Please ensure that @300miles doesn't come up short:

Garry and Lee with friends, family and staff at Clic Sargent.

For the past few weeks, I've been working with some pals from Edinburgh Coffee Morning to help the @300miles boys with fund-raising for their epic challenge.

But to be honest donations haven't gone as well as we'd hoped. (So far? Ed ;-)

At the time of writing this, (and with just a few hours to go of Lee and Garry's extraordinary feat of hammering through 300 gruelling miles in under 60 hours), we are still way short of our 25k total with just £7,655.00 in donations.

I think this might to a couple reasons:

1. I am a useless fundraiser. (Don't give up the day job then Mike.)

2. I/We didn't start drumming up support and pledges of money early enough, allow enough time to generate buzz for the event, and indeed I was probably too hopeful/naive that Twitter would deliver, in terms of encouraging donations. (Mike Coulter criticising twitter. Now there's a first. The words Poor, Worker, Criticises and Tool come to mind, but I'd prefer not to pursue that particular saying in too much detail.

3. I think we didn't perhaps manage the information well enough about how how your donation would help the kids and the families supported by Clic Sargent. We probably didn't express powerfully enough how your tenner, (or in this case all those 'missing' tenners could alleviate a lot of suffering, and help fund a lot of help & hope.)

In an attempt to try and figure out the slow donations flow, I looked at the list of who's actually contributed on the JustGiving site, and compared this with 400+ followers on Twitter, (and incidentally the 200+ on FaceBook) to see what 'percentages of generosity' we'd achieved.

I'm sorry to report the answer is that less than 10% of followers have donated. 

Ten. Per. Cent. (That's out of a possible hundred percent incidentally if Maths isn't your thing. Or if donating isn't your thing come to that. 'Don't get snarky Mike. Ed.')

Which means, to look at it another way, (hang on while I get a calculator for this one...)

Over 90% of the @300miles Twitter followers have felt unmoved/uncompelled to donate. (So far. Ed ;-).

My further thoughts to explain why such a small percentage of (very welcome follows and tweets of support), has translated into money finding it's way into the donations tin are as follows:

Maybe people are waiting until the end of the challenge? (5.30 pm today incidentally.)

Maybe waiting for pay day?

Maybe people (and I count myself very much in this category, looking back at my own procrastinatory history of giving) sometimes need a nudge or three before they actually get round to donating.

Maybe people care enough to follow @300miles on Twitter and be seen to support by way of 140 character tweets, but don't actually care enough to put a real-live tenner or so in the bucket?

Maybe people need Bob Geldof to hijack a TV studio and scream at the camera as he did at LiveAid "Just give us the flippin' money!" (At least I *think* he said 'Flippin'" might got the wrong word there.)

Maybe charity giving fatigue is at work.

Maybe I've been too pushy trying to get money in the tin. (Me 'pushy" schurely, schome, mishtake? Ed.)

In fairness, I did fairly forcefully DM privately a fair few people on Twitter asking for a tenner and for them to DM the appeal to 10 friends. But not only did this 'brilliant' wheeze fall, (in the main, and bar a few notable exceptions) on deaf ears and empty pockets , it also earned me a polite, but pointed clip round the digital ear from one supporter who suggested I was 'spamming' followers by soliciting donations by DM.

(Oh well, you don't ask, you don't get. Worth a punt says I.)

Anyway if you have given, or just simply just followed online, ReTweeted and shouted out: Sincere thanks for doing what you can/could.

But I would like to ask one final favour: If you do follow @300miles on Twitter, and happen to be one of the 90% of folk who haven't been motivated to donate, (yet. There's still time folks. Ed ;-), it would help us enormously if we could figure out exactly why, and so become more effective fund-raisers next time.

Do please let us know.

Comment here, on what  we got wrong and why you think so many followers are/were unwilling to put a tenner or so in the bucket. (If you don't want to comment publicly and want to keep your reasons off the radar here, please e or DM  me.)

I don't imply, nor intend any criticism, rather I'm simply curious, why such a worthy cause has had, (so far, Ed. ;-) such a disappointing response.

