial performance and attention to community and social needs.

I'd love to see a theory of change for this contest.  Perhaps it exists.   The above diagram describes the theory of change for Prizes from a recent report by McKinsey   I hope that Pepsi will be transparent in sharing that if it has one.

Do these contests really have impact?  Do they really help nonprofits or distract from their work?  Or is this just marketing?

Some responses: 

Charitable Contests Remash

Charities Cry Foul on Chase Facebook Charitable Giving Contest

The Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook is one of the biggest online contests thus far, open to more than  500,000 charities.  As of this writing, 1,027,398 people joined Chase’s fan page to cast votes for their favorite charities.   The top 100 "eligible" vote getters, announced a few days ago, received $25,000. They are going to participate in the next round, "The Big Idea" where the 100 charities share their big idea for changing the world and get votes.    The winner gets $1 million and five finalists will receive $100,000.

The top 100 included a mix of nonprofits with an operating budget of under $10 million with programs in designated Chase corporate responsibility areas: education, healthcare, housing, the environment, combating hunger, arts and culture, human services and animal welfare.  (Very interesting to see the American Cancer Society on the list as its budget - according to a 2005 annual report linked on their Guidestar Profile is well over $10 million)

Several groups who were in the top 100 (before Chase removed the vote tallies), were not on the final list, apparently disqualified.  Here's what Stephanie Strom, New York Times reported:

JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities.

At least three nonprofit groups — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All— say they believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.

The groups say that until Chase made changes to the contest, they appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters.

There was not a public leader board that lists the progress of contest participants and is considered a best practice.  It's unclear why Chase did not use a leaderboard, a contest best practice and way to make it transparent.  Instead, contest participants had to log in and look at other organization's vote tallies.  These were removed in the final days of the contest.

If you look at the contest official rules, in addition to the eligibility criteria, they've added these additional points to control who gets the winning money:

... or organizations otherwise not in alignment with Sponsor's corporate social responsibility guidelines. Additional reasons a Charity may be deemed ineligible include, but are not limited to, the Charity and/or its management being subject to any investigation for fraud, financial misconduct or other criminal activity. Any organization determined to be ineligible at any time will be disqualified. Sponsor retains the right at its sole discretion to determine eligibility and reserves the right to disqualify any Charity for any reason whatsoever.

If they wanted to have some control over who received the money, why not just award the money through tradition methods?  Or only allow a pre-selected group of organizations to participate?

Since 2007, when the Case Foundation launched its first America's Giving Challenge, social media-infused online contests to raise money for charities have gained popularity.  There have been many remixes of online charity contests since the Giving Challenge, so many that I can't quite remember all of them.  These contests are based on:

• Voting:  Organizations need to rally their supporters and stakeholders to vote them online and spread the word
• Donors or Dollars:  Organizations need to raise money and the organization with the most donors or dollars win.

The pool of applicants is either open to everyone, tiered, or starts with a group of charities hand-selected by the contest sponsor.

• Closed Pool of Contestants:  The contest sponsor hand picks the charities.  This is how Target ran its contest and more recently PayPal's FruitCake Challenge.  This way, the contest sponsor's dollars are donated to a known set of organizations that have been vetted based on corporate values, goals, or philanthropic strategy.
  

• Open Pool of Contestants:   Some contests have the crowd vote or donate - and the ones with the most votes or donors win.

One thing is for sure, if you're designing a contest, you need to think about how transparent and open you want it to be.  Or else you, the sponsor, might as Nathaniel Whittemore says, look like a jerk.

Guest Post by Frank Barry: Your Network Matters: Fatcyclist Raises Over 135K in 8 Days

Note from Beth:  I'm always excited to see inspiring examples of personal fundraising and the dollars raised have come a long way since my first experiment in 2006, a testament to how much more connected we are and the rise of popularity of this technique.  I hope to celebrate my birthday in January with some sort of personal fundraiser/fundraiser to support Cambodian kids (hint, hint) and scanning for ideas.

