Can you describe what your organization does in 140 characters? If so, here’s an interesting Twitter fundraising opportunity for you: The actor Hugh Jackman has offered to donate $100,000 to “one individual’s favorite non profit organization.”

Of course, there’s a caveat: You must do it within the space of one tweet (140 characters). So write down, edit, erase, and rewrite what it is your favorite charity does!

The winning charity will be announced live during Ryan Seacrest’s morning show on Friday, April 24. Good luck!

Last week a bunch of fundraisers and non-profit organizations participated in our Twitter contest.  They tweeted their fundraising pages, and we chose four winners at random.  Here they are:

• Tom (@greenjungle) is raising money for the Florida International Teaching Zoo. You can read about his Earth Day event and see some excellent Flickr photos that help tell his story on his fundraising page.
• Alicia (@got2trotlibrary) is running the 2009 Boston Marathon for Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary.  She also blogs about her marathon training and fundraising.
• Kait (@kaitswanson) is in a hurry for curry, training for the Nashville Country Music Half Marathon and raising money for the India Gospel League.
• CaringBridge (@caringbridge) is one of many non-profit organizations mobilizing their supporters to raise money online with Firstgiving.

Congratulations to all the winners!  We’ve made a $25 donation to each of your fundraising pages.

Did you know that Twitter is just one of many ways to get the word out about your fundraising efforts?  Want some more ideas?  Check out this week’s free webinar, “Nine ways to promote your fundraising page (and 99 places to do it).”

• When: Wednesday, March 25 3.30 PM EST
• Where: Online, register here

Thanks to all you folks out there on Twitter, we’ve just surpassed 1,000 followers.

And to celebrate, we’re sponsoring a Twitter contest this week.  You could win a donation to your fundraising page!

Here’s how:

1.  If you don’t already have one, sign up for a Twitter account and follow us.  Otherwise, skip to step #2.

2.  Tweet the link to your fundraising page.  In your Tweet, use the hashtag: #FG09.  (A hashtag is a little piece of text that we’ll use to track the Tweets–just copy and paste #FG09).  It will look like this:

3.  At the end of the week, we’ll chose 4 winners at random and make a donation of at least $25 to their fundraising pages.  After the first 100 Tweets, we’ll increase the donation by $0.25 for each additional Tweet, up to $125 per page.  One entry per Twitter-er, please.

So, the more Tweets, the bigger the donation to your page if you win!  Retweets count, too!

We’ll let you know by Monday if you’ve won.  Happy Tweeting!

Not too long ago, we hosted a free webinar on “Using Social Media to Expand your Fundraising Horizons.”  If you missed it, you can view the video here.  And there’s also a lively discussion, with Q&A from the webinar, happening on Facebook.

One topic that comes up a lot in the social media discussion is social media etiquette.  How do you introduce yourself and jump in to the discussion?  When you open-sourcetr your communication, should you moderate it?  How should you respond to negative comments?

The U.S. Air Force has been asking the same questions, and they’ve put together the following highly detailed flow-chart:

click chart for pdf version

 Your organization may not be as militaristic as the Air Force, but there’s some useful stuff here for everybody.  If you don’t already have one, devote some time to developing a plan for evaluating and responding to your donors and supporters.  And take a look at the chart’s “response considerations”–these are things every organization should be thinking about:

• Transparency Is key-be clear about where donor money is going.  Share stories that communicate the impact donor money has on advancing the mission of the organization or reaching a goal.
• Sourcing Speak with authority on your organization’s work and back up your claims with facts, links, and references.  Make it easy for people to find out what other people are saying about you.
• Timeliness Your donors are investing in your organization, so you should also be investing in them.  Make sure your communication is clear and reflects that you consider engaging with them a very worthwhile investment of time.  
• Tone Your communication, whether through snail mail, email, Facebook, or Twitter,  should always be consistent with your brand.  You can often communicate in a more casual tone through social media, but make sure you aren’t compromising on what your organization represents.  Consider meeting with others in your organization to discuss your target audiences.  

Are you a travelblogger?  Or just full of wanderlust?  Need some long underwear for your next travel adventure?  Pam and some of her fellow travelbloggers have put together a travel-inspired initiative to raise money online for Heifer International.  Each 10 dollar donation to their fundraising page enters you into the raffle for one of the fabulous prizes you’ll find here. 

Passports with Purpose is also asking people to help them raise money online for the Heifer Fund, here’s how:

Provide a raffle prize and publicize it on your blog. You’ll do the legwork to provide the prize, either by buying or making it yourself or getting a donation. The goal? Something that’s worth at least 100USD. 

Spread the word! We need link love and publicity to sell as many raffle tickets as possible. Hey, they’re only 10USD, the prizes are great (so far, and they’re still coming in!) and Heifer is a great cause. Write a post about Passports with Purpose. Post our widget (—->). Tell your network. Blog. Tweet. Sing.

Buy a raffle ticket. Did I mention they’re only 10USD? Buy two. Or five. Whatever works for you.  At the end of the month, you could find you’ve won a Fabulous Prize.

Here at Firstgiving, we really believe in the power of connecting people to raise money for the causes they believe in. And social media - blogs, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, social networking, etc. - is the latest way to connect people for a cause or any reason. So we’re running some donation promotions to help people learn more about how to use social media to promote online fundraising:

• First, we talked about tagging, and donated $500 to Debbie DeCerbo’s Fundraising Page
• Then, we dug Digg, and donated $100 to the Bly Family Runs Together for Team Hoyt and $500 to is Caitlyn Langley’s fundraising page for the Aplastic Anemia & MDS Foundation for having the most Diggs during the promotion.
• Right now, we’re in the midst of the Twitter promotion, and will award a $250 donation later today and another one next week to random people who follow @firstgiving and Twitter about Firstgiving fundraising pages.
• As you know, we have a Facebook application and recently relaunched our Facebook group, so you shouldn’t be too surprised if we do a Facebook promotion sometime in August. Just sayin…

Don’t be put off by social media, it’s not that hard. You’re already reading a blog, aren’t you? How about leaving a comment about your experiences and suggestions for effective Web 2.0 fundraising?

Back in June, we wrote about how people are using Twitter to promote their fundraising efforts. To help our fundraisers and NPOs get more comfortable using social media tools to raise money online, we’re offering the chance to win some donation dollars for your cause just by using Twitter. Here’s how:

1. Follow Firstgiving on Twitter. Go to www.twitter.com/firstgiving and click the “follow” button. If you’re not already signed up with Twitter, you’ll have to sign up to do this. It won’t hurt a bit.

2. Tweet at us (that means send us a message) with the address of your favorite fundraising page. It could be yours or anybody else’s. Make sure your message includes “@firstgiving” so we’ll see it and the full web address of the fundraising page.

That’s all you have to do. This Thursday and again next Thursday, we’ll select a random one of our Twitter followers, and if that follower has sent a Twitter message about a firstgiving fundraising page, we’ll make a $250 donation to that page.

For extra credit, you can tell all your friends to do this too. The more Twitter people twittering about your fundraising page, the better its chances of winning one of the $250 donations, and more importantly, the better your chances of spreading the word about your cause and getting even more donations from more people.

So don’t wait, get Twittering!

Fine print: Firstgiving fundraising pages only. No fundraising page can win more than one promotional donation from Firstgiving. If you Twitter about more than one Firstgiving fundraising page and win, we will make the donation to the page most recently mentioned.