Oh and actually, I lied about asking just one last favour, there is one more thing you can do, if you haven't already:

Please donate here now:

Comments

[Christian Louboutin Pumps]

enjoy your life with with friends, family and staff at Clic Sargent.

[Craig McGill]

Mike, don't feel bad on this one. Fundraising on Twitter is a lot harder than many people suggest - I spent a 72 hour non-stop stint at Burns weekend trying a fundraiser and it was fun/insightful (I've got a document I need to upload to my site this week about it) but it's not as easy as it looks. No doubt we can chat about this at some point when we meet up (and I've posted some thoughts on the Blonde site too) but basically: don't beat yourself up on this one.

[Mike]

Phil thanks for adding to and furthering the debate.

In the spirit of: "let's him without sin, cast the first tweet." I see I haven't actually ReTweeted Blondes RT offer of this morn!

Will rectify now.

Thanks again for help and input.

M

[Phil Adams]

Mike

Don't beat yourself up on this.

I too was a late donor, but was always going to.

But, stepping back for a minute and putting to one side the emotive side of the cause, there are clearly some interesting learnings arising from this.

It's interesting that you of all people feel moved to question the power of Twitter.

But I have a feeling that you're right to do so.

How come?

1) For anyone who hasn't met the @300miles guys (or someone that knows them) it probably looks like just another deserving charitable cause. Indeed, as Julie points out, it may not even be obvious that it is a charitable cause. A potential downside of the 140 character format - it's inability to hold the full richness of the message in a single Tweet.

2) There are barriers to making a donation, despite the best efforts of user-friendly technology such as Just Giving. And maybe Twitter is ill-equipped to overcome these barriers. (Although why as many as 90% of the people who've made the effort to follow @300miles haven't actually donated does baffle me.)

We (Blonde) tried to remove these barriers by offering 50p per retweet of a simple message of support. Dead easy. "You retweet. WE pay". And, despite an encouraging initial uptake, the response to this mechanism has been disappointing. At the time of posting this comment, less than 80 retweets from a potential reach of 40,000 people.

What I think is happening is that the "inner circle" of people who know me, Blonde, @300miles waded in with plenty of retweets pretty quickly. But once you move further away from that inner circle in "concentric rings" of retweeting, people get more cautious. "Is this SPAM or a scam?", "What is @300miles?". Up go new barriers that can't be pre-empted in a single 140 character tweet (in fact somewhat shorter than 140 characters to allow for retweeting). Overcoming those barriers requires people to check out 300 miles and/or Blonde before retweeting, which requires effort, which means that it doesn't happen.

[Mike]

Julie, thanks for your full, considered and insightful response. And for donating of course, much appreciated. Catch up soon, M.

[Julie Gibbons]

Hey Mike - I only donated to @300miles this morning. What took me so long? I'd seen a few posts about it, but to be honest there was nothing that caught my eye at a time when I was interested enough to follow up, so I didn't really know what it was all about. I'd a vague idea that The Proclaimers were doing a charity gig in the Outer Hebrides... (yeah - I admit it, I don't always pay attention).

I only reacted when I saw @Phil_Adams' post which promised a donation from @blondehaslearnt if everyone retweeted. Now I wanted to retweet, but I don't ever retweet without reading what I'm re-tweeting about (good socmedia practice, no?). So, off I went to take 5 mins to find out what it was all about, and was quite delighted to make a donation, before re-tweeting.

I guess it could come down to the good old psychology of making a sale/forcing a reaction - and that's going to be a different story for different folks...

@joannayoung wrote about social media making charity giving easier a few months ago - I agreed with her then, and I still do.

Sure, social media has the added benefit of a trusted network behind it, and the tools make it dead easy to action, but you've got to press the buy button for all of your followers - and at the end of the day, they'll all react to a different type of stimulus.

And before I go - the target is way short, but I bet every penny counts - and you should all feel thrilled with any coverage that raises one pound more. Making the donation really is the easy part, no?