ShareThisGot a tweet to spare? It could help the charity of your choice.
A week ago, a record number of status updates on Twitter and Facebook using the phrase "#BeatCancer" helped raise $70,000 for four non-profit cancer organizations.
Meanwhile, sales of a virtual crop for the popular Facebook game FarmVille raised nearly a half-million real dollars to feed poor children in Haiti. And a group called TwitCause used tweets to promote organic foods and a walk to benefit diabetes research.
These are just a few of many recent examples of how social networks have quickly become a powerful yet inexpensive tool to raise money and awareness for charities, even at a time when the economy has reduced overall donations.
"The economy is terrible, there's not that much money around to share, but there are all these opportunities as long as you are authentic and you have a message that you believe in and you are passionate about," said Meaghan Edelstein, founder of Spirit Jump, a Florida group that sends cards and inspirational gifts to people battling cancer. It is one of the organizations that will benefit from the #BeatCancer promotion.
For that campaign, Twitter and Facebook users were asked to post that phrase as their status update during a 24-hour period starting Oct. 16. Three sponsors -- eBay Inc., the MillerCoors Brewing Co. and nutrition chain Genesis Today -- originally pledged to donate 1 cent for each post, although they ended up donating much more.
Spurred on by posts from popular Twitter celebrities like Perez Hilton and Kim Kardashian, #BeatCancer was posted 209,771 times, which Guinness proclaimed a new world record.
Meanwhile, Zynga Inc., a fast-growing San Francisco social video game company, has raised more than $490,000 this month selling virtual sweet potato plant seeds on FarmVille, a simulated farm game played by 56 million Facebook members each month.
Zynga has donated 50 percent of the nearly $1 million grossed so far from sales of "Sweet Seeds for Haiti" to non-profit organizations Fatem.org and Fonkoze.org. The funds raised have bought a day's worth of meals for 500 children for one year, said Zynga spokeswoman Shernaz Daver.
Zynga tested the concept earlier this year by selling virtual dogs and cats on YoVille, another social game that has 19.8 million monthly players. Proceeds from the total $20,000 raised went to the San Francisco SPCA.
"If you can empower people to impact the world directly, they would do it," Daver said.
However, the use of social media overall is still evolving. And for nonprofits, it has to be used creatively because people are already "over messaged" with advertising on traditional sources like television and radio, said Tamara Knechtel, managing partner at Everywhere, an Atlanta social media marketing firm.
Knechtel, also a cancer survivor, came up with the #BeatCancer idea and launched it days later. She said it succeeded because it focused on a specific cause and gave "immediate gratification" to participants.
"There's something very powerful in the lessons we learned," Knechtel said. "Now we have to see what is the next opportunity to turn this into something more powerful."
E-mail the writer at bevangelista(at)sfchronicle.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
Must credit the San Francisco Chronicle
