Twitter + Compassion = child sponsorship

September 24, 2009 in Christian Living, Outreach

On the Compassion blog last night I discovered an innovative idea they’re launching this week – using Twitter to encourage people to sponsor kids. Here’s an extract from the blog post that explains what it’s all about:

Beginning today and continuing through this Friday (Sept. 25), we will send out tweets about specific children in need of sponsors.

And we’d like you to retweet them for us.

When you do, you’ll be eligible to win your choice of some free Live for Him apparel…

Every retweet counts as an entry, and winners will be randomly selected.

Once that child is sponsored, we’ll tweet information about another child, and we’ll follow that process for the duration of the week.

UPDATE: 9:05 a.m. – When you click on the child link in a tweet and you don’t see the specific child’s biography, it means that someone is considering the sponsorship. If the sponsorship isn’t finalized within 50 minutes, the child will be visible again.

What do you think? Good idea, or do you have concerns?

Given how expensive it can be for mission organisations and charities to tell people about the valuable work they do, I’m pleased to see a free service (Twitter) being harnessed for this type of communication.

Read more about the initiative here, or sign-up for Twitter and and start re-tweeting tomorrow!

  • http://blog.compassion.com Chris Giovagnoni

    Ok. I’ll start the conversation.

    I wouldn’t call it innovative since the idea morphed from the #moonfruit give-a-way and what some of our advocates have been doing on their blogs and in Facebook for a while, but I’d say it’s been a good idea given the results.

    At this point, 13 children have been sponsored and one person made a monthly commitment to another one of our programs. All of that without any expense outlay other than the salary associated with the time put into it.

    As for concerns, asking the same people (our followers) to tweet the same message to the same people (their followers) over a period of consecutive days could be perceived as annoying or intrusive and could cost us more social capital than we want, which could hurt us in the long run.

  • Steven Kryger

    Hi Chris, I’d heard of re-tweeting ideas like Moonfruit and Macheist and even charities, but hadn’t come across something similar in the Christian domain. I’d love to hear how you’ve seen Christians do this in other ways. Great to hear this has led to children being sponsored, hopefully not at the loss of any social capital. I think people will be pretty forgiving seeing it’s such a good cause.

  • http://blog.compassion.com Chris Giovagnoni

    Come to think of it I haven’t run across any Christian charities doing this. All of my examples are non-profits doing “Christian” work but not necessarily doing so in Christ’s name.

    There are a lot of churches and pastors on Twitter with huge followings that are probably experimenting with this, and doing so successfully, I expect. And I’m sure there are Christian charities that are working with Twitter and finding success, but none have reached my awareness yet.

    Doesn’t mean it’s not happening though.

  • Steven Kryger

    Keep up the good work Chris – I thought it was a great idea. Let me know if you come across other organisations in your space who are doing similar things, or if Compassion has other great ideas!