Stephen Fry uses his Twitter presence to help fundraising appeal
Howard Lake | 24 February 2009 | Blogs
Comedian and author Stephen Fry has used his high-profile Twitter account to help boost donations for the Childhood Eye Cancer Trust, following a direct appeal via a Twitter message from the father of a sick child.
James Morley-Smith spotted that Fry had grown up in the street in which he now lived. That was enough of a link to encourage him to reach Fry via his Twitter account.
One hour later Morley-Fry thanked Fry via Twitter:
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“@stephenfry Thank U so much. Many sponsors already + a lot of hits, great 4 the awareness. 4 any 1 interested, an update http://bit.ly/PrLy”.
Fry’s presence on Twitter is significant. He has 227,098 followers or people that have opted in to receive his messages. When he passed on the appeal on behalf of Morley-Smith he had a mere 100,000 followers, so you get a sense both of how popular Fry is and of the growth of Twitter in the past month or so.
The response was so rapid and positive that Morley-Smith doubled his fundraising target on Justgiving from £2,000 to £4,000.
Morley-Smith of High Wycombe was also able to demonstrate via Twitter the impact of one of the links to a news item about his campaign that he had posted on Twitter.
A good example of luck, timing, targeting and the quirky power of social media.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.