Personal Fundraising, Social Media and Friends Asking Friends all converge to make an incredible impact!

A Cycling Blogger @fatcyclist sent the Manager of Lance Armstrong’s racing team @johanbruyneel a resume (joking) as if he were applying for a job. You see, @fatcyclist wants to be a professional cyclist and who better to help him than the manager of Lance Armstrong’s racing team? That said, @fatcyclist didn't think there was a chance on earth Johan Bruyneel would ever see it.

But, wouldn't you know it, Bruyneel did see it! What transpired from there is pretty incredible. Bruyneel offered a friendly challenge – on Twitter and on his blog.

If @fatcyclist (pic left) raised $10K for World Bicycle Relief (WBR) and $10K for Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) @johanbruyneel would fly @fatcyclist to Cycling Camp on Dec. 13. And, if he raised $25K in a week, Trek would give him a sweet road bike (a $10K value). Pretty amazing stuff, eh? The story only gets better from here.

In 3 days @fatcyclist raised about $50K. In 5 days he raised over $100K. He used social media (blogging/Twitter) and Blackbaud’s personal fundraising tools (Friends Asking Friends) to pull off this incredible achievement. Without the ability to quickly connect and mobilize his his network to give this wouldn't have been possible.

The challenge is continuing to grow. You can follow the story at www.fatcyclist.com, or you can just go join the people making it happen by donating here or here.

By this time (12/11/2009 2:23 pm pst) he's raised over $135K. It's only been 8 days! Check out this video from Johan Bruyneel.

What can Nonprofits can learn from this? 5 Takeaways

1. Create a challenge or competition that inspires people to compete
2. Come up with cool prizes that motivate people to engage in fundraising efforts
3. Be active in social media channels and help your supporters spread their message
4. Make it easy and exciting for your supporters to communicate with their networks
5. Give your supporters, donors, volunteers and advocates an easy way to fundraise on your behalf

A bit more on how the story unfolds ... what else can we learn?

A Cycling Blogger @fatcyclist sent the Manager of Lance Armstrong’s racing team @johanbruyneel a resume (joking) as if he were applying for a job.

Manager of Lance Armstrong’s racing team @johanbruyneel responds to @fatcyclist with a challenge.

The Challenge: Raise $10K for World Bicycle Relief and $10K for LAF in ONE week and I'll fly you to camp!

@fatcyclist sees that Johan Bruyneel has challenged him and starts to take action! Read Fat Cyclist comes back with two Blackbaud Fundraising sites:

* http://grassroots.kintera.org/creative/fatcyclist
* http://www.livestrong.org/grassroots2009/sendfattytocam

Lance tells his 2.2 million followers about it …

Three days into the challenge Bruyneel congratulations @fatcyclist for his huge accomplishment

And the story continues...

@ ups the challenge to @fatcyclist ... By Friday December 11, 12:00 PM US Mountain Standard/Tucson, AZ Time you must have met the following criteria - Raise $50K for World Bicycle Relief and $50K for for LIVESTRONG. If those two criteria are met by the stated deadline, Trek Travel will donate one 2010 Paris Finishing Package to witness the finale of the Tour de France!!  And yes, airfare will be taken care of.

And, well, as expected at this point ... @fatcyclist responds ... or should I say the friends, family, supporters, network of @fatcyclist respond.

$135K and counting has been raised as of Friday December 11th, 2009 at 2:27 pm pst.

Amazing, right?! What other insights can you gain from this?

Frank is a Consulting Manager at Blackbaud Internet Solutions. At work he helps nonprofits with technology, social media & online strategy.  He also spends some time speaking at industry conferences and writing a blog. The rest of the time he enjoys family, learning, sports, food, friends & movies. 

