Samsung pledged to contribute up to $100,000 through this social action challenge, providing a donation of $5 to the Dan Marino Foundation each time someone pledged their support of autism awareness by sharing an infographic with their Facebook friends or sending a tweet with the hashtag, #teamautism. And in just 72 hours, they reached their goal of $100,000 through TeamUpForAutism.com.

Interview: Online Campaigning Success Story

That’s a whole lot of donations in just 3 days! So, I connected with Sloane Berrent, Founder of The Causemopolitan to learn more about this success story – she’s working with JESS3 on this entire campaign. They created the infographic and pulled her in for the overall digital strategy.

Going into the campaign, did you really expect to hit your goal in just 3 days? What were the goals/expectations you had set for the campaign internally?

It was truly a surprise to reach the goal in 3 days. There was a campaign they did in December with a very similar look and feel. That campaign had an infographic and charity partner and a set amount of money Samsung were donating based on social actions taken online. That campaign reached the goal, but it took a month to do it. Which is still amazing to take your online community and engage them in the process. A big success. That said, this time around, Samsung, The Dan Marino Foundation and JESS3 were looking for more bite. The goal was $100k and we were given a month, but were definitely hoping for two weeks. It was absolutely amazing to reach our goal so quickly and it’s because of all of the hard work we did beforehand that it happened. That and a bit of groundswell.

What kind of post-campaign planning did you do before launching; what do you plan to do?

We really focused on building our team of advocates before we launched the campaign. I know a lot of campaigns where people feel that you launch and put it out there and then you bring people in and have them share in the experience. But for this campaign we really baked them in early. We contacted autism advocates and let them know this campaign was coming. We didn’t have all the pieces finished, but we drafted outreach and pulled together lists. It’s really important to be prepared when you hit the gate. Sometimes campaigns change when they’re live and that hard work you put in gets discounted and sometimes it makes all the difference. It’s not a gamble though. You have to do the work, identify your target groups and know who your advocates are. You have to pay attention to what happens in that first 24 hours and be willing to change your strategy to fit what the market is telling you because you never really know what’s going to happen with a campaign until it’s live.

How do you see the social media engagement and outreach involved in this campaign impacting the post-campaign social media use by the Foundation?

We really worked on educating Dan Marino and The Dan Marino Foundation on how to effectively use social media. They both were aware of what was out there, but we talked a lot about engagement and creating conversation. Both have seen a rise in their numbers of followers and fans and sometimes that quantity helps to get to quality. I don’t think nonprofits should have to fight tooth and nail for every follower. Spikes like this campaign are good for nonprofits and then they can back into these tools and find a way that works for their bandwidth on a day-to-day basis.

To others looking at your success as an inspiration for their own campaigns and fundraising plans, what tips or recommendations would you share?

Thank people one time too many. I’m serious! Say thank you and then say thank you again. That’s a bit of secret sauce but you can never say thank you enough to people who do things for you because they want to and not because they’re paid to or work for you. That’s a powerful change agent. It’s like the idea of second gifts. Someone makes a gift, they get a thank you and then they make a second gift because they were impressed with the thank you. It’s a cycle. When people feel recognized and valued, truly valued, they are willing to go to bat for you. Social media is complicated and wily at times, sometimes you’re the hare and sometimes you’re the tortoise. But the key is bringing your supporters along with you to your next campaign. Then success will follow you because people love being a part of not only your cause but the feeling they get from helping your cause.

Has your organization looked to partner with another organization or a company (the way the Dan Marino Foundation partnered with Samsung – with dedicated matching funds) for a campaign? Have you tried a Twitter campaign with donations per tweet? What lessons would you share – what questions would you like to ask Sloane?

And now they are up to something again: MMT is looking for a million dollar idea to support!

More information is in the press release below – you can contact Marie with additional questions.

The foundation will collect the ideas from Oregonians on a forum on the web at ideas4oregon.org to commemorate MMT reaching $500 million in money distributed to tax exempt organizations, primarily in Oregon.

“Half a billion dollars in 28 years from the personal estate of one of Oregon’s leading entrepreneurs leaves a powerful legacy,” said MMT Board Chair Orcilia Forbes. “Our funds have helped make Oregonians healthier and better educated, provided greater access to social services and the arts and culture, strengthened the nonprofit sector and improved the environment for all who live and visit here.”

Meyer Memorial Trust is the largest private foundation in Oregon, established from Fred G. Meyer’s personal estate. It began operating in 1982 and anticipated awarding $5-$6 million a year. In fact, over the past five years, MMT distributed an average $28 million per year in grants and program-related investment loans, surpassing $500 million with its most recent awards. At the same time, its assets have grown from $120 million to about $600 million, after giving away $500 million.

