Flying Seeds

Recently, social media titans have been demonstrating the industry’s potential to garner donations for charities and other good causes. Mark Zuckerberg, TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year, donated 100 million to Newark, New Jersey elementary and high schools. He also joined the Giving Pledge, a philanthropic movement founded by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett. Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz also joined the pledge, which invites American billionaires to donate 50 or more of their fortunes to philanthropy.However, you don’t have to be a billionaire to use social media for a good cause. One website, GoodSearch.com, allows you to choose organization or causes, and then search the Internet as you normally would using the Yahoo! search engine. Fifty percent of the revenue from the sponsored search advertisers is donated to your chosen charity, averaging out to about 0.01 per search. As you might imagine, this can quickly add up.Supporting a charity through social media is also possible through non-financial ways. For example, you might organize a Tweetupa meetup on the Twitter social media siteto raise awareness for your favorite cause. In 2009, the 12for12k group, an organization which aimed to raise 12,000 each month for a different charity, used Twitter in a number of ways to raise money, including running a 12-hour tweet-a-thon in which every donation over 12 entered the user in a drawing for different prizes.Certain charities offer widgets that can be embedded on your social networking profile or blog. Aside from offering your profile visitors the opportunity to donate, these widgets also provide links to more information about their cause.If you’re planning on promoting a charity through social media avenues, remember that it’s a continuous highway. At its best, social media is a conversation between parties, as the website Mashable reminds us. If you continuously interact with your friends, followers, and visitors, they will be more encouraged to support the charity in the future. Make sure to give your charity a recognizable and unique personality and style, but make sure it’s authentic. There’s nothing that will stop users in their tracks like trying too hard. A genuine, heart-felt appeal is worth more than any number of phony presentations.While the holiday season is a popular time to consider charity options, true philanthropy doesn’t stop at the end of winter. Keep your organization active all year round, and encourage your friends and followers to do the same.