Sponsored walks, sponsored swims, sponsored sitting in baths of baked beans. However, you choose to raise cash for charity, the chances are the internet has changed the way you do it.
My two young lads did a three mile walk recently for Sport Relief – with mum and dad in hot pursuit of course. And it seemed that the most effective way of getting the tenners rolling in was for us parents to whack up a status on our Facebook profiles appealing for cash via the Sport Relief website.Once there, our web buddies could divest themselves of their money in a good cause, and as a family we could see the pounds quickly stacking up. In fact, we saw a huge amount of money pour in having done little more than flex our mouse-clicking fingers – far more than I had imagined we’d ever be able to raise.
The boys thought this was pretty good of course, and they were genuinely glad to be helping out in this way. I’m sure that Sport Relief are also very pleased that the internet and social networking now make charitable giving so simple, as it takes no more than a few seconds to do your bit. And for my part, I was mightily impressed by the way that a simple social networking website could have such a powerful and previously unimagined consequence; after all, my childhood sponsored fundraising used to garner a handful of coins and a few notes if I was lucky from friends and neighbours up the road – and yet suddenly, my boys seemed to have generated a bulging bag of virtual cash without breaking sweat.
Mind you, Sport Relief are not the only ones who are at it. Just this week, I have had sponsorship appeals from four of my Facebook friends via their status updates, all inviting me to visit their profiles and pay up in just a few clicks. Though as I tapped in my credit card number yet again, I did begin to wonder whether something valuable hadn’t been lost from the transaction. It was easy to contribute, but it felt very impersonal too.
In the end, I didn’t let my lads get away with mere laptop-driven sponsorship. We also printed off the relevant forms, put on our shoes, and trailed up and down the street, explaining ourselves to the neighbours in unfashionable face-to-face mode. And when Sport Relief day came round, we did our three miles, crossed the finish line, and now we’ve got to go back out to collect our cash. It takes a bit of extra effort, but at least the boys get a sense that real people have contributed real money to their real achievement.
Which is a round about way of saying that in our drive to do so many things digitally – which, as an integrated communications agency, is par for our course – we must always remember the personal touch too.
Oh, and I’ll send the boys round for the money in the morning.
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