A Random Act of Kindness Involving a Fruitcake

It's the holiday season!  Sunday evening I had a great time at a holiday party, a potluck with Michael Pollan and PopTech faculty and fellows in the Bay Area hosted by Tracy Barba from Duarte Design. 

That's where I ran into Emily Pilloton, a PopTech Fellow, and founder of Project H Design to mobilize product design ingenuity for social good. Having built nine chapters and a community of over 300 committed designers in just over a year, Project H Design has already launched over 20 projects in 6 countries – water transport solutions, a playground for active math education, designs for foster care therapy and more, all aimed at having a quick and real impact on people’s lives. Add to this her new book “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People,” and Emily is clearly leading the way in designing with – not for – communities, transforming lives and strengthening economies. 

Earlier this week, I heard about a fundraising contest that PayPal was running called "Regift the Fruitcake," where you could set up a fundraiser on behalf of a select few nonprofits.  Your fundraising page featured a fruitcake and by using Facebook Connect you could regift the fruitcake by sharing it with your Facebook friends and spread the message. 

I was a little disappointed not see my favorite charity, The Sharing Foundation, on the list - and experimented some technical glitches with the site.  I almost threw up my hands and gave up, but then I noticed Project H on the list and managed to create a fruit cake.

On Friday,  I received a check in the mail for $100 from Yahoo for Good as part of their Kindness Campaign.  The letter advised me to create a ripple of happiness from a single act of kindness by using the money to do something nice for someone.   And, to encourage the recipient to pay it forward.  The letter included a couple of purple cards to hand out.

When I ran into Emily at the party, I donated the $100 to the Project H and Emily passed out the cards to the other PopTech Fellows. 

If you got $100 in the mail and were told to do a random act of kindness, what would you do? 

How do you make your holiday charitable giving decisions?

Photo by Oblivion 9999

Last year, Nathaniel Whittemore facilitated an online discussion by asking bloggers to answer the question: "What is the one thing you need to know before you donate to charity?"   This year the answer to the question isn't overhead ratios and executive salaries.   

Nonprofit experts cite many reasons that focusing on an overhead ratio is not the best way to choose a charity:

• It tells you nothing about the impact the charity has on people it's trying to help
• It discourages charities from investing in tools and expertise that would make them more
• effective
• The rules for determining overhead costs are vague and every charity interprets them
• differently
• Accounting experts estimate that 75% of charities calculate their overhead ratio incorrectly

You can check charity rating and directory sites such as GiveWell, Great Nonprofits, Philanthropedia, Charity Navigator, and Guidestar,  and Philanthropy Action to get information about charities that are effective in delivering their programs.

My giving style is streamlined.   I have a particular interest area (Cambodia children) and I'm on the board of the Sharing Foundation.   So, most of my charitable giving goes there.  Next, in line are several organizations where I serve as a board member and a select few Cambodian charities.   I know the organizations very well and the people involved.   I know I'm making a good investment.  

When I give to nonprofits based on a solicitation, I only give if know the organization first hand or know the person who asked me personally.  I also do my due diligence by checking one of the above sites.  I also visit the organization's web site as well.     

During the holiday season, I get a lot of requests from friends, family, or colleagues to support their charity.  My giving is usually in very small gifts - $10 here and there, sometimes $20.   So, I make decisions based on the friend's credibility and judgment and if I'm not sure, I ask the friend or check out the charity myself.  I would never make a donation to an organization that I haven't researched or didn't know.

Of course, if a stranger or someone I don't know all that well asked to donate, I wouldn't.   There is some theory that backs this up from Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

There is a definitely some value to putting together a personal giving plan so your holiday donations don't end up - as Britt Bravo has said - like gum in the grocery check out line.

How do you decide whether or not you'll make a donation to a nonprofit organization or not?  What criteria do you use?  Are overhead ratios important to you?   Finally, do you have a giving plan?

