Surprise surprise the post won no… absolutely dominated the. Regarding whether the post actually furthered the online philanthropy conversation. I will note that a number of people who were drawn to Tactical Philanthropy to vote for their charity stuck around and commented on other posts.
Without further ado here is the victory speech from the author of the anonymous author of the blog.
When I submitted my entry to Sean’s “One Post Challenge” it wasn’t my intention to hijack the contest.
Fourteen months ago when I started my it was one of only a handful of fundraising blogs. Over the past year. I was initially excited to see so many more bloggers add to the online conversation.
Unfortunately the proliferation of websites has all too often produced an incestuous conversation. For this medium to reach its strongest potential and serve as a true benefit to the nonprofits we serve we must find a way to reach out beyond a limited number of fundraisers and foundation staffers to engage directly with individual donors.
As I wrote in my initial post. “blogging is not about talking AT PEOPLE it’s about making readers part of the story and giving them a reason to be engaged.”
Engaged was a bit of an understatement. Within the first 24 hours my post generated 57 comments which by itself would have been enough to win the contest.
Sean himself noted that the deluge of hopeful supporters leaving comments for their cause generated more traffic to the website than his mentions in both the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the New York Times. That single comment proved my point more than the huge number of posts that came in.
…oh but by the way… there were a heckuva a lot of comments. As I write this now it looks like there are 683 total comments. I will leave it to Sean to see if he thinks there was any cheating with multiple votes coming from the same IP address (Sean’s note: The voting seems to be valid. Some duplicate voting on both sides but nothing that would change the outcome)… but here is how I saw the horserace unfold:
A total of ten nonprofits tried to lobby for votes. The early leader after generating more than 60 votes within the first 36 hours. Thanks to one dedicated activist who was able to use his own site to reach out to more people built a commanding lead… so much of a lead they stopped thinking about the contest.
Then on November 26th someone who went by the name “Kjerstin” posted comment #75 - the first vote for. That was followed by more than 50 more votes for within the next couple hours… and the battle lines were drawn.
For the last week votes poured in from both charities. It wasn’t until late on December 3rd when must have thought the voting was over when moved in for their final push. The refugee assistance group poured on more than 250 votes in the final day and won the contest by a final vote (through 683 total votes) by a score of 423-231.
Truth be told. I had never heard of either group when this contest started but I have learned a lot about them in the past couple weeks… I hope others have. Both groups did an excellent outreach marketing job… and I would suggest that even though I will donate the $500 gift card (Sean’s note: the prize increased to $750 during the contest) I won to. I would like to suggest that Sean award his second $250 award to the second place group in this contest. .
My work here is done. This “fundraiser” is off to run a couple victory laps around the blogosphere. Congratulations to Sean and to (who apparently live about an hour away from each hour). I would encourage other bloggers to organize these challenges… it seems much more effective than those bland carnivals.
It was a good competition. What was most exciting for us at Pride At Work was reading the wonderful things that folks said about us. Like many organizations that do advocacy and education we don’t always know if our message is getting out there. Receiving such warm and supportive responses from hundreds of people many of whom we do not know was the best reward ever.
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Related article:
http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2007/12/and-the-winner-is%E2%80%A6
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