Our project was comprised of three fundraisers: bake sale, yogurt shop fundraiser, and online donation site. We set limitations to each of these fundraisers to examine social media's influence on the experiment.
- The bake sale was not allowed any advertising via social media; the knowledge had to be spread strictly by word of mouth and function traditionally where all donations were accepted in-person during a bake sale transaction.
- The online fundraiser had no physical element, and was advertised solely via social media and donations were collected only online.
- The yogurt shop fundraiser was a hybrid between a traditional fundraiser and one that uses social media. Donors gave by arriving in-person to the yogurt shop and the fundraiser was advertised online via a facebook event page.
Fundraiser Details and Observations
Bake Sale: The all physical fundraiser was held outside the Duckstore for four hours during a school day. Many adults came up to our table wondering what our cause was about and many were outraged that the school system couldn't afford to get this one book in the hands of students. Almost every adult that walked by either bought a goody or donated whatever they had in their pocket to Thurston. We chose to keep our bake sale to spread by word of mouth only so we could see the effects of physically being there for people to come by either hearing of it or seeing the table. We found however that even though our group didn't use any means of social networking, that could't stop our friends or customers from posting to help support our cause. Even though posts and tweets were sent for many students to see, none rushed over to donate. The only students that came to our table were our closest friends and a couple people from the philosophy class.
Online Fundraiser: A general Facebook page was made for the fundraiser along with a donation site. The facebook page was liked by friends and family along with non-affiliated people outside of the state. Online donations mostly came from known persons or citizens of the Eugene area, but a couple donations came from out of state as well. Word was spread via personal facebook and twitter account. Attention was gained from three local news anchors, and one story aired on KEZI 9's 6'oclock news, which has a viewership running the length of Oregon to Northern California. An event page for the yogurt shop fundraiser was also made by the fundraising page, and updates were made periodically to update those who liked the page on the progress of the fundraiser.
Yogurt Extreme Fundraiser: A Facebook event page was created where all group memebers invited their friends (about 500 invites) to print out a flyer to bring the the local Yogurt Extreme which gave 20% of each individual purchase to Thurston. We invited friends via text and word of mouth at the beginning of the week the fundraiser was to be held, so friends would know to attend Friday. The actual Facebook event was made 2 days prior and was advertised through our group's personal accounts. The flyer was available on the Facebook event page for anyone to print off an unlimitied amount.
Our project aimed to explore how the Internet influences fundraising dynamics. We did this by conducting three seperate fundraisers (no social media, only social media, combination of the two) and observing which fundraiser garnered the most attention and profit. All proceeds went to Thurston High School's American Literature class to provide the book Beloved by Toni Morrison.