SantaCause social media experiment: Christmas gifts that give twice
This week I attended the Society for New Communications Research conference in Boston. It was inspiring to see how some companies are working within the parameters and cultures of social media. They are flexible enough to bend their business perspective to accommodate the participatory aspects of the specific social platform they chose.
For example, Dell Outlet was one of several featured case studies. They have a profile on the microblogging site Twitter where they send tweets (short, 140-character messages on Twitter) about Dell super promotions, which are constantly changing. There are 379 people following Dell Outlet, looking to capture their next big bargain.
Immediately upon hearing this, I got the idea for creating a profile on Twitter called Santa Cause. Santa Cause will share with holiday gift buyers links to retailers who also provide a portion of their revenues to charities. See, it’s a gift that gives twice.
The elves at Provident Partners — Kirsten, Mike and me — will be tweeting away till Dec. 24. We also invite your help in this spur of the moment social media experiment. So if you know of retailers that give a portion of their revenues to charities, put their link in the comment section on this post and one of the elves will get it to Santa Cause to tweet.
Or if you are on Twitter, send a direct message to Santa Cause with the link, and tweet your followers to keep an eye on Santa Cause.
Here is a quick sample of a few of the list items. You can find a running list of Santa Cause’s Twitter posts at Santa Cause Twitter HQ.
–”Buy a gorgeous, green glass paperweight and 50 cups of food will be donated http://tinyurl.com/2bdab6”
–”Buy your doggie some treats for the holidays, with the proceeds going to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital http://tinyurl.com/ypn9yq ”
–”Oh Mama Cause I just found a good place to stuff my bag for the big ride. http://tinyurl.com/33c4bk It’s part of GreaterGood Network stores”
Tags: charities, christmas gifts, social responsibility
This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 7:26 am and is filed under new media, social media.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
RSS feed
Subscribe via e-mail
December 8th, 2007 at 8:54 am
There is a new alternative for online fundraising, take a look at GiveStream ( http://www.givestream.com). It offers a set of free and easy-to-use online fundraising and community-building tools that help nonprofits create their own branded easy giving center.
December 8th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Michael it seems like a good program, I’ve also included at link to the How Does it Work Page. http://gca.givestream.com/howdoesitwork.php
Also for our readers, here is an explaination of this program.
“Our GiveStream shop connects you to hundreds of your favorite online retail merchants, where you may already be shopping. These merchants donate a percentage of your purchases – ranging from 1-50%, with most between 3-5% – which are passed along to our organization. These contributions happen automatically when you shop, at no additional cost to you or us.
There are two ways to shop.
If you want to shop at your favorite merchant’s website, just click the tab marked Stores and locate that particular merchant’s banner. When you click on the banner, you will be redirected to that website, and all your purchases will automatically generate contributions to our organization. You can see the percentage of sales each merchant will contribute listed on its banner. Choose the stores that donate more, and make an even bigger difference for our organization!
If you are looking for a particular product, use our product comparison search engine to find the lowest prices among all the participating merchants. The search engine covers millions of products from leading retailers and enables you to find the best deals by comparing prices, donation rates and related items. So you can get a great deal and help our cause at the same time!
Strength in Numbers
Your online giving can add up quickly, especially when you and others in our community use our tools regularly! For example, if you book an airline ticket through Example Airlines for $500, our organization gets 5%, which would be $25. When ten people do that, it becomes $250 generated for our programs. And that’s just for one of many types of purchases.”
I hope this helps, I’ll also tell Santa Cause on Twitter.
December 9th, 2007 at 5:41 am
Thanks for the feedback. I believe non-profit fundraising is at the brink of a revolution. GiveStream lets nonprofits and their supporters engage with one another on a daily basis in both social and fundraising activities.
I encourage all non-profits to give it a try.
I can also be found at michael (at) givestream (dot) com