I did my final project on how social media has changed fundraising in our time. I begin researching major fundraising sites such as gofundme.com, kickstarter.com, Facebook, YouTube and seeing what was trending there. I also found articles on how charities use social media. That is where I found the UK charity Refuge’s video in an article by theguardian.com. I researched the video and charity some more and found that the video of the makeup tutorial has over 2.6 million views on the video. It was posted in 2012 but even four years later it still has a strong ring to it.
I researched the ice bucket challenge. When it first started back in 2014 I thought it was a nice trend and I participated in it. Little did my teenage self realize that the ice bucket challenge raised over $115 million dollars in that one year. It was crazy when I first saw that number. The ice bucket challenge was all over social media too. No need to buy commercials when you have celebrities like Chris Pratt, Demi Lovato and even the entire New England Patriot’s team did this challenge.
When I was doing this project I felt that this seemed too good to be true. That social media was this ultimate tool for charities but it isn’t. I found a Tedtalk video on how charities still face problems of promoting events. Most people won’t donate to a charity if they know their money won’t be used to help the needy. This creates a dilemma of getting commercial spots donated to charities. With social media this would help charities get ad spaces on sites by posting about their events for free.
This topic wasn’t the easiest to research but definitely worthwhile to find all of the information for it. Through research, I have found how social media has changed the ways of fundraising for this century.