Tech | September 10, 2009 | 9 comments

How charities harness social media for a social impact

source: http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/09/08/how-charities-harness-social-media-for-a...

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"Mr. Harrison is the founder of Charity: Water, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing clean water to impoverished villages in Africa. In January, he got an e-mail from a British woman who wanted to test Twitter as a fundraising tool. Amanda Rose thought the microblogging site, with its 30 million users, might have some cash power, and if it did, she wanted to put the cash in Harrison’s wells.

Ms. Rose organized the first-ever “Twestival,” an event whose name blends “Twitter” and “festival.” Using this instant-messaging power, Rose organized a series of 200 off-line charity events around the globe, from concerts in New York to knitting groups in Brussels, that raised a combined $250,000 from 10,000 new donors. The Twestival became a media meme, but what Harrison did next launched Charity: Water’s reputation as a social-media colossus in its own right.

“We orchestrated a live drill for them in Ethiopia. We drilled the first Twestival well live, broadcast it via satellite to the 202 cities,” Harrison says. “We actually allowed people to tweet in questions” for the well drillers.

Across the board, foundations and other funding organizations haven’t picked up these new tools as quickly as their nonprofit dependents, or even as quickly as the private sector. That, says Mr. Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy Advisers, is for the same reason that makes new media so useful for the world of social change. Unlike foundations, he says, “nonprofits are in the business of connecting with external people.” Which is precisely why all that twittering seems worth it."

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Much more at link including other stories of Charities who are using social media to spread their message and raise money!
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