Digital Media Buzz > Think Social, Be Global: Using Social Media For Charity

Think Social, Be Global: Using Social Media For Charity

By Rebecca Jacoby

As a digital strategist immersed in social media’s penchant to directly connect people with common interests, Toby Daniels dwells among clouds in an earthly way. He has creatively executed entrepreneurial businesses as well as humanitarian vision through Twitter and Twestival (not officially associated with Twitter) in New York City for charity: water. Daniels was a managing director for Online Creative Communications, a digital agency, in teh UK, and then ran business development for Mint Digital’s U.S. operations. He left to pursue ideas such as Social Media Week, a conference designed to encourage social media practices and policies in business.

DMB’s Rebecca Jacoby recently spoke with Daniels about using social media’s reach for philanthropic pursuits.

What type of projects have you been working on since Social Media Week?
ThinkSocial, cofounded with Jamie Daves, has been created in conjunction with with the Paley Center for Media in New York. The aim is to connect people and ideas to advance the use of social media to address society’s most pressing challenges. I have [also] been working on … thebetacup.com, a joint effort with a company called Mutopo. The goal is to eliminate paper cup consumption by engaging mass collaboration in the design of a convenient alternative to the reusable coffee mug.

How did you become involved with Twestival?
I learned about Twestival through Amanda Rose and agreed to run the New York event following a Skype conversation with her in late January. It seemed like a good opportunity to support charity: water [funding clean drinking water for almost 1 million people to date in Ethiopia, Uganda and other countries] and demonstrate how social media could be used to unite people around a single cause. Agreeing to organize Twestival for Sept. 12 was also an easy decision as I was able to nominate a local charity called CampInteractive, which I had been working with for some time.

How does social media make a difference?
First, it enables us to embrace our differences. People can now communicate through these new channels in spite of geographic, economic and ethnic differences. And with this new capability people – particularly those dedicated to development and social innovation — are, in fact, finding tremendous insight and inspiration through their social media interactions because of these differences. Second, it removes the barrier of distance. The distance between a social enterprise investor, a program officer or a policy-maker or citizen in the United States and a person in the slums of Kenya or India has never been smaller. Third, it expands the circle of social concern. We can now discuss, highlight and organize around initiatives that are actually working, while exploring ways that these new capabilities are radically expanding the circle of social concern we all feel, and increasing the possibilities for acting on those concerns.

How did you organize the local Twestival effort?
We established a working framework. I then approached a number of experienced people with complementary functional skills who would lead teams of volunteers. Then we invited the community to join the team, and about 25-30 people joined to organize the event. We formed teams such as AV, communications, production, technology and sponsorship, and leaders were assigned per team. With everyone’s busy work schedules it took persistence, but it was amazing how much we achieved in such a short time.

Weekly meetings were held to mark-off tasks during the planning phase. We tried not to take on any operation costs. The entire meeting space was donated, for example. There were also cash sponsors and in-kind donations, plus 100 percent of the ticket sales went to the charity.

In New York, all kinds of people got involved in both Twestival events: from marketing, public relations, music, film — every walk of life. It was encouraging to see so many young professionals give their time. The volunteers could choose what team they’d like to work with and how much time they’d commit. Some chose one team, some chose more than one and some were generalists. In a short time frame thousands of people made a significant impact.

As a team we’re particularly proud of a sponsorship deal we secured as part of the most recent Twestival event. SeamlessWeb, the nation’s leading online food ordering service, donated the change from every single transaction made on its platform on Sept. 12 to support our chosen charity, CampInteractive. Plus, they had a “Tweet-this” feature to drive interest to the event through Twitter, which was a particularly innovative way of integrating social media into the overall campaign. It was also a great gesture, a great way to support a social enterprise and a great way to integrate a brand with social media.

Rebecca Jacoby is a freelance writer who reports how digital media works with business. She may be reached at rebecca.jacoby09@gmail.com.