Thursday night I got home from playing poker and laid out my plans for Friday.
I’ve got a taping for LUNCH at 2PM and a few errands to run around town. But because it is a summer Friday I had already built in a little free time.
Most Friday afternoons I wander over to HubSpotTV for the 4PM show or grab a bench on the waterfront to people-watch and drink iced coffee. Tomorrow is atypical for a summer Friday as it’s got a few social media events on the schedule.
First is some sort of cookout in the middle of the day up in Lincoln, NH or Lincoln, MA or somewhere named after Abe.
The second is a Mashable-organized event called the #Hyatt4Good Tweetup Tour. Here’s how it’s described on Mashable’s site…
Over the past several weeks we’ve been on the #Hyatt4Good Tweetup Tour raising money for the the Summer of Social Good charity fund. We’ve had the great pleasure of meeting a lot of you so far and we have one stop left, Boston, before next week’s Social Good Conference. From the tour alone, we’ve raised over $6,500. Thank you all for coming, a big thanks to Hyatt for the beautiful venues for the events and we look forward to seeing you in Boston or at the Social Good Conference.The Boston event features: Appetizers, Cash Bar, Skype Giveaways, Fiesta Movement Agent’s offering rides to and from, Make sure to RSVP for Charity (100% of ticket sales are being donated to the Summer of Social Good fund).
Sounds like a good time. A little party, a little socializing, a little drinking and some charity tossed in for good measure. I love the idea. SO I went over to sign up for the event and saw that it was $20 per ticket. Not a big deal, but there was an option for people who had already donated to the Summer of Social Good.
I went to their site to see what that was all about.
There I found their four charities – one of which I really agree with and three that I’m less inclined to contribute to. And I also found a donate page. This is what started me on this rant.
This year I worked for a charity – I should say volunteered – that collected $100,000 for charity. We did this by focusing on making it easy for our audiences to give money.
Similar to Obama’s campaign, we didn’t turn down any donation amount. If you wanted to give us a nickel, we’d take it. It all goes to the cause and every little bit helps.
Not so for Summer of Social Good. See this screen shot…
Do you see what it says up top? That’s right…
If you want to make a donation to this project, please select or enter how much you would like to donate. The minimum donation is $10.
Excuse me? Is it too difficult to take $2, $5, $9.50 from people that you just ignore anyone who can’t spring for $10 or more? In the midst of the 2nd-most devastating economic downturn in my lifetime you’re refusing to take people’s micro-payments?
Isn’t social media great because it’s participatory?
What happens to the large chunk of social media folks who might want to support your causes but can only afford to give you $3 because they don’t have jobs?
Maybe they could scrape together a couple bucks for you, but your group refuses to take their cash because it’s not in a high-enough denomination?
That’s just silly.
There’s a lot of “rah rah rah, aren’t we great because we’re using social media tools to raise money” going on all around us. It’s admirable that so many people are involved and that causes are being helped.
But when it comes to making the decision not to accept help because it doesn’t match your criteria, you’re just shortchanging your organization – and literally shortchanging the people and organizations you’re hoping to help.
Keep reading!
With disclosure that I am a guest author with Mashable, I had a problem with the eventbrite page (http://hyatt4good-bos.eventbrite.com) that has two registration options linked to an external paypal page.
First, the choice is donating a “suggested donation” of $20 or donating $0 if you already donated before. What of the prices in the middle? If the suggestion is $20, what if I want to donate the Jewish mitzvah of $18? Or, what if I want to donate $50? By clicking the paypal link, it’s preassumed I’m for one or the other price.
Second, because it’s linked to paypal, there’s an assumption one has an account. If one doesn’t, one needs to create it. For an event with a large (if not all) number of attendees having Twitter accounts, why not use one of many Twitter payment OAuth tools?
I’m going up to the New Hampshire BBQ. Come join me.
Makes sense to me. Let’s face it, social media is already elitist – you have to have a computer, a good internet connection and time to play. Although we’d like to believe that describes most Americans, the recent changeover to digital TV says otherwise – more than 60 million people still use rabbit ears. So among the digerati, we should definitely make concessions for those who are hurting in the downturn.
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Don’t even get me started on the summer-long fundraising. A lousy $6500 is all you could raise at multiple events? That’s not the power of social media, that’s the failure of social media.
Not saying ‘you’ to you Ari, saying it about Mashable or the cause organizers. We had ten people on our board and pulled in $100,000+ in a ONE-DAY event. C’mon.
Oh, and yes, the stupid two options are ridiculous. How do you interpret them? If I consider that I was part of a group that is writing a $20,000 check for cancer research later this month (as part of our fundraiser’s distribution process) can I say that I’ve given to SOSC?
What if I make sure that the cancer cause we donate to is Livestrong?
We already wrote a check for $8150 to MDA – and that was the proceeds from a 15-minute event WITHIN our event.
I shake my head. Maybe they’d make more if they’d take the nickels and dimes.
*Can’t go to NH because we’re taping NomX3.com at 2PM in Hingham. Otherwise would love to.
Thanks,
Jeff
Appreciate the intention behind writing this post, Jeff, but I’m gonna have to back up my Mashable friends on this.
While yes, it would be great to have an open donate system, clearly it’s not in place. It’s during instances like this when I think the more appropriate call to action would be to directly contact Adam Hirsch, Sharon Feder, Brett Petersel, Pete Cashmore, or the other numerous Mashable staffers who have spent months planning this event series. Calling them out in a blog post does nothing to improve the situation fast. Sometimes, good old fashion email works better than social media.
