Salvation Army Needs Widgets, Twitter, Etc…

Posted on November 22, 2008 by Dana VanDen Heuvel

Since you now have no excuse not to donate to the Salvation Army, thanks to their new cashless donation buckets, it would be great to see them evolve this strategy and take charitable giving into the Web 2.0 age.

salvationarmywidget 150x150 Salvation Army needs widgets, Twitter, etc...

Salvation Army Widget

E-commerce giving widget: It would be great to see the Salvation Army create an online charitable donation widget that they could use to partner with e-commerce sites.  (they already have a program for bloggers to get their own donation kettles)  You could post a widget on your e-commerce home page (just like the SA is posted at the retailer’s front door) and the site could ding for a whole month before Christmas. This would be a great application for micropayments!  They’e done it in St. Louis, but that’s only for ‘reaching people in times of emergency’.  Of course, that’s all well and good, but let’s GIVE! I envision widgets on the home pages of the top 400 e-commerce retailers and another 10,000 bloggers during the holiday season.

Twitter giving: I see that the Salvation Army in Canada is on Twitter, but where are their US counterparts? There are plenty of cases of Twitter and other social tools in the employ of charity – why not these guys?

 

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SA on Facebook

On the bright side, they already have a Facebook application. However, it’s a pain in the ass and it DOESN’T TAKE PAYPAL.  Come on guys, you’re not making it any easier to give…  Regardless, I just installed it!.

 

What is these guys were to take a lesson from the Obama social media playbook. Think of how much money we could raise for charity!

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  • http://www.usw.salvationarmy.org Kathy L

    Thanks for your post! We appreciate the great ideas.

    Please follow us on @TSARedKettle – that’s the Red Kettle Campaign feed for the US.

    Installing the fundraising meter widget to Facebook is a little cumbersome, but if you want some help, feel free to email me.

    In answer to the PayPal question, our fundraising model requires us to collect zip codes for all contributions. In The Salvation Army donations stay local and are not sent to our national headquarters for distribution. Hence, the need for zip codes to ensure that money donated in Topeka stays in Topeka.

    Feel free to contact me anytime about anything. We’d love to hear more of your ideas.

    Merry Christmas and God bless you!!