Facebook fans help travel agency raise £10,000 for Children in Need
Howard Lake | 19 November 2010 | News
Online travel agency TravelRepublic.co.uk is planning to donate £25,000 to BBC Children in Need if it can persuade 100,000 people to ‘like’ its page on Facebook before midnight on Friday.
The Kingston-upon-Thames travel company already has more than 41,000 fans, so will donate at least £10,000 to the appeal. It launched its Facebook presence less than a month ago.
Managing director Paul Furner said: “We are delighted that people are getting behind this cause, and we’re really seeing the campaign gather momentum. It is being posted all over Facebook and the clicks are coming through thick and fast now.”
Converting ‘likes’ on Facebook into donations from a corporate or individual supporter is one of the most popular methods of fundraising using Facebook at the moment. Its roots lie in the click-to-give-for-free websites which came to prominence a decade or so ago with the Hunger Site and its variations covering breast cancer and demining.
The Facebook ‘like’ fundraising approach has been used by a wide variety of charities recently including Amnesty International USA which was receiving $1 per ‘like’. WeDay is receiving the same sum, and has raised over $446,000 in just over a month, and aims to raise $1 million in this way. Like the TravelRepublic campaign, these campaigns usually run for a set period with a clear deadline, intended to spur action.
The campaigns evidently have a mutual benefit of funds raised for the charity and audience for the corporate donor. As yet though it is not clear what the true value of a Facebook ‘like’ is. Who is doing better out of the partnership: the charity or the corporate?
www.facebook.com/travelrepublic
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.