This week, a social media acquaintance of mine, Danny Brown, announced the total monies his charity drive raised last year:  $91,275.

*cough*

Throughout the 2009 calendar year, Danny, a Toronto-area PR and Communications consultant, ran a campaign he called “12 for 12k”.  He dreamed up a simple concept:  raise $12,000 per month, for 12 charities, over 12 months.  It may not have hit the overall target, but starting at zero awareness late in 2008, 12for12k proved yet again that social media is a viable and valuable tool for non-profit organizations.

The fund-raising technique that may be surprising was the campaign’s use of something called the ChipIn “widget”: a small, easily implemented piece of functionality on a web site that allowed donors to contribute very small amounts of money to their charity of choice.

For the most part, non-profits still rely upon telephone or door to door canvassers looking for donations from individuals or selling tickets for some draw or other, and universally seek more substantial amounts from corporate sponsors.  Yet the social media micro-method multiplies the potential donor audience, and increases probability of donation by lowering the entry donation amount.  In some cases, a donation minimum of merely $0.01.  The result is a vastly greater number of people contribute small amounts, resulting in a highly successful overall donation total.

Not convinced?  The American Red Cross needed a very quick, simple way to respond immediately to the terrible disaster this week in Haiti.  They turned to social media.  Using primarily Twitter and Facebook, they asked cellular users to send the SMS text “HAITI” to 90999.  This resulted in a $10 charge conveniently added to the user’s cell phone bill.  In about one day, they raised almost $4 million dollars (USD).

“Micro” is a key aspect of social media, and with respect to non-profits, an often overlooked concept.  In future posts, I’ll also cover the concept of ‘micro-volunteering’.

And what does this have to do with business in Atlantic Canada?

Business-people here spend an enormous amount of time and effort supporting non-profit organizations in the region.  You only have to look back to last year’s Top 50 CEO Winners, who volunteer with over 270 organizations, and provided over $20.6M in cash and in-kind contributions.  So this article is aimed squarely at you, Mr./Ms. Atlantic-Business-Person, so you have some evidence you can take back to that non-profit you work with, and try to change some old thinking.

The opportunity for non-profits to improve relations, increase awareness and (potentially) increase the money they need is almost old news across the internet.  But as a service provider who lives in this part of the world, I can’t point to any examples from here as successful as the ones mentioned in this article.  As business people in the region, I hope you are helping that special cause of yours to make the transition into social media.

For further reading, view this presentation we used a few times last year:

Are there stories you can share about non-profits in Atlantic Canada using social media?