I Hope My Kids Organize Their Own Online Fundraiser When They Are Teenagers

Spencer Brodsky

Spencer Brodsky is 17 and he is spending his time online to raise money to bring Green Stoves to Rwanda, something he's been doing for the past 2 years. 

Spencer wants to help Stoves for Rwanda leverage matching money from an incentive program being offered by Global Giving called "Give More Get More."    If he can raise an additional $500 to bring his total to $2,500 by December 1st, he'll leverage a matching gift of 30% or little over $800 from Global Giving.

As I parent, my hope is that by helping my kids find ways to share their passion for giving - they will make it a lifelong habit.   My children, now age and 10, have been big helpers in all my online fundraising campaigns for the Sharing Foundation.   They have posed for photos in t-shirts, emptied their piggy banks, helped me make fundraising videos, contributed clothing or other items to drives at school, and have attended lots of fund raising events, including last week's Tweetsgiving Meetup where my daughter won a lunch with Twitterville author Shel Israel that was being raffled off.

And this year, Harry sent some of his birthday loot to the Sharing Foundation, making me proud that he is following my tradition of giving to celebrate a birthday.  

Philanthropy doesn't have to be an adults only activity, giving can be part of your family fun.  And while it is especially appropriate to do this during the holidays, it can be a year-round activity.

Tips To Encourage Your Child's Philanthropy

1. Teach Your Kids About Charities:  YouthGive is a site that helps young peole and their families easily donate to charities while learning more about the organizations.  The organizations listed are profiled by other young people.  You can also check out nonprofit ratings and other information from Great Nonprofits, a sort of Zagat's Guide for Charities.

2.  Let Your Kids Choose: Kayta Andresen from Network for Good has fantastic idea last holiday season, "Give with your kids day" She suggests giving your child or someone else's child $25 to donate to a charity.   "You can give them money to spend at Network for Good (which has every charity based in the US) or Global Giving (which has a bunch of international projects).  Let them choose how to spend it, either by letting them pick the charity or by designating their donation to a special project.  Spend it together online, checking out pictures and project descriptions."

3.  Offer a Match: Blogger Marion Conway,whose children are now grown, recommended the book Raising Charitable Children by Carol Wiseman. With her children's fundraising projects, she and her husband offered to match what they raised because they both worked for companies that matching gift programs.

4.  Set Up a Spend, Give, and Save Allowance Policy: Celeste for the studio 501c3 blog suggests this piggy bank, with separate slots for investing, saving, spending, and donating is a great way to teach kids about devoting a portion of their income to
charity. 

5.  Encourage Them To Give Their Time:  Laura Hecht shared a wonderful story about a class project where students made cards for some elderly residents of a group home. They had to work hard to spare the time for the effort, but when the residents wrote moving letters of thanks, the kids felt great.  As Laura notes, "This prompted a sincere discussion about giving the most valuable thing we possess  - ourselves."

6.  Buy Gifts That Give Back:  Rather than braving the crowded shopping malls, you can spend some time with your kids online and find gifts that give back.    The Ebay World of Good Site has a fantastic selection of gifts that will make a difference.

Resources

Brain Teaser: Young People and Philanthropy
Youth in Philanthropy
Six Steps for Raising a Charitable Child
Learning To Give
Youth In Philanthropy
Children for Children Foundation
Kids Can Make A Difference
Youth Noise

What other stories, tips, or resources would you add?

Five Social Media Fundraising Trends for 2009

Photo by Borman818

I usually don't write end of year roundups until those quiet last days of the year, but if Leave09Behind  gets legs, that might be next week!   But I'm a member of the Social Media Advisory Board for SmartBrief, Inc, a terrific daily summary of social media insights and they asked me to do a roundup post for this week.

Over the past six months, I've been collaborating on a book with Allison Fine, titled "The Networked Nonprofit"  and we've been sifting through stories, research, and seeing many patterns. So for this post,  I'd like to share 5 fundraising trends that we saw emerging in 2009 related to fundraising and social media and that will most definitely continue to have impact in 2010.

