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.
