A few weeks ago I received an email with the subject line “My broken tooth” from my very talented actor and comedian friend, Jeff Self (see video above). Below is what he wrote:
Hello friends.
Get ready for the weirdest email you’re gonna get today. So this weekend I broke my tooth. My front tooth. 50 percent chipped in half. Exposed nerves. The works. It’s pretty gnarly. And I’ve attached a photo for your enjoyment. I’ll wait while you open said attachment.
Now I’ll wait while you laugh at my misfortune. Okay, now I am asking for help. I don’t have dental insurance and I was awe struck to find out just how expensive a new tooth is going to be while at the dentist this morning. Beyond a new tooth, the exposed nerves on the broken tooth got infected over the weekend, leading to a root canal this morning. Messy.
Here’s my super 2011 idea.
I’ve set up an online fundraiser website to try and raise the money to pay for this. I’ve made a YouTube video explaining the situation and my pipe dream is that through the power of social media I can pay for this big mess and go back to eating sandwiches and apples like it never happened.
So literally, I’m asking folks who watch the video to donate a dollar two or ten or whatever you’ve got. Also, if you feel so inclined share with anyone you know in real life or Facebook or Twitter or where ever who might have two bucks and a desire to help some dude they’ve never met get a new tooth. I hope you don’t find this email and overall idea too forward or crass or weird.
Happy 2011 and thanks for reading. Here’s the link: http://www.indiegogo.com/Jeffery-Self-Needs-A-New-Tooth?a=72944&i=addr
Now, feel free to forward the attached photo to anyone who might need a laugh today.
love - jeffery
8 Tips for Web Fundraising
Jeff raised over $3,400 from 183 donors in 3 days! Sure, being an internet celeb helped. He does, after all, have over 11k subscribers on YouTube, a show on the Logo Network, 5k friends on Facebook and close to 4k followers on Twitter. But with a little bit of creativity and social media savvy, you can raise dough for your cause too. Below are a few ideas to get you thinking about how you could tweet your way to a new tooth, donations to your charity or even tuition.
- Get creative with how you tell your story: In Jeff’s case, he did what he does best – a funny email and even funnier pictures/videos.
- Leveraging your personal social framework vs. creating a social framework for your cause: Depending on length and size of your campaign, you might choose to just leverage your personal social network or create a social framework exclusively for your cause (e.g. dedicated blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, etc).
- Use donation sites to make it easy for people to contribute: Examples include IndieGOGO, FirstGiving, and ChipIn.
- Keep donors engaged: Aggregate donors’ emails in a Google Spredsheet and send them occasional email updates about your cause. Use MailChimp if you want to get fancy with email design and metrics.
- Ask donors to share with their friends: Make it easy for them by having pre-written messages with links that they can copy and paste to Twitter and Facebook.
- Thank donors in a public forum: Most people like donate to a cause to say they did. Write regular blog posts thanking recent donors. You can also use a donation site that keeps a scoreboard of donors like IndieGOGO.
- Email Campaign: You can scrape emails from your Facebook friends and track them via Google docs. It’s tedious but email is still what people check most frequently.
- Outreach Influencers: Reach out to bloggers or other sites that might find your cause relevant enough to share it with their readers. You can find top blogs by category using Alltop.com.
These are just a few ideas to get you started. The possibilities are endless so do some research. Google “fundraising with social media” and see what you find. Do you have any additional ideas or examples of individuals getting creative with social media to raise cash?
