In this age and time, Charity now begins at Facebook and Twitter. Some of America’s oldest charities are using Facebook and Twitter to send out tweets and create virtual kettles, besides the old ways of sending out “snail-mails” – according to a recent report on Baltimore Sun.
Some of the charitable organizations to join the social media bandwagon include, United Way, Salvation Army and the American Red Cross. Salvation Army has created a facebook fan page. The fans of the page could become virtual cheerleaders for the charity by creating virtual kettles on their profiles and asking friends to make donations, their by eliminating the need to ever go to the real storefront kettles.
Charities are using social media channels to get the word out to the social media generation. According to Amrit Dhillon, communications director for the United Way of Central Maryland:
We’re hoping to get this new audience, and we hope in the end there is a fundraising component with it.
The American Red Cross of Central Maryland has a twitter profile, that it uses to bond with its followers and inform them about the latest causes via news releases, solicits help such as request for photographers, and acknowledges support by sending out notes of thanks for donations.
As of now the charities havent been able to turn social contacts into a golden egg. Dhillon maintains that there’s little evidence of a boost in donations to the United Way through social media contacts.
This issue is further amplified by the lack of a comprehensive research or survey that quantifies the monetary value of using social media for social causes. Rainie, from the Pew Centers, says that:
Nobody yet has the full dashboard for how to measure each of these different realms in the right way
However, not all is dark too. There has been increased evidence that donor agencies and philanthropic arms of large corporations are turning to social media in order to hand out donations. The on-going Chase Community Giveway, where by Chase Financial Services group is using Facebook to hand out $5 million in donations to the charities – as voted by Facebook users is just one example of this shift.
So even if your social social media contacts don’t hand out donations by themselves, they could be instrumental in using their votes to land you large sums of cash.