As for your comment about Mashable only raising “a lousy $6,500″ versus your $100K from last summer, let’s keep in mind that you were working for a non-profit. Mashable is a for-profit web publisher. They easily could have just charged people at the door and pocketed the extra cash, which is what I think most people in this economy would do. Oh, and let’s not dismiss the fact that they’re featuring those four charities on Mashable.com. Given what they charge for advertising units, their overall donated value is much more than $6500.
Alexa,
Good points. The $6500 vs. $100,000 wasn’t an apples to apples comparison, but I was trying to make the point about charitable giving. If they’re not in this to be focused on raising money in a charitable way, then what’s the reason?
The free ad/promotional efforts do have a value associated with them but that has nothing to do with why I can’t give donate less than $10.
And I wasn’t really poking Mashable in this – unless they are the brains behind SOSG.org. I was saying that SOSG.org should have a more inclusive/versatile model.
If they don’t want my $5 then their fundraising goal is short $5 of where it might have been otherwise. I’d hate to be the animal who dies because research money or charitable fund was a mere $.01 short.
And yes, Mashable could charge at the door…OH WAIT, they ARE charging for the event – $20 a head. So maybe I’m missing your point on that.
Thanks,
Jeff
A few clarifications – or new points – I’d like to toss out there are…
Mashable seems to be behind the SOSG.org group
The single events, and not the entire campaign, have raised $6500. Maybe the overall total is more. That hasn’t been disclosed.
With Mashable’s reach, they could have raised a ton more money if they had micropayments and just asked readers to kick in a dollar each.
@Alexa – It’s easier for people to blow off steam and blog about something, than to contact a company directly about a concern. That takes work. Blogging about it also just gets one more blog post written.
Jeff could have interviewed someone at Mashable for their side of the story, but didn’t. He’s not acting as a reporter here, but as a commentator.
Many prominent bloggers, blog first and then ask questions later. Some don’t even ask questions later.
Some bloggers feel that a post like this IS the start of a conversation, expecting someone from Masahable to see this post in a Google ego search, and then respond here, or on thier own blog.
People expect a response when they tweet something about a company.
I recently sent off an email to do some original research prior to reponding to a blog post where the author made some accusations against a company. I wanted to get the company’s side before responding. They haven’t gotten back to me. I wonder if they’ve responded on the blog?
@Ari – I think people are wary of using thrid party services to send money. PayPal is a known and trusted payment solution.
From the PayPal site:
“If you do not have a PayPal account, you must enter a valid credit card to complete your payment. ”
http://www.paypal.com/helpcenter/
So you don’t need an account to send money.
As for micropayments through twitter, Tipjoy is shutting down.
http://tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-fish.html
First I heard of tipjoy shutting down. Bummer.
Yes, this blog is predominantly commentary. And based on the topic and time I wrote it, if I didn’t get and response from my 11:xx pm post, the column was dead if I went at it in a traditional news way. I went with the deadline so we could talk about this before today’s event.
“And yes, Mashable could charge at the door…OH WAIT, they ARE charging for the event – $20 a head. So maybe I’m missing your point on that.”
My point was that yes, they’re charging, but no, they’re not profiting. They could have done what they did last summer, which is charge at the door and keep it for themselves. This summer, they decided to do something different, which is give back.
@stevegarfield – **waves** I know it’s easy for us as bloggers and content creators to jump the gun and write when we’re feeling inspired or passionate about something. I’ve done it many times myself where I’ve just ranted about something for the sake of letting off steam. Jeff made it clear that his post was predominantly commentary and even used the word “rant” above. It’s possible Jeff just wanted a conversation starter, but if he really wanted to see Mashable or SOSG.org change their donate policy, I don’t think writing this post was the most constructive way to solve the problem.
There’s tons of power to be had in expressing ideas and sharing them in a public forum. Words, ideas, and dialogue have the ability to inspire and inform. However, publishings tweets and expecting companies to change is the equivalent of a three year old throwing a tantrum because they want a cookie.
I’m a little late to this conversation (in Internet time!) but after reading the comments, I have a few to add. Full disclosure: Jeff Cutler is my friend, but I reserve the right to express my own opinion. I was one of the founders of a national charitable foundation 13 years ago, so I know a little bit about fundraising. And, I attended the Mashable event last Friday.
That one person found the donation choices difficult probably means that others did as well. They either paid the $20 bucks and attended, or said “Whaaat?” and declined. My guess is that there was some lost money there. It seems ironic that Mashable would not have access to the latest and greatest e-method for collecting funds!
There are some numbers being “bandied about.” Whether it’s $6,500 or $100K, the important number is the NET and not the GROSS amount that matters. A charity can say they raised $40 quatrillion dollars, but if they only give $10 bucks to the charity, that’s not a good percentage. There are all sorts of benchmarks and philanthropic journals and Attorneys’ General who like to see most of the money going to the charity.
What’s the point here? The method of commenting or the result – how much money did the charities really get? I agree that Mashable could have done a better job with the $$$ platform; that can evolve and get better.
I applaud Mashable for raising money for worthy charities, especially in this economic climate, and I hope that this is a sustained, long-term effort. I like Mashable, and I hope that if I ask, they will cheerfully give me an accounting of the gross/net – how much actually went to the charities.
Whether it’s a rant, a blog, a question, a conversation, or an interview, the point is this – the charities potentially lost $20 bucks over something that is completely fixable… I have to wonder how many other donors, and dollars, were lost.