Social Ch@nge

Here’s an recent example of the “long tail” effect working for a non-profit.

Backstage Technologies is a small, “secretly Canadian” software company. They specialize in developing applications for Facebook - specifically, they’ve invented a way to simulate playing “scratch and win” lottery tickets. Careful, I said “simulate” - there isn’t actually money changing hands, you can’t win any cash.

However, you do get to pretend you are scratching that grey stuff off of the front of a real lottery ticket - in Facebook. And if you win you get to look at a nice photograph, and keep it as part of your collection. Admittedly, this sounds like just the kind of thing “Web 2.0″ is infamous for: very cool technology, but fundamentally kind of stupid. Until you combine it with fundraising…

Recently, Backstage partnered with a local charity, The Land Conservancy, who are fabulous fundraisers and have an apparent willingness to dive into new, potentially ridiculous, fundraising strategies. Backstage set up a way for people who play a particular kind of “scratch and win” ticket on Facebook to easily donate $1 to TLC. In fact, they get to play 10 tickets for each dollar donated. In return, they stand to win an image from TLC’s collection of wilderness photographs. Remember: that’s a real dollar that they are donating. All the player gets is a postage-stamp sized image…in their Facebook account.

Over 127,000 tickets were sold in about a month. That’s over $10,000 real cash to the TLC and, perhaps more importantly, 12,700 people who now have donated to TLC via Facebook. That’s a heck of donor base. And TLC didn’t spend a cent to get it.

How could this succeed? It goes against traditional fundraising strategies: it doesn’t appear to be directed, like an annual appeal mailout; the individual donation size is tiny, literally pennies; and it relies on untried methodology and technology.

But here’s the thing: let’s say that a Facebook user has, on average, about 150 friends. When they discover a new toy, all of those friends - who are inclined to like the toy - will hear about it. If even a handful of these friends pass the word along, it works like the old shampoo commercial: 150 friends tell 150 friends (and so on)…now there’s 22 500 people who know about it…and they each tell 150 friends…

This, to me, demonstrates a couple of truths about social media, the web, and non profits. It is ridiculously easy to form groups, and pass information between groups (see Clay Shirky) It can be ridiculously easy to pass small amount of money electronically around the web (see the Spare Change application in Facebook). Combine the two, and you’ve get some serious power.

So is this the future of philanthropy? Or just a flash in the pan?

For more information, check this out.