I have heard a lot about people shirking responsibility or thinking only about themselves. Last week I was extremely impressed by Penn State University junior Pat Howley. I’ll get to his story later, but first let me give you some background.
Earlier this fall Darah Bonham embraced crowdsourcing through a novel idea with Twitter. He wanted to do something to help eradicate cancer so he set up a Twitter feed @abolishcancer and an abolishcancer blog. The goal of each was to solicit sponsors to the Twitter feed, raise awareness of the need, and raise funds for research. A sponsor would pick a date, and for every new follower of @abolishcancer for that day the sponsor would donate $1.00 to the American Cancer Society.
This started in October when Darah sponsored a day to try it out. Then Chari Olmedo (@irishcari) agreed to be the first official feed sponsor. She has never met Darah, but thought it was a great idea. Through her efforts there were 65 new followers and she donated $65 to the American Cancer Society. Other sponsors since then have seen similar results. I even sponsored a day in December. I tweeted about it all day long while I was at a conference and still only got 56 new followers. Well, let’s fast forward.
A student group at Penn State called THON became aware of @abolishcancer. THON raises funds and awareness to fight against pediatric cancer. A group of them can be seen on YouTube chanting, “for the kids”. Anyway, Pat is active with this group and agreed to sponsor if he could donate the proceeds to THON. Of course Darah agreed and thus it began. Darah sent out tweets and Pat sent out tweets. Others retweeted until somehow it reached Khloe Kardashian. I don’t think that she became a follower, but she did tweet about it several times. At the end of the day through her celebrity influence @abolishcancer had 1,734 new followers. For me, this is where the real story begins.
Pat is a college student who identifies as not having deep pockets. He thought he would pay about 50 bucks. I’m not sure what most people would have done in a similar situation, but Pat stepped up to the plate. He got creative and used other social media as well as old fashioned begging and according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, has raised over the $1,734.00 that he had promised.
Some of the new followers commented that they thought it was someone with “deep pockets” sponsoring the twitter feed for the day. I’m sure that many thought that Khloe would step up. However it wasn’t the wealthy, famous, or powerful that made this happen. I love this story because it is about average people doing what they can to make a difference. Let’s follow great example of Darah (for the idea) and Pat (for the commitment) and do something good and worthwhile for others.
Earlier this fall Darah Bonham embraced crowdsourcing through a novel idea with Twitter. He wanted to do something to help eradicate cancer so he set up a Twitter feed @abolishcancer and an abolishcancer blog. The goal of each was to solicit sponsors to the Twitter feed, raise awareness of the need, and raise funds for research. A sponsor would pick a date, and for every new follower of @abolishcancer for that day the sponsor would donate $1.00 to the American Cancer Society.
This started in October when Darah sponsored a day to try it out. Then Chari Olmedo (@irishcari) agreed to be the first official feed sponsor. She has never met Darah, but thought it was a great idea. Through her efforts there were 65 new followers and she donated $65 to the American Cancer Society. Other sponsors since then have seen similar results. I even sponsored a day in December. I tweeted about it all day long while I was at a conference and still only got 56 new followers. Well, let’s fast forward.
A student group at Penn State called THON became aware of @abolishcancer. THON raises funds and awareness to fight against pediatric cancer. A group of them can be seen on YouTube chanting, “for the kids”. Anyway, Pat is active with this group and agreed to sponsor if he could donate the proceeds to THON. Of course Darah agreed and thus it began. Darah sent out tweets and Pat sent out tweets. Others retweeted until somehow it reached Khloe Kardashian. I don’t think that she became a follower, but she did tweet about it several times. At the end of the day through her celebrity influence @abolishcancer had 1,734 new followers. For me, this is where the real story begins.
Pat is a college student who identifies as not having deep pockets. He thought he would pay about 50 bucks. I’m not sure what most people would have done in a similar situation, but Pat stepped up to the plate. He got creative and used other social media as well as old fashioned begging and according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, has raised over the $1,734.00 that he had promised.
Some of the new followers commented that they thought it was someone with “deep pockets” sponsoring the twitter feed for the day. I’m sure that many thought that Khloe would step up. However it wasn’t the wealthy, famous, or powerful that made this happen. I love this story because it is about average people doing what they can to make a difference. Let’s follow great example of Darah (for the idea) and Pat (for the commitment) and do something good and worthwhile for others.
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