“To mark this occasion, we prefer to look ahead, not back,” MMT CEO Doug Stamm said. “We’d like all Oregonians to join us in kicking off the next $500 million. We think that’s where Fred Meyer would want us to look.”

Stamm noted that the million dollar idea challenge supplements MMT’s existing grant programs and initiatives, rather than supplanting any ongoing funding.

This is the first time the foundation has asked for broad and direct public input in its grants process. “We’ve set a goal to make MMT a national model of a regional foundation,” Stamm said. “Foundations are beginning to open themselves up as never before, and we want to be a leader in that movement.”

Forbes said the onslaught of bad news that Oregonians have heard in recent months contributed to MMT’s public approach.

In November 2009, Oregon was identified as one of the 10 states in most fiscal peril by the Pew Center on the States. Unemployment remains among the highest levels in the nation, with many more underemployed and in dire financial straits. Recent revenue forecasts were $577 million below what was projected just a few months ago. The global reach of the recession hurts exporting states like Oregon more than other states. Sharp declines in construction severely affected Oregon’s wood products industry and the state experienced high tech manufacturing job losses in the recession.

In response to the economic crisis, during 2009 MMT expanded its grantmaking strategies to help nonprofit organizations survive the economic downturn by helping with core and general operating expenses. In addition, MMT made significant grants for emergency food, utilities, rent and foreclosure assistance, and increasing access to the Earned Income Tax Credit. Through these awards, along with its ongoing grants programs, the amount MMT distributed remained constant, despite a significant decline in the foundation’s own assets.

“While we know foundation resources alone are by no means sufficient to solve our region’s significant challenges, we believe that opportunities exist for MMT to jumpstart actions that will lead us to a brighter future,” Forbes said. “We are looking for ways to provide meaningful leverage that help create conditions that will lead Oregon to its next best place.”

“Oregon used to be a hotbed of energetic innovation,” Stamm said, “but we are at risk of begin caught up in contagious pessimism. Do we really want to keep pointing to the bottle bill as our last great shining moment?”

“We hope this idea forum will help change the conversation in the state from how bad things are to what can we do to make them better,” Forbes said. “Meyer Memorial Trust can’t solve Oregon’s problems, but we’re willing to step up and try to jumpstart us in a better direction.”

The forum asks visitors to identify what they think is the most pressing issue facing Oregon and to share their best ideas to address it.

Stamm hopes the web forum will attract ideas from all Oregonians, not just nonprofits.

“Oregon’s issues go far beyond what nonprofits do,” he said. “We need to move beyond our customary categorical thinking and invite everybody – business, government, communities, organizations, individuals – to work together to address the issues we face before it’s too late.”

“This is not a time for faint-hearted suggestions, it’s a time to think big,” Stamm said. “We want bold and innovative, entrepreneurial ideas… the kind Fred Meyer might have had.”

All content of the forum will be public, with comments and feedback on ideas welcomed, Forbes said. “We want Oregonians to get engaged with us.”

While idea challenges and social media contests are increasingly used by corporations, governments and in philanthropy, ideas4Oregon.org has a far larger potential fiscal reward than most.

Ideas can be submitted and commented on until July 13, 2010. After all ideas are in, MMT will use them to craft a Request for Proposals, inviting applications to make a case for funding from the $1 million.

“If we get more than one outstanding idea, we’ll consider making multiple awards,” Stamm said. “Because we’ve never tried this public format before, we can’t predict just how it will go, and need to be flexible enough to make the most of this opportunity.”

Meyer Memorial Trust is a private independent foundation resulting from Fred G. Meyer’s personal philanthropy and is not affiliated with Fred Meyer Inc., the retail enterprise.

Cloudforce is all about integrating the mentions of your brand name on social networks into your regular system of dealing with your customers – in this case, obviously, Salesforce.com. This has a number of interesting implications:

Showing everyone the relevance of social media – the push for organisations to have a presence on the different platforms has just been increased at least tenfold.

Of course it is selling Salesforce as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform – it has just come back into relevance, by cleverly marketing a typically boring sales event as something really cutting edge to all the brilliant young clever minds out there.

It is forgetting that being able to manage incoming requests from the cloud still doesn’t mean you have a proactive presence on these platforms. So by taking care of the “cloud”, organisations are wrongly given the impression that they have achieved the full scale of interactivity with the Social Networking world.

I was not at the Summit but know that many of you Londoners reading this blog were.  What did you think – did you feel the same as Anke?  You can read her full post and the discussion in the comments or leave your thoughts here in the comments below.  Interested to hear what you have to say!