Ten days ago, I participated in a wonderful experience involving Tyson Foods and the Greater Boston Food Bank that to my knowledge has not been publicized in the local press. (Other than the New England Cable News network, thanks to digital media director Ted McEnroe.)
With the holiday season upon us, it’s not too late.
There are over 600 hunger-relief agencies in nine counties and 190 cities and towns of eastern Massachusetts, serving food to 20,000 children, families, and seniors. Over the past year, 90 percent of the agencies saw food assistance requests increase between 10 to 40 percent.
Tyson, the Arkansas-based meat processor, wanted to help. After conversations with nonprofit consultant Beth Kanter and SHIFT Communications‘ Bob Collins, organizer of the monthly meetings of Boston’s Social Media Breakfast, they decided to repeat a successful food challenge program held in Texas and California.
Watch this video by Ed Nicholson, Tyson’s director of community and public relations, who explained the challenge:
Tyson posted this blog post at hungerrelief.tyson.com on December 10, 2008 at 7:24 a.m., nearly a half hour after the 11th SMB Boston event began. (Times are Central time zone, an hour before Eastern time zone.)
The challenge was to use social media to donate food. Beth and Bob knew that the majority, if not all, of the nearly 100 people at the Ryles Jazz Club, had BlackBerry, iPhone, and other mobile devices; and that many of us were live-tweeting the event.
We sent Twitter messages to our followers, asking them to post a comment on the Tyson blog. One blog comment equaled 100 pounds of food Tyson would donate to the Food Bank. We also asked our followers to re-tweet our message, thereby virally marketing the challenge. Wanna read those tweets?
Within hours, there were over 500 comments. Tyson filled two 18-wheeler trucks and donated 70,000 pounds to the Greater Boston Food Bank.
Then… the magic:
A new challenge awaits…
Laura Fitton, who tweets as @Pistachio and was at the SMB breakfast, is asking everyone to donate $2 to raise $25,000 for an African charity. Surely you can afford to donate the cost of a small cup of coffee.
What are you waiting for? Click here.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
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Ari,
Thanks for writing about the event! When Bob invited me to speak at the event, I said to him – let’s do more than talk! I connected to Ed at Tyson, thinking maybe we could do what they did in Austin and SF. I was thrilled that Tyson was able to do this in Boston and that we as a social media community jumped into the challenge!
It’s going to be tough year all around for all nonprofits — as this paper indicates
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/12/collaborative-paper-what-to-do-in-the-nonprofit-sector-to-offset-the-economic-crash-.html
Beth Kanter´s last blog post..What’s the opportunity cost when a nonprofit blocks employees from using social network sites during work hours?