Social Media has changed the way in which we interact with charities, instead of huge expensive publicity events to raise awareness, viral trends like the #icebucketchallenge and #nomakeupselfie have gained international recognition and raised millions in their efforts. We now nominate and encourage people to share and give, with social media being the catalyst.
With the acknowledgement that social media is an intensely powerful tool for charities The Good Agency has teamed up with #pay; a service that links your twitter and paypal accounts, allowing you to donate with a tweet using a hashtag #.
A charity can sign up with #pay free of charge and offer a fixed or variable amount for the benefactor to pay, once this is done the giver only needs to tweet the charity and tagline in order to give an amount such as @redcross #syria £2. Subsequently they would receive back an automated tweet, in which the giver needs to retweet to confirm their payment.
There are hopes that this new form of payment will turn what can be huge amounts of awareness into actual donations charities desperately need. It is known that people are all too keen to share and talk about the issue, but may be a bit reluctant to actually donate. Regardless after a little setting up it will make giving money to charities a lot easier, but also transparent.
So will you start to donate with a tweet?