1. Organizer span of influence: I was at around 16k in followers at that time and rarely ever asked for anything from anyone. I had built a lot of social currency with my network and wanted to cash some of it in for a great cause. This is especially important if a nonprofit wants to be the one running the Tweetathon. You can’t just open an account on Twitter and start asking for donations. Twitter is a community, a conversation, not a pitch platform.

2. The cause: It doesn’t take much convincing to get people to feel for the cause of child hunger. If I were raising money for an obscure illness, the fund-raising may not have worked so well.

3. The raffle: I asked the Twitter world for donations first for the raffle. Out of 60 offers, I picked 11 of the best that would give the most bang for the buck. We had an Amazon Kindle, an iPod, a $500 gift card for Amazon.com, pearl earrings, and a designer handbag. One of the coolest things was that half of the items weren’t from the manufacturer. People actually went out and bought the items so we could raffle them off. I was able to get these awesome donations because of all the social currency I have on Twitter (see point #1). I had built a relationship on Twitter with almost everyone who donated an item for the raffle. This was not the goal of being on Twitter or getting to know them, it was just the result, but it is so incredible what happens when you ask for help from virtual friends—people step up to the plate.

4. The set donation suggestions: For every $12 donated, people got one entry into the raffle. If they donated $120, they got 10 raffle entries plus a web site review from me ($300 value). That gave people a focus, instead of asking them to “donate what you can.” Overall, about half the donations were in small amounts ($12 at a time) and the other half were the $120 donations and three $500 donations.

5. The short time frame: One of the issues of getting people to donate over a month (12for12k is a monthlong event for each charity) is that they can put it off. There is no sense of urgency. This was a 12-hour window, nothing more. To be entered in the raffle, people had to donate in that small time window.

6. The amount of tweets: I tweeted more on that day than any other day in my history at Twitter. A single tweet lasts a minute or two on people’s radars, tops. I tweeted almost every minute about it and every tweet had a shortened link back to the donation page.

7. The social-proof retweet: Every time someone tweeted about donating, I retweeted it with my addition (i.e., “awesome!” or “thanks!”) that kept the word going, helped the topic #12for12k trend on Twitter,⁶⁹ and it showed others that if they donated, they not only helped a cause, but got a chance to win something cool and also gained new followers.

8. 12for12k soldiers: Most people who had the 12for12k avatar ⁷⁰ stepped up and became a tweeting army. Momentum is everything in a charity, and drive like mine and the other amazing people who support 12for12k built incredible momentum. Danny Brown, the founder of 12for12k gave me all the support in the world, including the use of the blog page to host everything. It added credibility to what I was trying to do.

9. Focus: This is where I see the biggest mistake being made in online fund-raising. When the Tweetathon occurred, there was only one action people could take—donate. If you look at the page, the video I recorded, the text, everything focused on donating. Recently I’ve seen live streaming video, interviews, and musical acts that take away from the donation focus. Their heart is in the right place, but if people are busy listening to an interview subject talk about a topic outside of the fundraiser, they get distracted and eventually click away. If you still want to have virtual events during the fundraiser, at the very least have a banner across it always reminding people of why they’re there. Make the donate button (or ChipIn widget)⁷¹ at the very top, or alongside the video that is being used.