Less than 24 hours ago, Epic Change launched its TweetsGiving 2009, a 48-hour charity event to encourage people to express their gratitude using online tools and at face-to-face meet-ups.    This two-day event, which ends on Thanksgiving, also invites people to donate to Epic Change.  

Last year, TweetsGiving, raised $11,000 to build a classroom in Tanzania using Twitter to spread messages of thanks and opportunities to donate.   More importantly, the event was one of a series of social media fundraisers that offered evidence that Twitter and other social media tools were not just a passing fad.  

This year's Tweetsgiving hopes to raise more than $100,000 in donations.   Even though we are well before the ending bell of this year's campaign, there are number of principles that have been in used by other social media infused fundraisers over 2009.  These principles will no doubt be copied, refined, remixed, and extended as nonprofits experiment with social media-powered fundraising techniques:

Weaving Together Online/Offline Into Real Time Web Fundraising Events

Last February, Twestival raised over $250,000 for charity:water in 24 hours through self-organized volunteer events in 200 cities around the world.   While "Tweet and Meet" events, called "Tweet Ups," were popular with Twitter users in 2008,   "Tweet-Meet-Donate" events became more and more common in 2009.

As we march into 2010, might we see the invention of Real Time Web fundraising events?  Or maybe as more nonprofit explore the possibilities of location-based social networks and fundraising, the distinctions between online/offline fundraising will melt away.

A Platform for Self-Organizing

Social networks like Twitter connect us with people online who share our interests or passions about making the world a better place.   They also provide fertile ground for us to organize rapid, collective fundraisers.   They key is designing the opportunity for connection, plus self-organizing.   As June Holley, a thought leader in networks, would say, "Be Rhizomatic."

We witnessed the power of combining a platform for self-organizing with network building in the winter of 2009 with A Networked Memorial Service for Maddie, in memory of a toddler, Madeline (Maddie) Sphor who passed away suddenly.   The March of Dimes community rallied to raise money in Maddie's memory, unleashing a groundswell of support and sympathy expressions.  

Social Media Fundraising As Part of A Multi-Channel Strategy

Using social media channels alone for fundraising will not be as effective as making it a part of a multi-channel straetgy that includes traditional fundraising techniques. This includes using email, web site presence, google ads, face-to-face events and reaching out to the online and mainstream media . 

A great example of how well this multi-channel approach works is the Humane Society’s Spay Day.  In 2009, the organization launched the United State Spay Day Photo Contest in 2009 as one part of their overall effort that included broadcast media and other social media outreach efforts as well as offline event.  More than $550,000 was raised last March. 

And just last week, GiveMN, a new online web site that hopes to encourage more Minnesotans to give and help create a stronger nonprofit community for Minnesota, raised over $14 million dollars in 24 hours using a multi-channel campaign.

Donors As Program Partners Not Just Check Writers

In May, 2009,   Peter Dietz, founder of Social Actions, reflected on the future of online fundraising and wrote about a shift in donor expectations.  That donors in an age of social media, will come to your organization with the expectation of being full partners in your work, not just an ATM machine to be tapped when cash is needed. 

Take this compelling example of how deep engagement can lead to better results from Wildlife Direct.  In 2007, WildlifeDirect had 7 blogs in the Democratic Republic of Congo written written about a specific animal by a conservation professional. The blogs were an opportunity to engage people in conversations about the daily challenge of conservation work in Africa These blogs raised $350,000 to pay rangers salaries and help save mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park.  Says Paula, “Two years later, we have over 70 blogs, donations have risen 4 fold, as has website visitation. We treat our donors as partners in our programs.”

Not recognizing the importance of relationship building and engagement as the first step in getting donations has lead to a number of articles in the mainstream media or research studies to conclude that social media is worthless as a fundraising tool.  If we only continue to use these tools to gather nonprofit trend data, we're missing some opportunities..

