Originally, I thought I’d write this post in order to summarize the comments to this post on Twitip, which posed the question of how to fundraise on Twitter and requested help from readers in the comments. But I actually found a lot more ideas after a quick Twitter request, so here’s what I’ve come up with so far. If I’ve missed any, please list in the comments, and thank you to everyone who sent me links and ideas. These are in no particular order, and I haven’t gone into any great detail – I figure you can get a better sense from exploring the links below about how these worked.

1. Use a hashtag to promote a link to make purchases. Retweet several times over a few days and ask followers to do the same. The hashtag will show all the other people interested in the cause and build a sense of community around it.

2. Get a celebrity to back your cause (this doesn’t need to be a TV celeb, it could be someone big in social media or someone big in the relevant field or industry).

3. Offer a prize; each person to donate gets entered to win. Get someone (or a company) to donate something cool for the prize.

4. Use Tipjoy, a great twitter widget with a “goal thermometer”.

5. Find people on Twitter interested in your cause. Search by keyword, but also by location (try NearbyTweets).

6. Try something like Tweetsgiving – set up a simple website that tells your story, use a ChipIn widget, tweet it, list and thank donors, make it shareable in lots of ways.

7. Make your campaign time-limited, to encourage people to donate now. Encourage small amounts.

8. Plan a Twestival – i.e. find sponsors for a face-to-face event promoted through Twitter, where people can meet each other, socialize, maybe auction some donated stuff. If you can have more than one event going on concurrently in different places, it’s a Twestival, otherwise, it’s a Tweetup, but both are good!

9. Do a 12 For $12k – combine efforts with other causes to maximize exposure and viral power.

10. Try a Tweet-a-thon – a limited time campaign with a live video component (using a site like Ustream) and celebrities (of all kinds).

11. Find a “hook” – like 140 characters for 140 smiles – a simple idea about how small pebbles can create huge waves.

12. Write a personal appeal that really touches people.

13. Start a bidding war for something cool, silly, or meaningful.

14. Encourage champions for your cause to be able to set up their own “red kettles“.

15. Create a game like Trick or Tweet.

Now you may have noticed some talk about “social media fundraising burnout“; however I believe that there are always people willing to help others. But you need to find a way to tap into your community (so you should have a community to begin with, or have a cause that community can gather around); and you need to have a story, be creative and have some fun with it, because no individual can really donate to every cause that will come across their Twitter stream. I believe that successful fundraising using Twitter needs to be easy, needs to be shareable, and needs to be interesting. Hmmm… now where might I have heard that before? The same keys to creating word of mouth apply here. Good luck!

——————————————————–