# Digital Death campaign raises $950,000 in a few days

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2010/12/17/digital-death-campaign-raises-950000-few-days/
- Published: 2010-12-17T12:46:33+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

The Digital Death campaign earlier this month for the Keep a Child Alive Foundation
raised $950,000 in under a week using a combination of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The campaign was based on the idea of celebrities forsaking their social media presences
until their fans contributed $1 million. In that sense it was an online version 
of the ‘non-event’ in which a charity announces a fictional event and donors are
encouraged to make a donation instead of attending.

Celebrities who took part included Keys, Elijah Wood and Serena Williams. [Hitwise Experian](http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2010/12/digital_death_provides_boon_of.html)
reports that the campaign launch on 1 December had an immediate impact: “The website
saw traffic increase by 13-fold that day and was the sixth most popular charity 
website visited online by UK Internet users”.

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Hitwise adds that social media generated 60% of all traffic coming to the Digital
Death website. In addition, 38% of the sites visited after Digital Death were social
media sites, topped by YouTube (15.79%) and YouTube’s mobile site (10.06%).

The campaign raised $450,000 in just six days. The charity then received a further
$500,000 from a single donation from pharmaceutical billionaire Stewart Rahr. Proof
that social media can be used by charities to great effect.

http://buylife.org

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