Twitter Fundraising?

An excellent blog post by Leena Rao over at  ChurchCrunch called: Tweetraising: The Potential For Charities On Twitter looking at how charities can make use of Twitter.  They make the point that Twitter won’t, ‘replace conventional ways of fundraising, but it provides a low-cost, yet engaging way to diversify a charity’s fundraising efforts. And in this economy, diversification is too important to ignore.’

I love this notion of ‘diversification’, which speaks of the need to provide multiple channels into the organisation. Without a doubt the traditional approaches, what I call the ‘bread and butter’ of an organisation such as appeals through the post, are here to stay.  But as well as these we need to start to explore new areas such as Twitter, Second Life, and Facebook.  Why?  Well very simply, that is where people are, that is how people are relating, and as well as relating with each other they will start to see it as a natural place to relate to their favorite causes.  So although the returns are minor it is worth getting involved.  But a warning:  It takes way more than getting a Twitter account, it requires creative people to 1) fully understand the technology; 2) grasp completely the charities mission; and 3) find new ways of matching the two together.

Leena Rao states that, ‘most charities are relatively late-adopters to new technologies’ which I completely agree with.  There is plenty of space in the market for new creative fundraising and awareness raising initiatives that make creative use of social media including Twitter and Facebook.. be interesting to see what emerges!

Have you got any creative ideas?  I would love to hear them.

Filed under Social Media/Web 2.0, resourcing | |