December 14, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Two years ago, the charity Epic Change introduced the idea of Tweetsgiving as the centerpiece of a Thanksgiving fund-raising effort on Twitter. The event proved so successful, raising roughly $42,000 in its first two years, that it became a how-to for raising money using social networks.
This year, however, the organization saw a drop in donations as it raised just $13,630. The tag Tweetsgiving was also gone, replaced with the name Epic Thanks.
Stacey Monk, a co-founder and chief executive of Epic Change, attributes the decline in funds to a change in format. Last year her organization encouraged volunteers to host Tweetsgiving benefit parties, which proved a tough task during the holidays. According to Ms. Monk, feedback from volunteers led Epic Change to rethink its strategy.
“We decided to refocus, as we had the first year, on our online event and redesigned our online experience to be a bit more engaging than it had been in the past,” she wrote in an e-mail.
This year, Epic Thanks allowed visitors to its Web site to create personalized thank-you cards that could be shared through Facebook and Twitter. Over 300 cards were created and shared. Visitors could also donate money online to support projects by three individuals—dubbed “changemakers”—on the Epic Thanks Web site:
* Mama Lucy Kamptoni, whose school in Tanzania was the focus of the two prior Tweetsgivings
* Subhash Ghimire, used the Epic Thanks tag to connect with students in Nepal, where he is attempting to build a school.
* Mike Halley, a former marine who is training dogs to help veterans cope with trauma.
The new name, explains Ms. Monk, was an attempt to make the event more accessible to donors who did not use Twitter.
“We wanted to focus our event going forward more on gratitude and less on a specific technology or tool,” Ms. Monk notes. “Imagine rallying a community because they share use of the telephone or electricity.”
Looking forward, Ms. Monk stressed the importance of conveying a simpler message. “Can we build a classroom out of gratitude in 48 hours?” is simply more compelling, more urgent than an appeal to support three changemakers in different parts of the world,” she says.
“I do think in the future, you may see us return to that.”
