03 Feb 2011 2 Comments

Tweeting Towards A Cure

In January, Laura Speir began a project to tweet 50,000 tweets during 2011 to raise awareness and money towards a cure for ALS (also known at Lou Gehrig’s disease). We noticed her tweets as @Tweet50KforALS and asked Laura if she would answer a few questions about why she is tweeting, and what she has learned along the way about fundraising, and Twitter.

This is part of a series where we spotlight individuals who are raising money through their own creative fundraising events. If you know of anyone who has created an unique fundraiser on FirstGiving, leave a comment and the link to a FirstGiving page so that we can follow up!

Why are you raising money for ALS?

I am raising money in honor of my friend Haley Stevens. She was diagnosed with ALS when she was 16 years old and passed away when she was 17.

Why did you decide to tweet 50,000 by the end of 2011?

I decided to tweet 50,000 by the end of 2011 when I was following @tweet10K who was tweeting 10,000 in 100 days for Cancer Research UK. He sparked the idea of someone doing a similar challenge, but with 50,000 tweets for an entire year. I was a bit reluctant at first, but I decided that I would carry the baton for 2011.

What kind of information do you tweet and what impact will tweeting have?

I hope that during the course of the year, I will be able to inform people about ALS and make relationships with people around the world. I try to make sure that I tweet things relevant to ALS, along with tweets that I would normally post, and I often link to the ALS association’s webpage. People will generally retweet it so that their followers can see it as well. It’s a bit difficult at first trying to find the balance between informational tweets and tweets for fun.

Do you have any sense of how many people, or what percentage of people are donating as a result of your tweeting?

I’ve only had the fundraising page set up for a month so far. I think that most of the people who have donated did so because of my tweeting. Everyone who has donated so far is connected with me on twitter.

How has your Twitter follower grown since you’ve begun the @Tweet50KforALS account? Were you a big user of Twitter before this?

I’ve gotten a lot of new followers really quickly since I started tweeting, especially in the last week or so. I was a big user before I started this.

Have you ever raised money before? If so, for what?

I have raised money for ALS in the past through Walk to Defeat ALS. I also raised money for the Special Olympics when I was younger. I hope to begin raising money for them again this year.

Do you have any fundraising advice you’d like to share?

There are so many ways to fund raise. Not every method is for everyone. Try using your own talents to raise money.

What has been the impact of this experience on your life?

Even though I haven’t been doing this for very long, it really shows you that people care. It’s an amazing feeling seeing people donate money to help a cause.

Laura Speir is raising money for ALS in 2011. If you’d like to donate to her fundraiser, you can do so here.

by admin in Spotlights Tags: , ,