Celebrity Selfies – a New Approach to Nonprofit Fundraising

The selfie may have moved from an online term to being permanently in our lexicon by entering into the Oxford English Dictionary, but now it has reached new philanthropic heights. Celebrities are now using selfies to raise awareness and promote the nonprofit fundraising efforts of their favourite charitable causes. I have explored celebrities and philanthropy in previous posts like the 10 Most Charitable Celebrities from the 2013 Oscar nominees, the top 20 Celebrity Gone Good Part 1 (and Part 2), the 5 Celebrity Charity Events by Musicians, the 10 Celebrities Doing Interesting Things to Change the World, the 10 most charitable celebrities, the 10 Celebrities Doing Good for Women and Girls, the 10 highest paid actresses and their causes, the 10 highest paid actors and their charities, the TIFF 2013 Celebrities and the Causes They Support Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, the 10 people from Vanity Fair’s The New Establishment 2013 and the 10 Celebrities Using their Fame to Benefit Charitable Causes.

Over 43 million people watched the 86th annual Academy Awards telecast on March 2nd and saw Oscar Host Ellen DeGeneres organize a selfie with the A-list celebrities in attendance. Those who joined in on the candid moment included Meryl Streep, Jared Leto, Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Lupita Nyong’o. DeGeneres posted the picture to Twitter and asked viewers to retweet the photo to help make it the most retweeted photo of all time and they did just that. The photo has since been retweeted more than 3 million times and it even briefly brought Twitter down. The picture was taken using a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and though the company had paid for product integration, they maintain they knew nothing of the “selfie plan.”

As a thank-you for making social media history – by surpassing the record held by President Obama’s re-election image tweet – Samsung Electronics decided to donate $1 USD for every retweet up to $3 million. A lump sum of $1.5 million will each go to two charities of DeGeneres’ choosing: St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and The Humane Society of the United States. Wow – a little star power can certainly propel the humble selfie.

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Selfies and celebrities are also coming together for the Everyone Matters campaign with the inaugural “Everyone Matters Day” being celebrated in many cities around the globe on April 2nd 2014. Everyone Matters “brings together under one banner EVERYONE who is judged and stereotyped by how they look and what group they belong to — black or white, gay or straight, male or female, disabled, senior, overweight, religious and ethnic, whomever.”

A long list of celebrity supporters including Sir Paul McCartney, Hugh Jackman, Ellen DeGeneres, George Clooney, General Colin Powell, Kevin Spacey, Tom Brokaw, HH the Dalai Lama, Nick Clooney and Nina Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, London Mayor Boris Johnson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Natalie Portman, New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, Jeff Skoll, Debra Messing, Mary Tyler Moore, Bernadette Peters, Christina Aguilera, Deepak Chopra, Dame Judi Dench, Betty White, Fran Drescher and Chris Kluwe have “each penned a slogan of inclusiveness, pride in identity, or tolerance” in their own Everyone Matters selfie photo.

Leading organizations supporting Everyone Matters include The Special Olympics, The Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, Association of American Colleges and Universities, NAACP, National Association of Secondary School Principals, The Museum of Tolerance, Association of American People with Disabilities, National Organization of Women, UN Women National Committee United States, GLAAD, The Trevor Project, Human Rights Campaign, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Student Affairs Administrators, Equality Now!, National Hispanic Media Coalition, MTV’s A THIN LINE Campaign, National Partnership for Women & Families, Asian American Justice Center and the Network National Catholic Social Justice Lobby.

The goal is that on April 2nd people will join together and upload their own selfies proclaiming something about who they are without fear of judgment. The online and school campaign includes The Letting Go of Judgement Tree, the “I Am!” PhotoBooth and VideoWall and The 24-Hour Challenge to Not Judge or Call Names. Make sure your own “I Am” statement is heard and include it along with your selfie on the Everyone Matters wall.

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