Hey, Put Your Twitter Where Your Mouth Is

Attention pontificators of the interblogs! You know who you are. You take your 140 characters of Twitter genius and eviscerate those you disagree with while causing the masses to suddenly change their shallow opinions due to your amazing insights and prose. (Or something like that.)

And I count myself among you.

But no more! Today, it’s time to rise up and actually make a difference for charities and causes across our digital plain.

Today is Social Media Giving Day.

The middle of July is not usually when we think about giving to charities. If you’re like me, it’s usually as the year end approaches when taxes start to come to mind, or when your wife tells you to. (Thank God most of you aren’t like me, right? Heh.)

But now, as we recover from our national birthday, we have an opportunity to support the incredible work done by groups to help those in need. Today, July 15, marks the first Social Media Giving Day in the U.S. Mayors and Governors across America have declared it to be so, and consumers and organizations are being asked to leverage social media as a means to give to their favorite charity or cause.

I talked to Chris Sommers, cofounder of Givver.com, a platform that allows Twitter users to Tweet donations to charities about this movement, of sorts. He hopes summertime becomes a season of giving to offset the normally slow fundraising months many charities have in the Dog Days.

Texting donations for charitable purposes is commonplace but oftentimes up to 40 percent of text donations go to the wireless carrier, not the charity.

Social media giving tools include Sommers’ Givver.com, as well as Fundly.com, Snowball.com, and various custom tools that have been developed by charitable organizations themselves, such as SocialFund.org and GoFundMe.com.

To use Givver, for example, a consumer or organization signs up at Givver.com using a secure form. From that point, they can simply Tweet #Give along with a dollar amount at a specific charity, for example: #Give $10 @FeedingAmerica. The donation is immediate, surprisingly easy, and (at least for now) Givver doesn’t charge you or the charity a fee.

Mayoral and Gubernatorial declarations establishing July 15 as Social Media Giving Day have been made by Governor Jay Nixon (Missouri), Mayor John Sorey (Naples, Fla.), Mayor Buddy Dyer (Orlando), Mayor Nancy McFarlane (Raleigh, N.C.), Mayor Mark Mallory (Cincinnati), Mayor Tom Barrett (Milwaukee), Mayor Jacques Roy (Alexandria, La.), Mayor Francis Slay (St. Louis), and the entire City Council in Pittsburgh, Pa. (Go Buccos!)

Sommers says giving through social channesl may just give some meaning to social media us collective blovators (my word not his) have yet to surface. He’s right.

So in my best political and/or plea for action voice, I strongly urge you to take a few minutes and make a donation to your favorite cause or charity today. And then tell the world. Because there’s a chance we might actually be able to do some good with social media.

Besides that aimed at our own egos. Heh.