The Maturation of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Peer-to-Peer fundraising is about empowering people to fundraise on behalf of  your nonprofit. It works for marathons and in lieu of birthday presents or wedding gifts, although sometimes it can be a waste of time for nonprofits.  

Last year, Facebook Causes added its birthday wish feature and we saw more peer to peer fundraising unfolding on social network sites.   Ammado has recently launched a new take on peer-to-peer fundraising called giving circles and giving communities that nonprofits should keep an eye on.

Another trend with peer-to-peer giving we are likely to see is that donors will want the opportunity to have a closer tie with those who benefit from their donations.   In 2010, we are likely to see more interaction - not with the organizations, but with the actual recipients of the dollars.

Click at the Heartstrings

We know that good storytelling that tugs at the heart strings opens the purse strings.    With "click philanthropy" actions, ways that users can easily spread a message or leverage a donation, it is important to tap into human emotion.  Good fundraisers (and marketers) know that tugging at the heart strings can open the wallet.  

Tweetsgiving is playing off the theme of gratitude, according to recent research is a powerful emotion that encourages positive behavior, the giving and receiving of thanks (and gifts.)   Drew Olanoff, who was diagnosed with cancer, decided to raise money by taking revenge on cancer through his BlameDrewsCancer.com which allowed you with a twitter hashtag, #blamedrewscancer, to blame anything you want on his cancer.  And finally, fun and public humiliation - as NTEN's executive director Holly Ross discovered, can be good levers for donations.

Although social media as part of the fundraiser's tool box is not yet the norm, these experiments are laying the ground work for even more dramatic successes in 2010.    Social media fundraising tools will come and go, but the ability to leverage one's social graph to raise money for a good cause is bound to be with us for a long time.

What do you think are the key fundraising/social media trends of 2009?   What is important to take into 2010?

Help Raise $1 Million for LiveStrong By Following @DrewfromTV

Carey, who is on Twitter with the handle  "DrewFromTV," offered $100,000 for the Twitter name "@drew," which is was offered for sale by Drew Olanoff, of "Blame Drew's Cancer," who was willing to auction off his Twitter handle to raise money for cancer research.

Drew Carey upped his bid for the Twitter name @drew to $1 million, announcing that he would pay $1 million for the account if he could get a million Twitter followers by 2010. 

Here's the Million Drew Web Site where you can follow @drewfromTV. It looks like they are using some tracking application. Drew tweeted it this morning.  Who wouldn't take 3 seconds to do this simple click action.

http://milliondollardrew.com (RT if you care about destroying cancer)

GiveMN Raises $14 Million Online in 24 Hours!

I think I want to change Garrison Keillor's well known descriptor of Lake Wobegone.  It goes "Minnesota from"where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." Let's add  "and where the charitable donors are extraordinarily generous."

Earlier this week, I wrote about giveMN.org as an example of local and regional online giving initiatives.  GiveMN a new online resource that hopes to encourage more Minnesotans to give and help create a stronger nonprofit community for Minnesota.   On Tuesday, November 17, they held their first "Give to the Max Day" competition where all donations during the 24 hour period were matched, plus there were incentives for organizations that received the largest number of unique donations.

The unofficial results:  $14 million raised for more than 3400 nonprofits

I knew it was potentially possible based on a research study funded by the The San Francisco Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation demonstrated that high dollar donors — especially 30-49 year-olds — use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. This was among the key findings of the  “Community Philanthropy 2.0,” conducted by Geoff Livingston (he is a Society for New Communications Research Fellow), Qui Diaz and myself. 

According to a project staff person, "The factoid that blows me away is that more than 45,000 Minnesotans donated!  More than 350 orgs received $10,000 or more.  We're having lots of fun today hearing anecdotes from happy nonprofits all over the state.  What we are most excited about is the number of organizations who are reporting they got new donors.  The most heartwarming thank yous are from small ones who have never had online fundraising capacity before and are just thrilled."   The campaigns were multi-channel using a variety of fundraising and marketing techniques, including social media.

