As dared by Matt Knell (@mknell on Twitter) in comments here (read the post for all the rules! $10 donation here per dare… dirt cheap!), our second HOMEOKE DARE is complete!
Our very own artiste extraordinaire, Natasha, brings Nat King Cole like never before.
Girl, you killed it. And I mean that in the positive Vaynerchuk way.
As dared by Matt Knell (@mknell on Twitter) in comments here (read the post for all the rules! $10 donation here per dare… dirt cheap!), our FIRST HOMEOKE DARE is complete! Michael Gruen (@gruen on Twitter) practically CHANNELS Ms. Aguilera!
Sure… the audio might be a bit wacky and I DON’T SEE POMEGRANATES but I’m pretty impressed he sang it out strong.
Natasha Wescoat answered the dare in the comments below for “Unforgettable” - watch it
Michael Gruen answered the dare in the comments below for “Genie in a Bottle” - watch it
We recently launched of “SM4SC Sings” with our partners in crime, TechKaraoke, in three different spots across the US: NYC, New Jersey and Minneapolis, raising more than $200 in one day - not bad for $1 a song!
But what if you’re not in those cities. And worse… what if it just isn’t your THING?
Not a fan of crazy karaoke bars full of nutty drunks belting out Shania Twain and Def Leppard?
Located in a town where your only hope of karaoke would be singing along with the piped-in music outside the grocery store?
Afraid to leave your basement lest the sun touch your “Internet Pale” shade of skin?
Well, you can STILL get involved — in THREE WAYS!
$10 Requests – In the comments below, you can request that the lovely Natasha or the (not so lovely, but totally insane) Meg — AND MORE PEOPLE TO COME — sing along ON VIDEO with any song you choose. Simply donate, choose a song, and pop it into the comments. Make sure the song is reasonably recognizable (not one you wrote last year, or a Gregorian chant) and clean (hey, this is a family organization) and sometime in the next week, the chanteuse of your choice will record it for our upcoming video channel, launching next week. We do have the right to veto really sketchy songs, but you can always request again. Neither of us minds being embarrassed. And you should HEAR my Axl Rose. And my Cher.
$10 DARES — In the comments below, dare ANYONE to video themselves singing along at home with the song of your choice. Simply donate, choose a song, choose a person (give us their @) and pop it into the comments. We’ll give them your dare on Twitter… and we’ll see if they are man or woman enough to make it happen. If they refuse, well… you gave to a good cause.:) I would personally love to see something from, say, Gruen or, say… like, Chris... or how about rockstar Rebecca? Or Mr. Notion to Motion himself? And we all know Erin and Aaron can rock out… or whoever you want! (Note, none of these people know I’m suggesting you dare them to do ANYTHING… I just know they have webcams!)
$10 COVER at the HOMEOKE bar! If you want to record YOURSELF singing along with your favourite song (again, keep it as clean, kids) for our video channel, simply donate and let us know in comments to be looking for your video in our inbox (send it to Meg AT sm4sc DOT com).
This is a GREAT cause… and we can get some pretty hilarious videos if you guys get creative and have fun.
And $10 can do a HUGE amount to keep an adorable animal alive — and we’re pretty sure that’s worth a few rough notes along the way.
Look for the SM4SC channel to launch next week (which I’m pretty sure will be one of the funniest things ever) – and start donating and commenting below! And any tweets you do, please tag with #homeoke!
The survey itself is designed to take a snapshot of…
how people involved in social media are giving to charities and causes right now
how they’re discovering who they want to give to
what kind of causes and charities they are focusing on
what influences/motivates them to give
how they stay informed about new causes and campaigns
how they stay in touch with causes and charities they’ve already given to
Most importantly, we want to learn how we can communicate and raise funds in such a way that YOU — the people supporting the causes and charities that matter to you most — feel engaged and informed throughout the process.
That’s a lot of information for a ten question survey, to be sure, but we’ve managed to gather some truly interesting data across our initial platform at Survey Monkey, and our new platform at Formspring (huge thanks to friend of SM4SC Chris Lucas — @hockeyskates on Twitter — for helping set that up for us.)
We also owe a big thank you to everyone who has taken the survey, tweeted the survey, or blogged the survey — we couldn’t have gathered the responses we have without you! It’s been a big push — followers of me, @megfowler, you’ve seen this link many times — but we wanted to have as large a data sample as possible from active social media users.
We’ve received some great feedback about how to modify or expand the survey to do it even more effectively next time, so we owe a big thank you to everyone who has offered their thoughts or ideas on the process and the questions, as well. That’s one of the benefits of the collaborative nature of this space — we’re always moving towards a goal of “better”.
The survey itself is ending today, Wednesday, June 10th – so please head there if you haven’t shared your experiences with us yet. The 5-10 minutes you take to do the survey will have a real impact on what we do in the year ahead, and how we help causes and charities expand their reach across the social web.
I’ll be putting up a series of posts about the data in the next couple of weeks, and then putting up a PDF of a full report and analysis at the end for you to download.
Here’s the survey link again — and thank you! Please feel free to RT, Facebook, Tumblr, or blog it, too!
After all, it would only take 5,000 people giving $20 to make that total a reality. When you look at it like that, 100K — even 200K — is a completely do-able number.
We spend $20 in one week on any number of things that would be pretty easy to give up, especially when that sacrifice would mean helping someone else out!
You could give up:
Three fast food meals
2 overexpensive deli meals because you forgot your leftovers
Two drinks at happy hour (including tax and tip)
A week’s worth of DVD rentals (go take a walk outside! It’s summer!)
