Raising money the social media way

By David Harte on Apr 14, 08 09:41 PM in Economics

Now when I was a lad it was the done thing when it came to fundraising to hawk your sponsorship form round the neighbours in the hope of getting them to commit to a measly 10p a length for the 20 lengths your school was forcing you to swim to support their local charity (for us King Edward's Aston Boys it was the Children's Hospital). Even then all you'd get was a commitment rather than cash. You'd have to do a second trip up and down the street with wet hair and a towel round your waist to prove you'd actually done it before any money was handed over.

My how things have changed. I've just had a rather intense week of trying to use social media to raise funds and by and large succeeding. Inevitably this story involves blogging and tweeting and people I don't know very well being incredibly generous....

First thing to point out is that I jog to the point of tedium. Not tedious for me you understand but for those who have to put up with my dull running stories. I use Twitter as many others do but my updates are infrequent and usually work related. That was until someone I've only met twice spotted on a facebook update (do keep up) that I was running the London Marathon. Was I raising money for charity he asked? Well kind of, in a half-hearted way, I replied. So with only a week to go a plan was hatched to see if we could use various social media to raise £495 for St Mary's Hospice in Selly Oak.

To cut a long story short I had all sorts of people blogging, tweeting and facebooking (is that the right term?) about my one week grab for hearts and minds and cash. Gradually my blogging and tweeting became more intense as I got caught up in my own desire to see the total rise. Meanwhile a work colleague set up a separate challenge to compete against the social media fundraising through the rather old-fashioned notion of sending an email round work. How quaint!

But not once was a sponsorship form hawked round the neighbours, it all existed online and all the money was given before I'd run a single step. Well thank goodness I managed to keep up my end of the bargain. Race over, legs tired but over £300 raised in a week largely through the magic of Twitter and Facebook and a few blogging friends.

The Brits are big on giving generally, donations from individuals are over £7bn a year, topped up by the government's Gift Aid scheme. A scheme incidentally that will be negatively impacted upon by the recent tax cut (less tax relief = less gift-aided to charity). I suspect few kids nowadays are allowed out to knock on strangers' doors asking for cash but then why would they need to - they're only a twitter away from doing it from the comfort of their own homes.