There have been several interesting posts and comments that have arisen about the @childfund Twitter campaign. Specifically, people have questioned the funding of the effort, and the rising trend of providing a reward for following (Fishing Pond Construction image by ChildFund Australia).
For context, in summary of last Friday’s post: To celebrate rebranding from the Christian Children’s Fund, ChildFund International is giving gifts of agricultural love and hope from the organization’s gift catalog for every 200 Twitter followers @childfund receives. These efforts will directly benefit children in Gambia, Zambia, Kenya and Ethiopia. There is no cap on followers, and the offer will continue through July 27.
Funding
OK, on to the controversy: On Twitter and later in a blog post, Colin Carmichael questioned the funding of the effort:
I’m guessing that ChildFund International set aside a specific amount of money for this campaign to be donated at those 200 follower increments. Note that this is money/aid that ChildFund International already has since they aren’t asking for donations from those followers. My suspicion is that the aid in question was destined for Africa regardless of how many followers @ChildFund gets.
It was my wrong assumption that the money had been allocated of the marketing budget instead of advertising. In actuality, ChildFund International reached out to donors who have said they will fund this campaign. This is above the amount they usually give.
To be clear: The Twitter campaign isn’t about raising money, either. It’s about raising awareness of the work that ChildFund does for deprived, excluded and vulnerable children in the 31 countries where we work.
And it’s more than sponsoring gifts for followers to reach out and spam folks. ChildFund has promised to report back to its Twitter followers who have invested. We designed the effort to attract followers that want to see firsthand how the money can make a difference. Twitter followers can expect open dialogue from @childfund as well as reports in the form of photos, videos and the stories of those who received the gifts. In short, it’s a two way give and take.
Alex’s Post
Friend and Changeblogger Alexandra Rampy has noticed a trend of the reward for follow effort. We discussed this, too, when the United Nations Environmental Programme planted a tree for every Twitter follower. Alex’s analysis offered seven tips:
- Wait
- Set realistic and attainable benchmarks
- Mirror realistic rewards
- Extend the initiative
- Keep momentum
- Make it fun
- Follow-up
First of all, Alex had some great points in her post. I want to acknowledge that. We did or are planning to act along most of these steps. Here are some deeper insights into the ChildFund effort as it applies to Alex’s post.
Wait: We could not, unfortunately. Rebranding ChildFund demanded an immediate effort to move capital from the old name to the new effort in a rapid fashion. In many ways, because Twitter is but the first part of a plan for building a social web community the rest of the year, we wanted to do this first and attract followers quickly. In order to extend the initiative, we need an interested community.
Attainable benchmarks and realistic rewards: I like what Alex said about 500k followers and a reward of the same fashion. We have no stated goal, just a hope to attract a strong vibrant community. I’d rather see 1,500 rapid fans than 150,000 uninterested followers who don’t do anything. Thus it’s an open ended WOM, opt-in initiative that will run for the rest of the month.
Based on cost per gift we felt that 200 followers was the correct benchmark per gift. Keep in mind followers are not leads, they are people who will give us a chance to maybe, just maybe become a long term Twitter community member.
I like providing a reward in social media. Too many marketing efforts ask you to follow and give nothing back to the follower. Whether it’s a donation and a commitment to report back like this or some other type of give, people need to be rewarded. Social media demands a two-way relationship, not abuse of followers. Call it a return on freely given social capital.
Follow-up: We hope to build a long-term community with @childfund’s followers. There’s some commonality: Wanting to help children in impoverished countries. A dialogue along those lines seems possible. To succeed, @childfund Twitterer David Hylton and later a new community manager will engage with people in real and meaningful conversations. It’s our hope that people on @childfund’s stream are already seeing Dave talk with, not at them.
Alex has agreed to interview @childfund for more insights into the campaign so stay tuned. And thanks to the many people who have already provided their support for this effort. Please continue spreading the word to your friends.
no offense, but whoever is giving this org grief is right to ask questions, and to expose any potential corruption, but why ask the question to put someone immediately on the defensive? The actuality of non-profits getting any serious funding and squandering it are on the lower end in general. I just don’t like the “attack and guilty until proven innocent” tone that these *questions* took. Questions are fair. Asking them to explain is fair. Assuming that they’re doing something wrong is lame and counter productive. This person who attacked them originally is probably sitting in some nice cushy office with running water & electricity while many, many people working for these non-profits are living in primitive conditions just like the people they serve.
Thank you so much for saying this, Michael. I was really taken aback at being called manipulative for trying to execute an awareness campaign to really try to benefit kids in Africa. For me, it’s a great opportunity to help out. That’s why I got behind this one myself.
Hey Geoff,
Thanks for the post and for continuing the conversation. I know we’ve talked between the two of us, and are going to post another follow-up. In the meantime, I’d like to state here that my post was in no way intending to “attack” anyone or be directed towards any one org. Mainly, I made an observation that organizations, including non-profits, are increasing their efforts to increase Twitter followers. I was mainly trying to bring people together over this type of tactic, share best practices and make a wider discussion so that we could all learn from each other moving forward as even more orgs and people look to implement this type of tactic.
I’ll save the rest for the follow-up. ;)