Match Days have been used by community foundations to stimulate local charitable giving.  They are done in a condensed time period - 24-48 hours and local nonprofit rally for donations.   Last November, The Columbus Foundation's Power Philanthropy Day was highly successful, raising over $1 million dollar.  However, Minnesota has set the bar pretty high!

They are estimating that more than 20,000 donors set up accounts on the giving site.  Now that the recruitment phase has done a fantastic job, the next challenge is to build an active base for an ongoing community.  The key will be the staff hired to make GIVEMN engaging to donors.   Plans may include campaigns that are focused on particular types of charities around the state.  The goal is to grow the giving pie.

The GiveMN site is designed for both individuals and organizations.   Individuals can browse the site and find local nonprofits and make a donation online.  Or, if they want, they can launch their own fundraiser for an organization.    For nonprofits, GiveMN offers simple, secure tools to achieve their goals.  The site is powered by Razoo, a giving platform.

Three Different Approaches to Twitter Fundraising: Bees, Turkeys, and Blame

TweetsGiving 2009

If the dollar amounts from fundraising campaigns using social networks are disappointing, one response is to say this doesn't work and stop doing it.  An alternative approach is to experiment and find ways to improve results.   

Twitter for fundraising has been around for two years (read Shel Israel's Twitterville), as of 2009, there seems to be three different tactical models for Twitter fundraising approaches emerging:

1)   Sponsored Tweets/HashTags: Donors do not have to open their own check books, but instead retweet or use a hashtag to leverage a donation from a corporate sponsor to a charity.  

2)   Spreading Person to Person Asks:   This approach uses twitter and encourages people to ask their friends through Twitter to donate to a charity and spread the ask to their friends.  Successful versions of this approach tie a human emotion to the click action - blame, thankfulness, etc.

3)   Tweet Meet Give:   This approach weaves together online and offline activities and leverages "Tweet Ups."  Amanda Rose and Twestival pioneered a networked version of this approach to benefit charity:water, but it has also been used by single nonprofits.

Sponsored Tweets/Hashtags

Sponsored Tweets or Hashtags is a form of click philanthropy and has been used by nonprofits on their web sites before it was common Facebook and Twitter.   

Take for example,  The Free Rice Game, an interactive online game that donated rice to the United Nations World Food Program based on clicking.   All you had to do was click and play a word game, and that leveraged a food donation to fight hunger.  The game was very engaging for adults and children alike.  

For each click, 10 grains of rice is donated.  That may seem like a small amount, it is important to remember that millions of people have played the game since its inception in 2007.   It is everyone together that makes the difference.  The Free Rice Game has generated enough rice to feed millions of people since it started in October 2007 or a total of 70,991,387,110 grains of rice as of October 2009.

In 2008, we started to see click action philanthropy on Facebook with Lil Green Patch raising over $100,000 for the Nature Conservancy.  In 2009,  it has evolved to incorporate a networked approach and there are even platforms or communities of people dedicated to click action philanthropy, including Every Wun.   And it comes as no surprise to see click action philanthropy become more common on Twitter, with the platform Twitcause.  

More and more we are seeing fundraisers incorporate Retweet This Message or Use This HashTag to leverage donations from a corporate sponsor or to simply spread the fundraising message from friend to friend.  This transition began a year ago as Twitter came into its own as a charitable gift spreader. (See my Twitter Fundraising Timeline.)   We've also seen some versions of Twitter fundraisers not do too well - take for example this follow me Twitter and I'll donate a dollar to a charity or applications that integrated donation engines in Tweets.

TwitCause, a service not unlike the popular fundraising application Causes on Facebook, only built on top of Twitter has been implementing some new interesting twists on click fundraising on Twitter.  As a basic service, TwitCause will find a cause to support (partially based on community feedback) and use Twitter to drive awareness for it. They also ask that you donate some money.   

