Ever dream of picking up the phone and hearing Bryan Cranston on the other end? The University of California and Creative Agency Noise, created Promise for Education to make outlandish wishes like this a reality and help raise money for much needed college scholarships. Promise for Education is a charity website dedicated to raising scholarship money by crowdsourcing people's vows to do something daring – like skydive or dye your hair pink – after reaching their set fundraising goal. Over a thousand do-gooders posted to the site, including some big celebrities with equally impressive promises. Not only did promise-makers post promises on promiseforeducation.org, but they shared their vows through email and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The Promise for Education owned Facebook Page garnered some pretty stellar interest as well. See what these folks offered up to help Promise for Education raise over $1.3 million in scholarship money in six weeks.1) We created a unique idea to raise money through digital media: Noise and University of California created PromiseForEducation.org, a new way to raise money. Knowing that one of the biggest desires of people today is to be educated and entertained simultaneously, we knew we had to create a campaign that got people excited and involved. It had to be more than just donating money for a good cause and it needed to be viral and pushed out through social media. 2) We made signing-up simple and social media drove donations: The webpage was easy to use; Sign up. Make a promise. Set a fundraising goal. Upload photos, videos or stories. Most importantly, share through your social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or simply email your link to all of your friends. Driving interest through Facebook and Twitter were the biggest ways to get people back to the PromiseForEducation.org site to make donations. 2a) Facebook & Twitter accounted for 40% of the visits to PromiseForEducation.org 2b) We offered different ways to share activity on FB: Like, Create, Donate. Each one of those activity posts were viewed by 65 of the poster's "Friends" on average 2c) In six weeks, PromiseForEducation raised $1.3 million dollars. With Facebook and Twiiter driving over 40% of the traffic to the site, one can only assume that social media was one of the main drivers for donations. 3) We made fundraising exciting: Through the easy to use website, thousands of promises were made providing a fun, interactive way to raise money. The website allowed people to view all the promises. You could search by name if you knew a friend or a celebrity that you wanted to donate to. You could also search by campus. This allowed people to see all their friends as well as famous alumni of a particular campus. When promises were completed videos or photos were uploaded with the proof. 4) We brought in some big brands and celebrities to drive awareness: Bringing in celebrities and big brands such as Bryan Cranston, Jamie Foxx, Vice Magazine and Bank of America provided big names to drive interest. Who wouldn’t want a voicemail from Bryan Cranston as Heisenberg on their voicemail? Many people agreed and made the $100 donation to get one. 5) We raised a LOT of money in a short amount of time: In six weeks we raised over $1.3 million dollars through PromiseForEducation.org. And this was primarily from the state of California. If we launch this globally, who knows how many students we can help!
https://www.promiseforeducation.org https://www.facebook.com/PromiseForEducation
