Risa Hemtasilpa 24 Nov 2013
When talking about Charity, I am sure that majority of
people in Thailand will think about charity on TV, music festival, flood
donation and UNESCO or Greenpeace staffs walking around city streets asking for
donation. These activities are accounting on traditional way. However when
social media era came, some non-profit organizations moved to use social network
as an alternative way to reach donors, and build up relationship and engagement.
Facebook becomes a popular tool for not only profit
organization but also non-profit. Facebook isn’t just another channel to have donated
transaction but also a channel to share experiences and good will amongst people
who face the same situation.
Breast Cancer page is a good example for above statement.
Some create online fundraising campaign in order to enhance
their ability to spread the words and campaign awareness. Below example shows
free the children we day campaign which sponsors agree to donate every $1 for
each Like on Facebook.
Some use gamification pattern such as Timberland
Earthkeepers Virtual Forest App which
allow people to plant trees online and every 25 tree planted will turn to a
real
Read for
the blind case study:
There are a number of disabled people in Thailand,
especially blind. About 90 percent of them do not get basic education level. As
a consequence, many non-profit organizations give their hands to assist those
people by producing voice books. When I was studying in university, the process
of audio record for voice book is choose your interesting book, read and record
it in tape cassette. The problem is it took a long time to finish one book and
you cannot know whether your book had been read by others. Currently there is “Read
for the Blind” campaign, setting goal to produce 3,000 voice books in one year.
The campaign uses both mass media and social media such as TV, PR and Facebook to
build awareness.
Furthermore the campaign goes beyond traditional way (waiting
for volunteer walk-in by themselves) by creating mobile application in order to
provides more convenience to volunteers and increase success rate.
“Read For The Blind (RFP)” mobile application interesting
points are
1.
Flexibility & Mobility: you can record the
book anywhere and anytime, don’t need to go to particular place or buy tape
cassette and recorder anymore.
2.
Success rate increase: you do not need to finish
a book by your own, you have others to help you read other chapters. This made
the voice book finish quicker.
3.
Book list is shown and categorized: from this
function, you will know what type of book is still lack and which one already
been read.
“Read For The Blind” is a good example of giving campaign, trying to engage with current lifestyle of people to build up awareness and human action.
