Hashtag mania sees UK nonprofit achieve fantastic results

Just a few weeks ago we wrote about how celebrities are now using selfies to raise awareness and promote nonprofit fundraising efforts of their favourite charitable causes. In the continued mania for the ‘selfie’ comes news that nonprofit fundraising with or without the celebrity endorsement can provide a great pick me up for fundraising awareness.

In the UK the inclusion of a simple hashtag #nomakeupselfie went viral, crossing the Atlantic within 6 hours and helped to raise over £2 million (CA$ 3.7 m ) within 48 hours from the time of the campaign launching. Cancer Research UK were the benefactor in this most pointed example of the power of viral social media even though they did not begin the string which was centred around the hashtag. It’s also important to consider the important role the incorporation of hashtags, a Twitter invention don’t forget, by Facebook last June makes to the overall growth of hashtag mania.

For the nonprofit in question more than 800,000 donations were sent to Cancer Research UK by texting the shortcode 70099 with the word BEAT, in order to make a £3 (CA$5.55 ) donation. Within the initial 24 hours, £1 million plus had already been raised as women throughout the social media world communicated the cause and hashtag, while posting selfies of themselves without any makeup. On day two the total raised managed to double.

Carolan Davidge, Cancer Research UK director of communications, said

“Thanks to people choosing to donate to us as part of the #nomakeupselfie trend, we’ve been overwhelmed with donations and support in the past 48 hours.”

Momentum wasn’t lost after just two days however, according to reports I read last night the total has now exceeded £8 million raised in just over a week.

In two related stories to the Cancer Research UK fundraising efforts, nonprofit UNICEF have received almost £19,000 (CA $35,150) in error after people who had pledged via text entered ‘donate’ instead of ‘beat’ in the message. Unicef said that they will now be working with the correct charity to transfer all of the funds erroneously received.

If you ever thought auto-correct on your phone was either an annoyance or humourous how about if it resulted in you connecting with the wrong charity? That’s exactly what has happened connected to the story above, with the World Wildlife Fund receiving multiple offers to adopt a polar bear this week. The cause: the polar bear enquiries are thought to have come because a number of smartphones corrected the word ‘beat’ to ‘bear’, which then resulted in a question about adopting a polar bear with the WWF.

Never underestimate the power of the hashtag in your fundraising ventures. While viral transatlantic mania like the tale above isn’t often going to be the outcome, communicating with your audience in advance of a fundraising drive about the value of a hashtag in raising awareness can make an enormous impact, even if your aims are local.

If you’ve got fundraising success stories that relate to the use of hashtags we’d love to hear them.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services