Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children

The UCSF Challenge for the Children Facebook Causes campaign provides a good example of a successful cause-related marketing strategy using Facebook Causes. The post Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children appeared first on VMR. Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children was first posted on June 8, 2011 at 7:28 pm.©2015 "VMR". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

In last week’s post , I discussed cause-related marketing and why it can be a terrific fundraising approach for non profits dealing with the negative effects of a slumping economy.

Let’s take a look at one non-profit who benefited from a cause-related marketing campaign: The UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

The hospital is named after Marc Benioff, who is the Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com , a publicly-traded (NYSE: CRM) on-demand cloud computing company that in 2010 brought in approximately $1.6 billion in revenues.

The UCSF Children’s hospital chose to make use of the Facebook Causes app in its online social fundraising campaign.

I’ll let Marc Benioff explain the logic behind leveraging the power of Facebook to raise money and support from people who who would have otherwise never even known about the hospital, let alone the exciting fundraising campaign on Facebook to support it.

So what were the results of this campaign?

In a word, amazing.

Over 65 different teams from all over the world competed to raise the most money for this cause. And donations came from over 164,000 people.

In under 60 days.

What’s revealing for our purposes in this post as we look at cause-related marketing is how businesses reached out to their customers and other contacts to raise money for this cause.

Take a look:

You’ll notice the cause started by Zynga was responsible for over 163,000 donations. Zynga is a software company that develops social games played on various social networks including, of course, on Facebook. If you’ve been on Facebook for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with a few of the games Zynga has developed: CityVille , FarmVille , FrontierVille , Mafia Wars , Zynga Poker , Café World, Treasure Isle, YoVille, FishVille and PetVille.

But I digress.

In October of 2009, Zynga’s co-founder, Mark Pincus , founded zynga.org. Its mission? Get this: To transform the world through virtual social goods.

Those virtual social goods came in handy for the UCSF Challenge for the Children campaign.

According to a UCSF press release :

Now how’s that for an innovative fundraising idea? Forget cookies and brownies. Sell virtual candy canes!

That’s assuming you’ve got a willing audience ready to buy them, of course! Zynga has over 250 million customers.

There were other companies and celebrities who leverage the power of their social networks on Facebook to raise money for UCSF Children’s Hospital as well. As you can see below, companies like AOL pitched in as did celebrities like Ashton Kutcher.

Hopefully this gets you thinking about ways your fundraising campaign might be able to tap into not just the pocketbooks of your most loyal supporters, but also, perhaps more importantly, their connections and influence.

How can you see such an approach working for your organization? Do you have any questions or comments related to this post? Please feel free to comment below!

Photo Credits:

Marc Benioff : https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/db2266f5/File%3AMarc_Benioff_in_2009.jpg

Mark Pincus : https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/db2266f5/File%3AMarkpincus2.jpg

The post Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children appeared first on VMR.

Social Fundraising Using Facebook: Exhibit A Courtesy of UCSF Challenge for the Children

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