At FirstGiving, we’ve recently had a spate of celebrities using our online tools to raise money for causes they care about, including Britney Spears, Twilight’s Kellan Lutz, and even Jersey Shore’s The Situation. So Mashable’s recent series analyzing the relationship between celebrities and social good definitely caught our attention. The first post of the series sheds some light on whether celebrities actually hurt or help online causes. We’d love to hear more from non-profits as to the successes and pitfalls of using high-profile spokespeople and celebrity fundraisers – it’s not for us to say. But we can glean some insight into how to conduct a successful online fundraising campaign with a celebrity (or harness their enthusiasm on a grassroots basis), based on our observation of what works:
3) Partner with your fans. Likewise, actor Kevin McKidd has created a relationship with Save the Children, and uses his notoriety to draw attention to the organization in times of great need. His fan site, Kevin McKidd Online, conducted a fundraising campaign and eBay auction of signed paper hearts to raise money for earthquake relief in Haiti last year, and this year the actor is taking a two-pronged approach to raising awareness to the famine in the Horn of Africa: Kevin fasted for a day, and is also fundraiser for a Tough Mudder event.
Kevin shared with us how the relationship between him and the fan site came about:
“I first became aware of KMcKonline when my friend Danny from the UK became fan on the site, which at first was a little weird… You know, a friend becoming a member of a fan site. But Danny and Leanne (administrator extraordinaire of the website) struck up a friendship. Quickly we began to cook up ideas to use the site to raise money for charitable ends. Ben Stiller (@stillerstrong) told me about Save the Children and their Haiti effort to raise funds and support, so we chose that as our first fundraiser. It went better than we expected, in no small part due to the brilliance of the FirstGiving site and donation pages that we use. We are now raising money for Save the Children again and the fight against famine in #eastafrica. I feel lucky to have Leanne and her team at KMcKonline and FirstGiving as huge supports in the effort to help kids around the world.”
http://blog.firstgiving.com/2011/08/5-ways-to-make-the-most-of-celebrity-fundraisers/
3) Partner with your fans. Likewise, actor Kevin McKidd has created a relationship with Save the Children, and uses his notoriety to draw attention to the organization in times of great need. His fan site, Kevin McKidd Online, conducted a fundraising campaign and eBay auction of signed paper hearts to raise money for earthquake relief in Haiti last year, and this year the actor is taking a two-pronged approach to raising awareness to the famine in the Horn of Africa: Kevin fasted for a day, and is also fundraiser for a Tough Mudder event.
Kevin shared with us how the relationship between him and the fan site came about:
“I first became aware of KMcKonline when my friend Danny from the UK became fan on the site, which at first was a little weird… You know, a friend becoming a member of a fan site. But Danny and Leanne (administrator extraordinaire of the website) struck up a friendship. Quickly we began to cook up ideas to use the site to raise money for charitable ends. Ben Stiller (@stillerstrong) told me about Save the Children and their Haiti effort to raise funds and support, so we chose that as our first fundraiser. It went better than we expected, in no small part due to the brilliance of the FirstGiving site and donation pages that we use. We are now raising money for Save the Children again and the fight against famine in #eastafrica. I feel lucky to have Leanne and her team at KMcKonline and FirstGiving as huge supports in the effort to help kids around the world.”
http://blog.firstgiving.com/2011/08/5-ways-to-make-the-most-of-celebrity-fundraisers/
