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