TweetsGiving 2009: Gratitude by the Numbers
I wish we could measure the gratitude that TweetsGiving cultivated in the hearts of participants – that, after all, is the most important metric of all. Perhaps this quote from team member John Haydon gives just a hint of how hearts were transformed:
I know that I’ve become a bigger person in how I connect with others. When I hang with my friends and family, I tell myself, ”this is the only moment we have.” I have much more gratitude equity than before I participated in Tweetsgiving.
But until we have a gratitudometer, we’ve collected these other metrics that give us some indication of just how much thanks – and giving – was created this TweetsGiving. I hope these numbers give some insight into just how far the spirit of gratitude spread.
Much of our strategy this year involved face-to-face gratitude parties across the globe. Since many amazing organizers were involved well before the official launch of TweetsGiving, the metrics for the whole month of November are relevant. The increase in engagement we saw throughout the month makes sense given the launch of our BuddyPress community and the buzz on twitter that began once organizers started to promote their events.
Here are some of the most relevant November campaign stats for TweetsGiving …
- IMPACT: One library and one classroom at Shepherd’s Junior School in Arusha Tanzania and countless people around the world inspired and transformed by gratitude expressed online and in person between friends, family, and loved ones.
- TANZANIA PARTICIPATION: 555 tweets from 11/24 – 11/26. On the final day of TweetsGiving, we saw both students and teachers tweeting from Tanzania well after midnight their time. It turned out that the teachers had staged a vigil of sorts, camping out overnight in their classrooms to share their gratitude. The children had been sent home, but it was clear that they’d wandered overnight to an internet cafe where one of the students, Gideon, lives in a back room. Even parents emailed us to learn how to tweet and get involved, though we haven’t been able to count all their tweets as we don’t know all their usernames.
- DONATIONS:
- Total Raised: $30,902 USD, up 180% from $11,021 in 2008
- Total Donors: More than 647, up over 80% from 360 in 2008. This is a significant underestimate, as many donations were submitted in aggregate, with 1 donor submitting on behalf of many cash donors at an event.
- Estimated Event total (ticket sales, raffles, and other event funds): $14,035 USD, up 100% from $0 in 2008 as we had no live events. This figure is likely an underestimate because some events use
d the donation option on the tweetsgiving.org homepage rather than our event ticketing system for ticket purchases at the door.
- Online Total (excluding ticket sales & live events): $16867 USD, up 53% from $11,021 in 2008
- Top Turkeys: 64 donors gave over $100 – up 25% from 51 in 2008
- New Donors: 587 donors , or 91% of total donors, had never before contributed to Epic Change.
- Return donors: 60 donors, or 9% of total donors, were repeat donors. Just over 16% of 2008 donors donated again in 2009.
- THANK YOU NOTES: 22,605, up 653% from an estimated 3,000 total tweets in 2008
- tweets: 21,226 sent by 7,638 unique Twitter users – with a total reach of 78,170,484 (a sum of all the followers of each of those 7,638 participating Twitter users)
- blog posts: 896, up 737% from 107 in 2008.
- photos (Flickr) – 336
- videos (YouTube) – 79
- songs (Blip.fm) – 68
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- SITE TRAFFIC (combined for tweetsgiving.org and epicchange.org)
- Site Visitors – 36,029, up 95% from 18,468 during the same period in 2008
- Page Views – 75,691, up 112% from 35,638 during the same period in 2008
- CAMPAIGN VIDEO VIEWS: 9,640 between Youtube and Vimeo, up 151% from 3,852 total views of our 2008 campaign video
- EVENTS:
- Total Events – 37
- Total Estimated Attendance – 1500
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It’s worth noting that our entire team and Honorary Turkeys, our Wild Turkeys group in the Epic Change community, and our event organizers played an important role in spreading the word as TweetsGiving got started. There were also several celebrities including Ashton Kutcher, Alyssa Milano, and Deepak Chopra, whose participation helped get the word out to an even wider audience.
So many thanks to everyone who helped make TweetsGiving 2009 a success – participants, everyone engaging in the Epic Change Online Community, event organizers across the globe, our Honorary Turkeys and core team and the many sponsors and partners who made TweetsGiving a success.
Thanks for bringing your grateful heart to the party! We hope you were as inspired as we were.
This TweetsGiving post was written as a collaboration between Avi Kaplan, Stacey Monk and Sanjay Patel.
Posted: December 9th, 2009 under The Foundry, tweetsgiving.
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