Two appetizers at dinner out on Friday night
3 pints of Ben and Jerry’s
4 frozen yogurts
60 McNuggets (that stuff will GET you)
1/3 of the average parking ticket you keep getting because you’re not paying attention to signs
5 Starbucks frappuccinos
1 silly summer lipgloss at Sephora that is the same color as three others you already have
1/5 of the pair of shoes you just have to have… but don’t, really.
… you get the idea.
So head to the post at Mashable to learn more, and spread the word with the tweet templates below:
Raise 100k in 1 week by donating $20 to http://sosg.org and retweeting this. #socialgood #100k1week (Tweet This)
Donate $20 to Summer of Social Good and retweet this to raise #100k1week http://sosg.org #socialgood (Tweet This)
The fine folks at Mashable have been gearing up for a VERY special project for months now… and today is finally the day their new Summer of Social Good project goes live!
If it sounds like something that would be right up our alley, then you won’t be surprised to hear that SM4SC is VERY honored to be acting as a partner in this incredible effort!
From June 1st till August 28th 2009, the Summer of Social Good is the first large scale online charitable campaign to raise funds strictly online through the power of Social Media and the Internet over an extended period of time.
The goal is to use the power of “Social Influence” via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs and other online media to raise an unprecedented amount for our fund benefiting The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, Oxfam America and WWF. We are very excited to engage and encourage online communities to truly do something remarkable.
In addition, we are also announcing the first ever Social Good Conference. On August 28th at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, we will have a one day conference highlighting the charities and organizations involved. Speakers and presentations will be on the topic of “Social Media for Social Good” and will be live streamed.
Thanks to our two sponsors, MailChimp and Zappos, 100% of the ticket sales for the event will be donated to our fund. Agenda, speaker list and ticket sales will be announced shortly.
This is the first “Social Media for Social Good” initiative by Mashable. 100% of funds raised will be donated to charity through the Summer of Social Good fund. All proceeds will be split equally between our four charities.
(To read the full blog post at Mashable, head here.)
SM4SC is VERY excited to support each of these fantastic causes alongside Mashable in our role as Partner.
Since 2008, we’ve been passionate about realizing the potential of social media tools to start conversations, create community, and facilitate fundraising — all to the benefit of a wide range of Non-Profit causes.
And there’s no doubt that Summer 2009 will take us even further down that road!
We extend our congratulations to everyone involved in developing this initiative, especially sponsors MailChimp and Zappos for their tremendous generosity.
Stay tuned here and at Mashable for all the news, events, and opportunities that you need to know about to support Summer of Social Good, too!
Remember — change can’t HELP but happen when ALL of us get involved.
Here are some places to lend your support right now:
At the NY Social Media Roundtable on Thursday, Matt will join fellow panelists Allison Palmer, web manager for The Center; Rachel Sklar, Founder of Charitini and Editor-at-Large of Mediaite; and Soraya Dorabi, Manager of Digital Partnership & Buzz Marketing for The New York Times, and Communications Board Founder of Goods4Good.org while they discuss how non-profit organizations can best use social media.
Here at SM4SC, we’re always asking ourselves questions. What charities could best use our services? What channels should we use to communicate with our supporters? Can we expect donations to increase (as they have so far) or dip over time?
We’ve decided to stop asking ourselves, and start asking you.
Don’t worry, this is just a short survey - 10 questions - to get your feedback on a few things, such as how regularly you give to charities, or how you vet charities before donating. There’s no math needed, and no long essays to write (that’s our job, afterwards)
This survey is not just for SM4SC, but can be useful for any charity that’s trying to build awareness and raise funds using social media. After we’ve compiled all the information, we’ll present our findings here on the blog.
So, please, take the survey, and stay tuned to learn about the state of giving in the social media community.
UPDATE: Our first survey provider only took 100 surveys, so many of you were blocked from taking it. Sorry for that!
The great people at Formspring have allowed us to use their service to host the survey on our site. How awesome is that?? So, please, if you haven’t yet, take the survey, and thanks!
The event is free, but in the spirit of the conference, all attendees are encouraged to present, or help with a presentation. The first three rounds of tickets have sold out, but the final round of 25 will be released soon - and you can get tickets here.
I’ll be there on the second day (May 31), so come find me when I’m walking around. Hope to see you all there!
PS - We also have some very exciting news to announce in June, so stay tuned for that as well!
The official Wikipedia entry for Wiffle Ball tells you how the game was invented, and what the equipment looks like. It even tells you how the game “exploded” in the 1980’s as an organized sport.
What it DOESN’T tell you is that YOU CAN WIFFLE FOR CHANGE.
Angelwish was created in 1999 with the mission to provide the public with an easy way to grant wishes to the millions of children that are living with HIV/AIDS around the world, Angelwish achieves its mission by ensuring that 100% of individual donations are used for program services and that those funds are extended, where possible, to incorporate an educational component giving young people a hands on lesson in philanthropy.
(If you just want to donate more to Angelwish, please select the “I want to donate” option and enter the amount you’d like to donate on the Eventbrite page.)
The Game:
Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules! Well… okay, I guess we do.
We’ll be playing “clean” wiffleball rules (no juiced bats or balls) and each team will play at least 2 games during the tournament. Bats, balls and water will be provided. Unfortunately, alcoholic beverages are not permitted as this location is a NYC public Park.
The Teams:
When buying your ticket, please specify if you have a preferred team you’d like to play for (this information will not be made public until event time) or if you’d like to manage a team (we have 3 open slots as of right now). Anyone not on a team by game will be “drafted” onto a team to play.
Join us as we partner with non-profits, charities and other community organizations along with new media professionals for SocialChangeCamp.
Our goal is to share knowledge about the new ways these organizations can use new media to meet their goals. We're looking for volunteers now!
Here at SM4SC, we’re always asking ourselves questions. What charities could best use our services? What channels should we use to communicate with our supporters? Can we expect donations to increase (as they have so far) or dip over time?
