Twitter is not a fundraising tool 2

Fundraising | Kirsty Weakley | 22 Nov 2011

Fundraisers should not rely on Twitter, according to founder of Twestival, Amanda Rose.

She was speaking at civilsociety.co.uk’s Mobile and Digital conference yesterday, and said: “I don’t know anyone who makes money on Twitter, it has to be parlayed with something else.”

In July IT professional Simon Painter launched Giv2.it as a way for Twitter users to donate through the social network.

Speaking to civilsociety.co.uk he said: “She has a point in a way – until I created Giv2.it getting people to donate on Twitter was difficult.”

Since the launch almost 100 users have signed up and 75 charities have received donations totalling about £300.

An online campaign, Tweets for Balls, is now using the platform as its main method of fundraising and is hoping to raise £1,000 by the end of November. So far it has raised £125.

Painter added that, in terms of numbers of users, “Twitter is never going to be as massive as Facebook. I just wanted to make sure that there was an option for those people who wanted to, to donate via Twitter.”

Last month Twotto, a Twitter-based lottery, launched and hopes to raise money for charity through advertising to followers. Once it has 100,000 followers it will start weekly prize draws, based on a fixed 2 per cent of how many people follow the lottery. A randomly-selected follower will receive 1 per cent while the person who recruited the highest number of followers will receive the other 1 per cent to donate to charity. The lottery currently has 433 followers which equates to a prize fund of £4.

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Ehren
HelpAttack!
22 Nov 2011

It's true that Twitter is not a significant fundraising channel yet, and for most organizations, neither is Facebook. Most organizations are still deciding on a strategy and growing a community on these networks. Do you think email was declared "not a fundraising tool" years ago?

There are many other tools organizations can choose from already, such as http://helpattack.com, Rt2Give, JustCoz, GiveATweet, Givey.co.uk....

[Reply]

Dawn Varley
Consultant
Purple Vision
22 Nov 2011

Twitter can be whatever you want it to be. Let's not be constrained by what others tell us it is! And whilst that sounds really grandiose, it's totally not meant to be. Twitter is simply a method of connecting to people, so if you have something interesting to say (and as a charity you should), and you tell it well (and if you want to fundraise well, you should) then you can reach lots of interested people that way. It is a tool for interacting with your supporter community, and so it is a tool for relationship building - and can be a lever for fundraising if you're clever

A great, but admittedly perhaps one-off example, is the case of @lizjonessomalia, an ironic twitter account set to poke fun at the fact the Daily Mail sent a fashion columnist to cover the famine in East Africa. The joke raised over £24k in just short of 3 days for the DEC. Amazing. See the story for yourself at http://www.justgiving.com/DMReporter

So, as with any technology that reaches out to potential and/or existing audiences, just because it isn't designed to be a fundraising tool as such doesn't mean it can't be. What we need to do is simply be creative with the tools we have. And a little fun can be had on the way, as is the beauty of an instance response medium such as twitter. I love it!

[Reply]

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