On my way to work this morning, I read an email announcing the start of the countdown to the next Red Nose Day for Comic Relief (on the 18 March). If you visit the website you will see the usual social media links to follow them on Facebook and Twitter, and a link to download things from iTunes. This made me wonder if there were any more creative uses of social media out there for charitable causes. Not sure if this is a normal thing to start pondering over a bowl of cereal; it could just be a sign that I spend too much of my life online!
So after a bit of a search around, these are some of the ones that interested me the most:
#BlameDrewsCancer
In 2009 Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer. Since then, he has blamed everything, from losing his keys to Twitter being slow, on his cancer, and he decided everyone else should too. So if you wanted to blame something on Drew’s cancer, you tweeted it with the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer, and it appeared on his site. He partnered with the charity LIVESTRONG and aimed to get sponsors to donate a dollar for every tweet. The result: 14,122 people blamed 34,205 things on Drew’s cancer. Drew is still active on Twitter and is involved in projects to raise money for cancer charities.
The Uniform Project
The uniform project is an online fundraiser supporting the Akanksha, which provides education to children living in Indian slums. Sheena Matheiken pledged to wear one little black dress for 365 days. She was allowed to reinvent her uniform only using accessories that were vintage, handmade, reused or donated. Each day she updated her site www.theuniformproject.com with pictures of the days look and the project attracted a lot of media attention from major newspapers and fashion magazines. The site received more than two million hits, raising more than $100,000 in donations. Sheens has now formed the Uniform Project Company.
Since then different designers and stylists have been taking up the challenge for a month at a time to raise money for various charities. After each month, the dress is sold to raise more money for the chosen charities. This February Designer Sarah Jones joins the Uniform Project wearing her little black dress for the entire month to raise money for City Harvest, a New York charity aimed at ending hunger throughout the city. There is also a section on the site encouraging you to do your own Uniform Project.
iHobo
iHobo is a live action iPhone app designed to give people an insight into the issues faced by young homeless people from Depaul UK. Once you have downloaded the app you get a young homeless person living on your phone for three days. You then have to take care of him. If you ignore him his life will spiral out of control, and he’ll turn to drugs and may even die.
The app is designed to show how complicated the homeless problem is. The hope is that once you’ve helped a virtual homeless person, you’ll feel more inclined to help a real one. The app is free but there are links through to Depaul UK for you to donate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK3umnWNW4Q
Social Vibe
There are also sites like www.socialvibe.com that highlight a number of different causes. Your social vibe account can be linked with Facebook to show people what causes you support. Corporate sponsors from the site then advertise on your profile and donate money to your chosen charity based on the number of points that you generate daily on their site.
And finally as they inspired my charitable hunt this morning (resulting in my signing up to many different projects/newsletters/sites!), please check out the comic relief sites as it is all for a good cause.
and if you have a spare moment, stick your head up a red nose…
http://www.rednoseday.com/fun-and-games/red-nose-augmented-reality
There are some interesting uses of social media and apps for charities out there, and they provide a great platform for charities to engage people and encourage them to get involved. I would be interested to know your favourites.