Two Twitter swearjars raise funds to fight famine
Howard Lake | 18 October 2011 | Blogs
The swearbox has come to Twitter. Indeed, it is such a good idea that there are at least two swearboxes on Twitter that are helping to raise funds for charity.
First we have New York-based Charity Swear Box. It doesn’t handle donations, just prompts you with an appropriate amount for the number of times you have cussed on Twitter: “At the end of each month we will send you message letting you know how much you have sworn and your suggested donation.” The default amount is $1 but you are able of course to donate more. So far it has raised $228.
Then there is the UK-based SwearJar which is raising funds for UNICEF’s East African famine appeal. Again, you sign in with your Twitter account, and SwearJar tracks how many times you swear in your tweets. It encourages you to donate £1 per swear word.
SwearJar is just one of the 50 projects of 50/50 which aim to raise £1 million to fight famine in Africa.
You could describe these humorous initiatives as an attempt to ‘gamify’ (I’ll eventually get used to that as a word) swearing to benefit fundraising.
Would you swear for charity? Would you charity be happy to benefit from this?
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.