Twestival,charity and the rise of social media

A small interview with Scott Harrison (@scottharrison) on the eve of the first Twestival. Harrison is the founder/president of Charity Water

Is Social Media working for charities?

Yes! Our Facebook cause of 40,000 people has raised more than USD 41,000. SocialVibe.com has raised more than USD 37,859. The September birthday campaign (www.borni nsept - ember.org) helped raised more than USD 950,000 in three months

How do you see it helping further in the future?

I hope, much more of the same. More platforms, more interest, more supporters!

Has the affiliation with twitter so far increased people's awareness or readiness to open their wallets for charity water?

I think so. I searched for Twestival yesterday, and got 130,000 pages on Google. Today, 195,000. That’s massive awareness!

Have you seen a rise in donations directly resulting from the event or is it too soon to tell and the money is basically meant to come from ticket revenues?

Yep, lots of donations have been coming in on the website and ticket sales. I think it’s still too early to tell just how much will be raised though...

And how long have you been running Charity Water for, why did it start and how have you seen it make a difference?

We’re pretty young. I started the org about two and a half years ago after a decade of selfish alcohol-fueled living as a nightclub promoter selling USD 350 bottles of vodka and USD 16 martinis. I came back to my Christian faith as a kid, and decided to serve God and the poor in Liberia, Africa. Two years of volunteerism broke my heart, and I decided to start charity: water. We’ve been blessed. In two and a half years, we’ve raised USD 8.5 million and been able to fund 1240 clean water projects that will serve 640,000 people in 14 countries. I travel constantly to India, Africa, Bangladesh and Central America and am able to see the differences firsthand. It’s humbling.

I Love the valentine gift idea you have come up with (give your valentine a charitable donation of clean water for the poor)- reinventing the advertising world is huge in Brussels at the moment as well - is it easy to keep people interested?

I think so. Most people expect their charities to do sub-par design work. Why? Why shouldn’t our Valentine ’s Day promotion look as good as Apple’s selling Ipods, or someone selling flowers? Why shouldn’t it look better? See Scott, Twitter and NEurope at the Twestival February 12.