The Tail of Two Twitter Donation Challenges [#Twit2Give]
By Peter Corbett on December 8th, 2008
Posted in
Community Development, Digital Word of Mouth, Social Media Marketing
UPDATE: So twitter cleaned out it’s spam users during this expieriment and lopped off about 300 of my followers. Instead of not donating as described below, iStrategyLabs has opted to donate the full amount of $2,500 – half to www.strength.org and half to www.greaterdccares.org.
No time to read the full post? Just follow @corbett3000 and @mvolpe on Twitter and we’ll donate $.50 for each new follower! Giving has never been so much fun 
The HubSpot team continues to impress me with their innovative thinking and smart products like Twitter Grader, Website Grader and more. These guys were kind enough to ask me to speak on the topic of “How to Create Viral Videos that Spread Like Wildfire” at the Inbound Marketing Summit a few months back, and today I’m jumping in on a really timely, fun way of raising money for non-profits.
Mike Volpe, the VP of Marketing of Hubspot has created a “Twitter Charity Challenege” where he’ll be donating $.50 for every new follower he gets between now and December 31st. He’s capped his donation at $2,500 (5000 new followers) and I’m matching that!
iStrategyLabs will donate $.50 per new follower to my twitter (@corbett3000) and will cap the donation at $2,500. My current follower count is 1325. My donation will be split between two charities I’m deeply involved with and feel passionately about:
Share Our Strenth is an iStrategyLabs client and is focused on solving childhood hunger in America. Based on their equivalencies two new twitter followers will buy a meal for an undernourished child. Feed these children with me with a simple click. Tell your friends on twitter to do the same be clicking here and spreading the word about #Twit2Give.
Greater DC Cares is the leading coordinator of volunteering and business philanthropy in the Washington region. I’m a board member and and hoping we’ll be able to help both these worth causes this season through this little Twitter experiment.
All you have to do is follow @corbett3000 and @mvolpe and your follows will count towards our donations.
It would be really cool to see other people jump in on this meme so I’ll track that here:
@mvolpe = $2,500 max. Starting follower count = 2955. Full donation at 7955 total followers.
@corbett3000 = $2,500 max. Staring follower count = 1325. Ending count = TBD. Full donation at 6325 total followers.
@jessieX = $250 max. More details here.
@pmhesse = $2,500 max. More details here.
Total Possible = $7,750
Actual = TBD based on new followers as of 12/31.
If you jump in, leave a comment on this post or @ me and I’ll add you to the list!
KyNam
December 8th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Thank you for being so generous. It’s encouraging to see people doing that extra bit to not only help those in need but also spread joy in their own networks by enabling them to feel good about themselves by getting just a tiny bit involved.
JessieX
December 8th, 2008 at 2:39 am
Interesting idea, Peter. I’m inspired. Well, at least inspired to put something on my “someday/maybe” project. I’m also a board member for a hyper-local organization in my community. I might follow your lead on this. ~ J
Ed Nicholson
December 8th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Excellent idea! Already following you, Peter, but just followed Mike. Thanks for another great example of using social media for social good.
JessieX
December 9th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Yep, I followed suit. Borrowed the idea. Added a twist. My pay scale per follower varies. Only interested in hyper-local for the particular twitter account for which I’m wanting followers. Blog post about it here: http://is.gd/aNV3 Thanks again for the idea, Peter.
Ernesto
December 10th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Nice work Peter.
E
Peter Hesse
December 10th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Peter, thanks for mentioning me on your post. I’ve created my own post you can link to containing my reasoning: http://tr.im/23o4 . Now, get out there and follow me, people!
Dan Keldsen
December 19th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Peter – well, you tipped me past the tipping point. I’d seen Mike’s project and thought it was a great idea, but here I was buried in getting a startup fired up and thought I had no time.
But, hey, great things don’t happen unless you MAKE them happen, so I’ve done a similar challenge, benefits going to the Grameen Bank – microcredit pioneers lending to the poorest of the world’s poor, and helping them to pull themselves up through the economic mud.
Great charity – would appreciate spreading the meme. Looking forward to seeing how these experiments work out, and how the ripples have spread!
See http://bit.ly/z9Kk for full post.
Cheers,
Dan