Take the right step: include social media when seeking public support for charitable giving

AVON Walk for Breast Cancer has a tip sheet posted on its website that guides participants on how they can “partner” with its public relation professionals in publicizing the annual event. Fortunately, it includes social media.

Here’s why:
Laurie Brosius, a Dallas business woman raised $6,000 for a breast cancer walk by directing traffic to her donation site via Twitter --half of the money she collected came from people online that she had never met.

Pete Cashmore, CEO and founder of the social media blog Mashable, raised $10,000 in about a day by tweeting that he wanted donations made to a nonprofit providing clean drinking water to those in third world countries instead of birthday presents for himself.

These two examples highlighted by Health.com, an affiliate of Health magazine, are among the hundreds out there. In the article “Can Twitter and Facebook Help Fight Breast Cancer?,” Brosius makes a great case for her decision to use Twitter: People who are already on the organization’s website (where most donors contribute) is a little bit like preaching to the choir; they are there because they are already interested.

But among the almost 200 million Twitter users, Brosius found a harvest ripe for the picking.

Peg Mulligan, a content developer who tweets and blogs to raise awareness about breast cancer, also makes an interesting observation in the Health.com article. Some people may not seek out traditional breast cancer donation channels, but Twitter “indirectly grabs users’ attention in a stream of other topics.”

I’m pleased to see AVON looking at the bigger picture and including social media as a part of its strategy to ensure the fundraising campaign experience is a positive one for the participants and successful for the organization as well. However, I would like to see AVON shift the focus and move social media from last in the seven-step plan, to say step 2 so that it’s positioned as a medium that shouldn’t be missed. Currently, it seems too much like an afterthought.