February 13, 2009
Twitter Followers Raise Thousands of Dollars for Charity
Organizers of the 24-hour global fund-raising effort known as Twestival are still counting the cash they raised Thursday for charity: water, which works to provide clean drinking water to developing countries.
Twestival, which took place on February 12 at more than 175 cities around the world from Banaglore to Baton Rouge, brought together people who use the social networking site, Twitter, to meet in person and raise money for charity.
Planned in a little more than a month, the event organized by volunteers initially sought to raise $500,000 through a combination of ticket and merchandise sales, raffles, sponsorships, and online donations. But, based on an overwhelming response, organizers quickly revised their goal to $1-million.
According to early estimates, New York’s Twestival, which attracted hundreds of people to a downtown club, raised $22,500 – enough to build four freshwater wells.
Detroit Twestival-goers also collected enough to build a well, raising a total of $4,600. In Cleveland, 67 people attended a Twestival event, raising $1,410. Boston tweeters raised $3,855 through door and raffle tickets.
See and share pictures from Twestival at The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Flickr page.
Twestival participants: Click below to share your experiences and report your city’s fund-raising tallies.
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I attended the Calgary event. Very cool concept, poor execution. Not sure how much was raised.
— Gena Rotstein Feb 13, 01:33 PM #
In Seattle, we had over 100 show up, generating $1150 at the event and perhaps another $2100 in outside donations.
Our details are at http://seattle.twestival.com/
— Eric Weaver Feb 13, 02:07 PM #
A lot of the San Diego group went up to LA for Twistup and Twestival, but we still had a group of about 50 and raised close to $400.
— Pete Sternburg Feb 13, 02:53 PM #
The comments about the London event here: http://tinyurl.com/c8fg5k
in many ways make our point that these are great parties, but might not be great acquisition sources yet. You can read about my Seattle Twestival experience here: http://www.oneicity.com/blog/twestivalseattle-report/
Twestival’s are a great experiment and good fun. It remains to be seen if there is a way to make these effective donor acquisition events.
— Steve Thomas Feb 13, 03:25 PM #
I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Cleveland event came together given the short turnaround time – it was a great collaborative effort. I agree that Twestival was an interesting experiment – but at minimum have had a glimpse into the potential of Twitter and other 2.0 opportunities while meeting folks I might not meet otherwise – and also while raising money for a good cause. Not bad for 140-character bursts of communication.
— Paul Putman Feb 13, 03:46 PM #