Towards the end of last week, I stumbled across an awesome initiative from the Jimmy Fund that will allow folks addicted to social media to put their time behind the keyboard to a good use.
How can you do that you ask?
Well if you visit Help Attack!, you can pledge a monetary amount that is tied to status updates or Tweets for a 30 day period. At the end of the month, you simply donate the money to the Jimmy Fund. The money goes to help children and adults with cancer.
After checking out the promotion, I talked to my friend Coral Vogel who is the assistant director of social media at the Boston-based charity about this fundraising campaign.
How did this promotion come about?
As the Assistant Director of Social Media at the Jimmy Fund, I’m constantly keeping my eye out for new interesting ways to spread awareness of the Jimmy Fund’s mission, to grow our online community, and of course, for new ways to raise additional funds for cancer care and research. I have a robust Google Reader account where I try to keep up to date on the ever changing social sphere by following many different social media blogs. Last month I was starting to see a bit of a trend and reading about HelpAttack! more and more, so I wanted to see what it was all about. I created our account and have promoted it lightly through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We haven’t seen very much money come in from this so far, but I think it has huge potential.
Are we as a culture addicted to social media?
Speaking for myself, yes, I’m addicted to social media for sure! When you hear the statistics about the percentage of people that check their Facebook account before they even get out of bed, sadly, that would be me! Recently, I’ve had to make myself turn my smart phone off for a couple hours in the evening, just to force myself to disconnect for a while. Working in social media is not a 9-5 type job, things are happening online 24-7 and it can be a challenge to step away. I’m very passionate about the cause of the Jimmy Fund, and very excited about all of the possibilities there are to make a change with social media, so it does become addictive. When I was on vacation last month, my boss actually texted me and said “step away from the Hootsuite.”
As a culture too, I think we are addicted to social media. We’ve become so busy, with more to do, and less time to do it. We need and want news, information, etc. immediately and social media provides that. I think social media also allows people to express themselves in ways that they might not in person. I heard a talk recently where the speaker said “people are passive in person, and aggressive online.” That of course can be a good or bad thing.
How are you tracking the pledged amount?
As the administrator for the Jimmy Fund page, I can download reports on the pledges, etc. Each person’s pledge campaign lasts for 30 days, or until they reach their set limit.
Do you think pledges like this will become the norm for charities?
I think charities will have to continue to be creative and stay on top of emerging technologies that would help bring in additional funds in a variety of ways.
How did the Jimmy Fund get into the social media space?
Back in 2007, the marketing team realized we would be missing out if we weren’t on MySpace, so I created and managed our page. A couple months later, we started hearing a lot about Facebook and decided to get involved with that as well. Until this past October, social media has been a component of my job which was to coordinate all of the photo and video efforts for the Jimmy Fund. With the growth of social media, it was decided to create the Assistant Director of Social Media position which I was promoted into in October.
I like the promotion and find it interesting, how about you? Is this something that you would consider participating in?