Here's an example of a campaign to raise money on TwitCause for honeybee research. 

The fundraising campaign added some extra buzz, a sponsor, Ice cream maker Häagen-Dazs,  willing to pay for any Twitter user who tweets out the support for the cause.  The sponsorship worked liked this: Häagen-Dazs was offering to donate $1 per tweet for the first 500 people that tweet everyday with the hashtag #HelpHoneyBees. The money was donated to UC Davis research project to further look into Colony Collapse Disorder, as well as help fund the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, which aims to teach people about how to create their own honeybee farms.  

I got some of the back story form Julio Vasconcellos, VP for Business Development, for the Experience Project which operates TwitCause.  "I think the #HelpHoneyBees hashtag campaign was very effective and helped
raise $7k for the honey bee research as well as get Häagen-Dazs some great exposure around the contributions they've been making to the cause (and of course, to their brand)."

For those that want the numbers:

• 6,818 tweets sent out during the official week (several more before) by 3,294 unique Twitterers
• Total followers reached was slightly over 5MM (these are non-unique followers, basically a sum of all the followers of each of those 3kTwitterers)
• Total Twitter impressions generated 12.4MM (here an "Twitter impression" is anytime a follower is presented with a tweet - if I have 100 followers and tweet twice, that's 200 "Twitter impressions")
• Häagen-Dazs donated $7,000 to UC Davis for research into colony collapse disorder which is afflicting honey bee populations
• Participation from some celebrities and notables

Vasconcellos predicts that we'll be seeing more and more sponsored tweet programs of all shapes and sizes. There are already a number of active causes on TwitCause.  And some are building their own Twitter Fundraising Drive pages for sponsored Tweet Campaigns.   Here's one to benefit Make A Wish Foundation, each tweet will drive a 5 cent donation from LeapFish to raise $10,000 to send a sick child to Disneyland.  That's 200,000 tweets which compared to these other efforts seems like an ambitious goal.  I hope they make it for Jacob's sake or if not I hope they just donate the money anyway.

Spreading Person to Person Asks

Scott Henderson  called it "creative philanthropy" but it is really the Twitter version of person to person fundraising asks for small amounts, taking advantage of Twitter's ability to easily spread person-to-person fundraising solicitations.  He describes last Thanksgiving's Tweetsgiving campaign and Blame Drew's Cancer campaign.  

This year Stacey and her flock (I'm one of the honorary turkeys) will launch this year's Tweetsgiving, another 48-hour celebration.  They have integrated the Twestival strategy - tweet, meet, and give by organizing meetups  from different cities to help promote the drive.

I think one of the important qualities that make these and other retweet or hashtag fundraisers successful is to tap into human emotion.  Good fundraisers (and marketers) know that tugging at the heart strings can open the wallet.  Stacey is doing this with gratitude, Drew is doing it by blame (blaming his cancer).

So, the click to donate action needs an emotional lever as well as a money lever.  

Tweet, Meet, Give

Twestival has had the most success at scaling this model.  Plans for 2010 Twestival are already in the works.

Conclusion

We are all curious to see these approaches fundraising on Twitter become a standard practice both for nonprofits and  for corporate sponsors.   Some questions:

• How to set a realistic goal (total dollars = $ per retweet or hashtag) that helps the nonprofit actually implement the project or solve the need?
• What is too ambitious or too low a goal?
• How does the ongoing affinity/relationship building online and offline impact amounts raised?
• How do amounts raised compare - sponsored tweets or person-to-person asks or tweet-meet-give approaches?
• How to make a click philanthropy action on Twitter engaging and fun?
• How to best incorporate human emotion in the Twitter?
• Will this approach become so popular and so many nonprofits and corporations using it that it will create "Cause Retweet Fatigue"
• Is there value in the impressions metric?
• What's next for Twitter fundraising?