Charities Latching Onto The Social Media Wave

Charities are using social media networking as a way to get their causes out. Using Twitter some charities are seeing a new source of fund raising that is making a difference.

Charity:Water is a case in point. Last January the founder Scott Harrison tipped his toe into the social media pool by accident and has not looked back. A British woman named Amanda Rose was curious to see if using Twitter would be a viable fund raising tool and asked Harrison if she could use his charity as a test. Intertwining the words festival and Twitter, Rose organized the first "Twestival." With 200 off-line charity events scheduled around the globe Rose used Twitter as a way of connecting the dots. In the end Charity:Water came out $250,000 ahead and added 10,000 names to their donor roster. It was clear, social media networking was a very viable tool when it came to fund raising. Ory Okolloh has used Twitter as a way to get the message out on the violence in Kenya. She asked readers to use her blog to report on the violence when the government banned live reporting. With that information that flooded her blog she set up Ushahidi. The way violence in Kenya is now reported is a result of that action. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

“In some sense, it was an incredible demonstration of the power of video to really crystallize an issue in a way people … can understand,” says Sam Gregory, WITNESS’s program director.

Knoxville Twestival will be taking place to benefit the Salvation Army of Knoxville on Thursday. The event is expected to bring 100 attendees. There is power in social media. Help Find My Child is another charity that uses social media as a way to get their message out. In this case helping to find missing persons around the globe. Some of their cases have been featured on Digital Journal, the most recent the case of Ontario brothers Alexander and Christopher Watkins. The power of social media is that people respond quickly to powerful messages. The retweets go around the web in an instant, bringing a group's message to more people than was ever possible. It has shown citizens of the world that a single joined with the whole can make a difference. Charities have taken notice, reducing the cost of overhead by simple keystrokes. It's a win-win situation.