Non profit Console.ie: how comedian Dara O’Briain and social networking followers, fans and friends helped raise much needed funds

Posted by: Krishna De | Posted on: December 21st, 2009 | 10 Comments | Posted in: Social media and nonprofits, Social Media Ireland

If you work with a non profit organisation I hope you were inspired by the article about the ISPCC.

Here is another example of a non profit leveraging the benefit from social media – but in this case they don;t have any presence on the social web. You see you don’t have to publish content to the social we to always benefit from it.

I was recently speaking to a director of Console, John Murray – Console is an Irish charity who support people bereaved through suicide.

John was telling me about a recent fund raising event that was an evening of comedy at Vicar Street in Dublin with comedians Ed Byrne, Dara O’Briain, Des Bishop amongst others.

All of the comedians gifted their time to the charity and therefore the main goal of Console was to get as many tickets sold as possible. their goal was to sell 1100 tickets.

The gig was announced and promoted about 2 weeks ahead of the event initially on radio, but that didn’t drive sufficient sales – in fact they were worried that the event would need to be cancelled.

At that stage they increased their PR and outreach campaign including emails and radio interviews Newstalk, TodayFM and 2FM. At the same time they also approached the comedians participating in the event to share about the event to their followers on Twitter and Facebook – as an example you can see the Tweet that Dara O’Briain sent to his 70,000 followers on Twitter.

Within a few days the event was completely sold out and the team at Console could not believe the impact that sharing information about the event though the social web had. After 5 days of advertising spending a few thousand euro’s there were just 136 tickets sold – leveraging their online networks and outreach in traditional media channels such as radio meant that the event was a great success and raised much needed funds for Console in a matter of days.

I think there were three key things that led to the success of the campaign:

• using the power our real world network – after approaching one of the comedians they asked their network of friends to join the gig
• great content – the gig was with terrific comedians and a line up that was rare to see in Dublin
• using the power of the social network online – in association with radio interviews and email, having the comedians connect to their social networks allowed the news to reach people across multiple channels and at no cost.

Ultimately we are talking about compelling word of mouth marketing and in addition to the above, of course when people booked a ticket they also told their friends that they were going to this great gig.

If you are a non profit but not yet publishing content to the social web, how could you tap into your network to help you spread the word about your cause? Remember Console.ie don’t publish to the social web and to all accounts you could say their website needs a redesign – but that didn’t stop them from benefiting from social networking.