Fundraising 2.0
Today marks the end of Movember, a moustache-growing fundraiser our offices participate in. For a month, guys like myself shave clean and grow a moustache while raising funds (and awareness) for prostate cancer.
Though for a very good cause, I knew the economic downturn was going to make collecting donations rather difficult. The economy is making people think twice about their money, and the novelty of doing Movember a year ago wears a little thin. So how do you improve your reach and the possibility of collecting donations over the course of the month?
Constant updates. Entertain your friends, family and colleagues with progress on your efforts. I’ve created a blog to show progress each day and provide detailed information about the fundraising effort. Not only is it a simple site to set up (and free), I’ve also found a plugin to make my blog formatted for the iPhone for those who want to track my ’stache from their mobile.
Go social. Instead of walking door-to-door or calling up friends, there are much easier methods to get the word out. Update your MySpace photo. Post the direct donation link on Facebook. Create a response video to the official fundraising video on YouTube. Update your LinkedIn status. Tweet away with Twitter. Spread the word on multiple networks with an AddThis button. If your social network is active, other users will catch all of your notices in their feeds.
Focus on the micro-interaction. The Salvation Army now accepts online donations. Political campaigns like President-elect Obama’s are using mobile applications and social media feeds to raise money. Gone are the days of hoping to sign people up on paper or depending on ringing bells outside of stores. Small donations are now easier to make than ever.
The key is that all of these methods are free or accessible to anyone. Most likely, you already have a few of these networks set up. So far, we’ve raised over $3,000 this year and donations are still being accepted until December 9th.
Thank you to all of those who have already donated!

(3 votes)

Nice Super Mario!
What’s this iPhone formatted blog you were talking about?
Very nice video soundtrack
Dan:
My blog was built using WordPress, so it came natural to take advantage of open-source projects.
To upload new blog items from my iPhone, I used the free WordPress app. Pretty easy to set up and it helped me make daily updates away from the computer. You can get more info here: http://iphone.wordpress.org/
As for the actual visual theme of the iPhone-formatted site, it was a simple download of the WPtouch plugin for WordPress. Since my site is image-heavy, this plugin makes all blog posts larger to click on and doesn’t load images until you clicked on a headline. You can get the plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/
Tim, I think you did an amazing job advertising your moustache. This was a great example of how the online social space is becoming the new word of mouth but only more powerful and faster than the original. The power of this virtual WOM will only grow with mobile as an extension. The great thing was that you were able to accomplish reach and engagement for free! Many social media elements are free and brands (just like consumers have) need to take advantage of this space.
Hi Tim,
You’re blog has inspired me. Check my blog posting out on http://mstrategiesinc.typepad.com/m_musings/
Add me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CindyOlivera
Have a great weekend!
Cindy