Breakthrough Breast Cancer launches first social media fundraising campaign

Breakthrough Breast Cancer is launching its first social media fundraising campaign as it looks to encourage its Twitter and Facebook audiences to donate to the charity, rather than just ‘liking’ and ‘retweeting’ posts.

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Breakthrough Breast Cancer will use social media for fundraising for the first time

Launching today (10 February) across Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Instagram, the “Change Challenge” campaign, created by communications agency 1DA, makes use of peer-to-peer fundraising. It asks people to post a photo or video of themselves holding a sign showing the change they will make if their friends donate.

Participants can decide what the change will be, from dying their hair to doing a run or wearing their clothes inside-out. They can also choose how much they want to raise in order to complete the challenge and make the change.

Tris Jones, national participation manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, says: “There are so many different ways to fundraise, but not every fundraising event is right for everyone. The only rule here is they need an account on social media.”

While Jones claims that the campaign is aimed at all ages, it is particularly focused on the younger generation who tend to engage most on social media. Breakthrough Breast Cancer has 15,000 Twitter followers as well as almost 33,000 fans on Facebook and now hopes to monetise that audience.

By using peer-to-peer fundraising, the charity hopes to engage people in the campaign, raise awareness and boost donations. Jones claims that recent figures suggest that an increasing amount of online charitable giving is now driven by social media and so the charity is hoping to harness this to raise funds.

“Millions of people in the UK actively engage on social media every day. Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels provide us with a great opportunity to reach out and raise awareness and we hope this campaign can inspire people to act, engage and raise funds,” he adds.

If it proves successful, Jones says the charity will use it as a model for future campaigns.

“We are always looking for better ways that we can raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of breast cancer, as well as the life-saving research we fund. From a fundraising perspective this is the first time we’ve used social media in this way so we’ll analyse the response and go from there.”

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