Social-Media Campaign Honors Mothers—and Draws Aid for Female Activists

Epic Change

Twitter handle: @EpicChange

What it raised: $16,910 in 2010 for a campaign with a Mother’s Day theme.

The campaign: Epic Change, a nonprofit that uses social-media tools to support and raise money for grass-roots activists worldwide, created a drive called To Mama With Love to give online supporters an opportunity to honor their mothers on Mother’s Day and give money to four female “changemakers” in Afghanistan, Nepal, and Tanzania.

What it used: Twitter, Facebook, Twibbon, JustCoz

How it worked: The charity set up an online map of the world and then encouraged people to upload pictures of their mothers to it. By doing so, participants created a fund-raising page that could be used to spur donations from others, typically by sending messages through e-mail or using social networks. More than 300 pictures of mothers were uploaded.

Additional promotion efforts: Epic Change promoted the campaign withJustCoz, an online relay system that lets people donate their tweets to a cause. More than 180 people signed up to allow Epic Change to automatically post a message about To Mama With Love on their Twitter accounts. It also used Twibbon, a tool that people can use to automatically add a campaign logo and hashtag on their Twitter profile pictures. About 700 people added the To Mama With Love badge to their pictures.

What it accomplished: Change says for every donation, 85 percent of themoney went to one of four female activists featured in the To Mama With Love campaign.

Why it worked: It provided tools that allowed people to do something unusual and meaningful to commemorate a holiday.

[video url="http://youtu.be/7JpN7Gd-5W8" align="center” size="full-width” class="" starttime="" caption="" credits="Epic Change”]