Watching the Twestival Unfold
Posted by Allison Fine on January 27, 2009
One problem with monitoring the spawning activities of Twitter is that it generates words like “Twestival”! That’s too bad because the thing itself, the Twestival, is an awesome idea.
As Beth explains here, Twestival is a fundraising effort on Twitter to raise money for charity:water working for clean water in villages around the world. Laura Fitton, a.k.a. Pistachio on Twitter, set a goal at holiday time of 12,500 donors each giving $2 to this cause. It began with the simple question, “What can $2 do?” Well, a lot, of course, when a large number of people give it. And now here comes Twitter, the fastest, cheapest way to reach 12,500 people if you’re Laura Fitton who has over 15,000 followers on Twitter as of today. But as Beth notes, the campaign was successful not just because Laura has a large social network on Twitter. It was successful because the ask was easy and inexpensive, the cause was very easy to understand, and the giving was powered by tipjoy a giving portal for Twitter users.
With that success under her belt, next up for Laura and charity:water is Twestival. On February 12th self organized groups around the country will be meeting, eating, talking, tweeting to raise money for clean:water. And this is the answer to the question I am most asked about social media fundraising efforts: are they scalable? We’ll see on February 12th, but I already know the answer and that is yes.
6 Responses to “Watching the Twestival Unfold”
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Beth Kanter said
Allison,
What’s fascinating is that I got into a little discussion with the grassroots organizers – wanting to find out what their goal was. Right now they’re asking each of the locales to come up with a goal and they’ll add to the side bar – and the total.
I bet they’ll raise at least $1 million – don’t you think?
Allison Fine said
$1 million?? Really? We can hope, but that would be really incredible and certainly put to rest questions of scalability of these kinds of efforts (although maybe the Obama campaign did that already). My guess would be @ $500k which would still be astounding. Important to remember the need and importance of getting grassroots efforts actually to the grassroots. Wonder what if any costs there are to clean:water?
Beth Kanter said
You were on the money! They just announced their goal. Now, let’s see what they actually do. The charity:water site has excellent information about their programs.
Twestival Update « A. Fine Blog said
[...] I first posted about Twestival, there has been a doubling of events listed on the website, particularly [...]
Bruce Dixon said
Allison, I attended your session last week in Hartford. Good stuff!
I’m the CEO of an educational non-profit and have made the decision to move from incrementalism and a culture of low expectations.
Keep up the good work!
Allison Fine said
Great hearing from you, Bruce! Great going re: moving away from incrementalism – keep going and let me know how it’s going! Thanks.
Allison