Twestival Raised $250,000 and Expectations

Feb. 20, 2009, Guardian — After the Twestival hangover, how much money was raised for charity:water? Twestival today said that after adding up 116 of the 175 cities involved, the Twitterrati has raised just over $250,000.

That amount means safe, clean drinking water for 17,000 for 20 years and it is great news. But it is far below what Twestival had hoped to raise — just a quarter of the target $1m. In the thrill of the tweet, perhaps $1m seemed a reasonable target. But it also seems reasonable that at least 10,000 people donated a little over $25 each, and that's a far more realistic outcome.

Co-organiser Amanda Rose said that $250,000 could pay for water projects for 8,250 people in Uganda, 6,700 people in Tigray, northern Ethiopia and just over 2,000 in Orissa, India, and that 100% of the proceeds will go to the water charity.

"Of course, Twestival is still shy of reaching our ultimate goal of raising $1 million, but the campaign does not end here," said Rose in a post on Mashable.

"We may not have reached our target yet, and in some cities expectation exceeded turnout, but such is the nature of an event of this scale. And any disappointment we might feel for not hitting seven figures in a single day simply makes us all the more determined to carry on raising both money and awareness for charity: water."

If this was a bunch of khaki-trousered entrepreneurs trying to build a networking business around Twitter, we might have laughed if they told us they made one quarter of their estimate. But it wasn't - it was a project built on the hard work of hundreds of volunteers, trying to do something fun and raise some money for charity. And that's more than enough.