Twitter for Charities and Non-Profits: 3 Case Studies + Tips
Over the last 6 months I've seen some pretty cool results for charities and non-profits using Twitter.
Non-Profit Success Stories with Twitter
Tweetsgiving.org – Epic Change + Kbuzz
This was a very clever, well planned, successful viral fundraiser. The goal was to raise $10,000 to build a classroom for children in Tanzania.
Tactics:
- Asked twitterers to tweet their gratitude along with website address and
- The hashtag #tweetsgiving
- Enlisted influential twitterers (via direct messaging) as seed evangelists
- Chip-in for donations
Results:
- People tweeted 3,000 gratitude messages
- They gained 1,337 twitter followers
- Tweetsgiving was a top trending term on Twitter for 48 hours
- Tweetsgiving.org received 15,830 page views from 7563 visitors in 101 countries
- More than 100 press and blog mentions, and here's one more
One Day For Human Rights – Anca Foster
This campaign was focused on the Dec 10, 2008 Human Rights Day, and modeled after Blog Action Day. The goal was to get signatures for a petition to get the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into people's passports.
Tactics:
- Twitter avatar mod/logo
- Tweets
- Badges for blogs
- Got commitments to blog about it on the actual day
Results:
- 1,849 signatures
- 1,535 Twitter followers
- 387 members of Facebook group
- 2,349 inbound links
This is a fairly new, ongoing year-long effort for 12 different charities. Each month, a new charity.
Tactics are fluid, but they include:
- Avatar mod, tweeting, badges
- Chip-in for donations
- Raffle contests
And they just did a tweet-a-thon… March 19 2009 to Raise $12,000 for the Share Our Strength charity.
Results:
- Website traffic: 3,117 unique visitors with 6,239 page hits
- Twitter: 100+ pages of search results for the #12for12k hashtag
- Twitter: 300 users of the #12for12k hashtag between 11.00am and 1.00pm EST
- Twitter: Topping numerous Twitter trend sites (above March Madness hashtag)
- Donors: 459 contributors, raising a total of $14,847.69
- Amount: Target of $12,000 was raised in just 6 hours. On average, more than $1,000 was being donated per hour.
Real World Results
- Connect 546,840 families to programs that provide free meals to their children during the summer.
- Provide 14,112 preschool children with a nutritious lunch.
- Give 352,800 schoolchildren a glass of milk
- Feed 420 children three meals a day for a month
Um wow.
So What Works For Charities and Non Profits on Twitter? Tips for Getting Action and Participation
- Widgets and logos for people's blogs
- Logo that's avatar-sized for Twitter pic modification
- Hashtags
- Reason for people to constantly tweet about it
- Chip In widget
- Get commitments to blog or tweet
CEO of FanReach, Brian Carter has been an Internet Marketer, speaker, and social media trainer since 1999. Brian has been quoted and profiled by Information Week, US News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur Magazine. He is the author of the book How To Get More Facebook fans. He is both an adwords consultant and a facebook consultant. Check out his his free Facebook Marketing 101 course, and the full FanReach Facebook Marketing and Advertising course.
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Thanks so much for all you did to help make TweetsGiving successful. I am so grateful. Let me know @StaceyMonk if you'd like to help create an even bigger celebration of gratitude for 2009
This is a nice little collection of causes and results, Brian, and it's good to be able to see what's worked for other events as well. As Stacey said above me, thanks for your support with 12for12k – you, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
Oops, PS – We received an update total from Stop The Silence after corporate sponsors sent donations, just short of $6,000 in total. We will be revisiting older charities through the year to try help towards our overall goal of $12,000 per charity.
I studied this intently before kicking off out Mom It Forward fundraiser this week. I had all the plans in place and recognized, after reading your post, that I hadn't planned on a few things. Thank you for your articulate assessment of these successful events. I feel fortunate to be working with 12 for 12K and Danny Brown on this venture.
Thanks again for the great tips and threads of success as well as for coming on and sharing your insight on #gno Tuesday night. You truly are one of the girls, Brian… and we love you for it!
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