Community Foundation gives $1K to Nashville nonprofit in Twitter giveaway

The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee's CFMT $1K Twitter Nonprofit Giveaway logo

Nonprofits using social media

Love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet. Rockin' Robin is not the only one sending out tweets. The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee’s CFMT $1K Twitter Nonprofit Giveaway ended its 10-week campaign, which gave $100 a week to Middle Tennessee nonprofits submitted by the Twitter community. The giveaway ended with a tweet-a-thon and a grand finale prize of $1,000, with the nonprofit winner drawn from among the five organizations with the most votes from July 10-July 31. Congrats to the grand prize winner, The Nashville Shakespeare Festival.

Kallie Bienvenu, communications associate of the Community Foundation, said the organization selected a nonprofit at random from the week’s submissions and gave $100 to the winner until the grand finale drawing for $1,000 ever Friday. After a nonprofit won for the week, it profiled on GivingMatters.com, The Community Foundation's online resource that provides detailed information about Middle Tennessee nonprofits. Alive Hospice, Community Resource Center, Nashville Zoo, Nashville Shakespeare Festival, and Tennessee Women's Theater Project were five nonprofits placed into the pot for a random drawing for the $1,000 prize.

During the 10-week period, The Community Foundation invited people to follow their organization on Twitter and tweet about their favorite local nonprofits. They spread the word through Twitter, Facebook, GivingMatters.com, e-mail communication and help of local partners including CoolPeopleCare.org and radio station Lightning 100. Nancy VanReece, executive director of The Nashville Shakespeare Festival, said she heard about the contest through an e-mail blast.

VanReece noted that her organization decided early on that they would participate the first week and the seventh week since the contest was long. They did not want their followers to become burned out on their requests to participate. “Because the grand prize opportunity was not announced until that eighth week we were able to put all our efforts on that opportunity without what I would call tweet burn,” VanReece said. “We used HootSuite to schedule our requests at different times of day and used a pattern of every other day toward the end. With some research, I was able to tell when the tweets were trending and sent requests out at those times. In the last 24 hours, we sent direct messages to any follower that had sent a direct message to us in the last year and asked them to RT to help us win. We also included instructions on our Facebook Page, our Facebook Cause and our E-Newsletter – all in the last 48 hours of the contest. I really think that that hat-trick kept us in the top five for the drawing.”

Once the contest was over, Bienvenu said the staff of CFMT was excited and amazed by the response and participation rate from people in the Nashville community who embraced the opportunity to support their favorite nonprofit. “I was surprised by the opportunities on Twitter to reach people directly and make new friends for our organization through conversations, retweeting, and direct messages,” Bienvenu confessed.

She continued to share her insight from the Twitter giveaway as she noted that there were more Nashville nonprofits than she originally thought using Twitter and other social media platforms, and she said it was helpful to see how other organizations were using these tools. “A great thing about Twitter is the ongoing conversation and sharing of ideas. One creative use of Twitter we discovered is the Nashville Zoo’s tweeting meerkat, Gumu, who tweets about the organization and adds personality to their messages,” she exclaimed. (Click here to see how the Zoo feels about social media.) VanReece compared Twitter to instant inside information about a nonprofit or business’ mission. “It’s permission marketing at it’s finest,” VanReece commented.

The Nashville Shakespeare Festival had been early adopters to the social media movement striving promote its organization. VanReece said her organization developed a strategy not to make Twitter, Facebook, their Blogs and YouTube fundraising tools but rather further ways to enhance their mission and provide opportunities for value enhancement to people.

The Community Foundation had a phenomenal turn out from its contest. Bienvenu exclaimed that CFMT ended up with 30 to 90 nonprofits submitted each week from individuals, businesses and the nonprofit organizations. She noted that there were more than 1,000 tweets from hundreds of enthusiastic participants over the 10-week period, and CFMT gained about 1,000 Twitter followers during the giveaway.

This contest proved to be a win, win situation for everyone. VanReece said that The Nashville Shakespeare Festival told their followers that they would be giving away 10 free T-shirts to lucky winners with the first $100 bucks on the Friday and Saturday nights at Shakespeare in the Park this year, which begins August 13th and ends September 13th. The remaining balance will go into the nonprofit’s general pool to help them with their Save Our Shakespeare campaign to close out their fiscal year. Keep on rockin' robin, tweet tweet tweet.

Follow The Nashville Shakespeare Festival on Twitter.