Fundraising benefits from a Daffy (Duck) viral Facebook campaign

If ever a case study was needed to determine the viral impact of Facebook in terms of nonprofit fundraising it has certainly taken place over the last four weeks. If you spend any time on the social media site you couldn’t help but notice that the profile images of many users were changing to a wide variety of cartoon characters. Naturally enough people explain to each other why they are suddenly Speedy Gonzales or Penelope Pitstop. I admit I had to find out myself as many of my Facebook ‘friends’ were morphing into characters I haven’t considered for about 30 years.

Here’s where the story gets a little bit strange, the consensus of opinion was profile pictures had been changed to show that you were a supporter in the fight against violence against children. While some said it was associated with the NSPCC (Britain’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) others weren’t sure of the source but that it was a statement of ‘a month of speaking out against child abuse’. Either way it caught on like wildfire with perhaps as many as 40% of the people my profile is associated with changing their profile images over to their favorite cartoon character. I didn’t change mine simply because I couldn’t pick between some Sylvester the Cat or The Pink Panther – realising at this late stage that my allegiances to both still run deep.

The fact of the matter is no associated nonprofit has been deemed to be the actual source of the campaign, in fact at this time nobody knows where the quickly growing trend began. It almost certainly didn’t commence due to any official social media campaign by registered nonprofit. There was even a rather sinister rumour that the initiative was no more than a ruse by those who might prey on children suggesting that the youngster would be more likely to befriend somebody on Facebook whose profile image was a cartoon. This was quickly renounced as an urban myth Facebook style. The reality is that (according to nonprofit quarterly) the NSPCC saw its Facebook following increase from 65,000 to 115,000 in recent weeks, while the nonprofit apparently received almost $150,000 in gifts directly from the Facebook campaign – also known as the campaign that wasn’t.

This illustrates the huge spike google reported for ‘cartoon character’ searches

Amongst the myriad of tools available via Google one is known as Google Trends which allows you to track the search volume index for keywords entered into online searches, you can do so monthly or annually and even base it on locality. As the image above demonstrates search volume for ‘cartoon characters’ increased more than tenfold from a steady pattern earlier in the year. To date the source of the idea remains completely unknown but even without a concrete root cause what is completely evident is that a buzz via social media can cause a chain reaction unlike any other.