Social Media

An innovative new social-media engagement platform launched by the United Nations World Food Programme is using the power of social media to raise the funds needed to feed tens of thousands of hungry children around the world.

WeFeedback engages supporters through an online “Feedback Calculator” that helps them work out how many children they could feed if they donated the cost of a favorite food item. Through social networks, followers of WeFeedback can track how many children their communities feed and what popular food items are being donated throughout the world.

The Royal British Legion, RSA and Comic Relief are the top three U.K.-based charities with the largest “social media presence” — in terms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube engagement — according to a major briefing, Social Media League Table.

By specific social media “platform”, the Royal British Legion heads the Facebook rankings, with 1,875,926 ‘likes’; the Tate heads the Twitter rankings, with 304,987 ‘followers’; and the RSA heads the YouTube rankings, with 79,341 ‘subscribers’.

Greenpeace has laid its claim to a new world record: the most comments on a Facebook post in 24 hours.

The organization’s post, and the more than 80,000 comments it prompted, were part of Greenpeace’s “Unfriend Coal” campaign, which was created to encourage Facebook to use renewable energy to power its data centers–the huge groups of servers that store and serve the site’s information.

Ventureneer has produced a new e-book — "Social Media for Your Nonprofit: Take Charge!" — to help you get acquainted with the most influential social media and their best uses so you can choose which ones will work best for you.

The e-book contains examples of how nonprofits large and small have used the Big Five — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and blogging — to ramp up their programs.

The Craigslist Foundation unveiled its LikeMinded network today — you can check it out here. This is the second launch from the Foundation in 2011 — it launched CraigConnects several weeks ago.

LikeMinded, which is supported by the Knight Foundation and Craigslist Foundation, is a way for people to share their own stories of making a difference in their communities and to connect with their local officials.

A recent study conducted on behalf of Harvard University's Institute of Politics found that around a third of four-year college students said using online tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has a greater impact than in-person advocacy.

The "Survey of Young Americans' Attitudes toward Politics and Public Service" study, conducted by Knowledge Networks in February, found that 32 percent of college students with Facebook accounts believe advocating for a political position using online tools has more of an impact than advocating in-person.

How can you raise money for your cause when it doesn't translate easily to cute, emotional imagery? The secret is building a community through social media, according to Susan Gordon, director of nonprofit services at Facebook fundraising platform Causes.

Your social-media plan — if you have one — should consist of goal-setting, implementation and measuring, among other things. That last part, metrics, frequently is overlooked, partly because the tools for measuring are still maturing and partly because there's 
no clear agreement over what to measure.

More than 150 cities across the world participated in Twestival this year. Each city selected a local charity and received a Web page from FirstGiving.

'Twestival' brings the Twittersphere offline and onto a physical location — a fairground, skating rink, park — for a single day to highlight a community cause. This year, it was March 24, with donations accepted through March 31 on the website. As of March 31, they had raised more than $550K for more than 150 local nonprofit causes.

“2:46 Quakebook,” a Twitter-sourced collection of personal accounts of the quake and its aftermath that will soon be available for purchase here, is one group’s response to the disaster initiated by the local blogging community that aims to raise money for relief efforts (the title refers to the time at which the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11). All proceeds will go to the Japanese Red Cross.