Who are we ?
BL’ONG is a creative area to share about fundraising : every day, ideas are being born throughout the world.
These ideas may come from many organisations, associations, agencies, businesses, or even states ... our goal is to collect and publish the most interesting of them in a place open to comments and conversation.
RSS Feeds
Highest rated
- Bhadra Communications - Islands
(5 out of 5) - Global Warming - In 50 Years, Same Time Same Place? (5 out of 5)
- WWF - Money Makes The World Go Round (5 out of 5)
- AIDES - Aids Awareness (5 out of 5)
- Douleur Sans Frontières - Never Ending Pain (5 out of 5)
- Amnesty - Libertad (5 out of 5)
- Amnesty - The Audition (5 out of 5)
- Blue Man Group Stop Global Warming (5 out of 5)
- Redess Jovenes - Get Tested (5 out of 5)
- Red Cross - Soccer (5 out of 5)
Do you know Facebook ?
The second biggest socialnetwork in the world behind Myspace already has more than 40 millions registrated users. These users are essentially college students and young graduates, but the network’s base is diversifying rapidly. With a clean and easy-to-use interface, and open API, Facebook is coming to be THE socialnetwork of today, and will probably remain for some time.
The opening of his API allowed thousands of users to developp applications directly into the platform : in less than two months, there were already more than 2500 of them, in which you can find apps used by more than 30 million people.
What has surprised us is the amount and creativity of these applications, especially concerning the nonprofit sector ! The BL’ONG list of the top-12 nonprofit applications for Facebook you can find here is not exhaustive, but lets you see a little part of the opportunities of communication, fundraising and advocacy offered by the new media to the nonprofit organisations.
(to see all these apps in actions, come visit the BL’ONG profile on facebook : Blong Blong)
Used by more than 1,8 million people this application let’s you display on your profile the causes you’re supporting, the people you’ve recruited and the gifts you’ve made.
A lot of causes are already registered, from the smallest local association to the biggest NGO (Greenpeace, Amnesty, Save Darfur to name a few).
Causes is a really powerful tool of communication and fundraising. It’s also one of the most used app on Facebook.
One can find two applications Awareness Ribbons which work almost the same way : you choose the cause you support and display them in the form of little ribbons on your profile. Each one can create his own ribbon for every kind of cause : from leucodistrophy to antiracism…
I AM GREEN let’s you display publicly what kind of actions you do for the environnement. Each action gives you a “leaf”, and the total score defines your “greenitude”. Anyone can add new actions and invite his friends to share them.
From “I print on both sides of my printer paper”, to “I bought an hybrid car”, one can find a lot of possibilities to show his own actions :
The application Change.org has been conceived and developped by the change.org team. Change.org is a socialnetwork that lets you say to the world what you want to change in it, and leverage the power of community to effectively act. In some way, this application let’s you become your own mini-NGO with communication, fundraising and action tools.
The application Chipin comes from the famous fundraising widget, which allows anyone to raise funds very very easily.
The application Carbon Diet Plan lets you define how much CO2 you save by using one way of transportation instead of another (feets vs car, train vs plane, etc…).
It’s a nice application that makes me feel is the full contrary of the so-called “right to pollute” : the “duty to save energy” !
The well named application Health Tip of the Day lets you display on your profile a daily tip to stay healthy.
The application Passive Activism describes itself like that :
Lazy people of the world unite!
Help save the world without lifting a finger.
The concept is simple and brilliant : you add a little advertising banner on your profile. The revenues generated by all the facebook users will be given to a different association each month. For exemple, in july, the money will go to the Cancer Research Institute.
The application Peace Commitment let’s you simply display what actions you’re planning to take for the International Peace Day on september 21st and hare it with your friends.
The application Nature Quote of the day displays a nature quote on your profile on a daily basis.
The application 24 Hours for Darfur is leveraging the power of facebook as an e-advocacy tool. Users are invited to submit videos against genocide in Darfur. These videos will be shown to political decisions makers on foreign policy, and a week of micro-events will be organised in september, including a live-broadcast from the UN.
The application Your Daily Green let’s you display everyday a new “green lifestyle”. A nice way to share your green attitude.
Two month after the opening of the Facebook platform to external applications, more than two million people added nonprofit applications to their profile. Even if it’s lower than 5% of the total number of users, one can be confident in the growth of the nonprofit sector on these new media.
In fact two different things are pretty encouraging : the big NGO’s are not yet exploiting new media as they could (especially in Europe), and the demographics of Facebook are an extraordinary opportunitie to raise awareness and money from young people.
The BL’ONG is on Facebook, are you ?
[UPDATE]
Another application to add to the list was sent to me by Stas who seems to be from the Searchgive team. This application lets you search thru the main search engines (Google, Live, AOL, and more), thus making money for the advertisers… and for charities !
Sexy Smart advertising in Le Monde (the french newspaper) the 6th of july.
Partner, aside with Philips, Pepsi, MSN and many others of the mega-giga-live-green-concert “Live Earth” organized by Al Gore to fight against global warming (huge campaign on which we’ll focus next week), SMART claims the “CO2 champion” title whith a confusing copy.
What do you think of it ?
Here are the two non-profit campaigns, Gold Lions winners at Cannes Lions Festival 2007 in the Direct Category.
1.Title: Stick & Save, Collez et Sauvez
Advertiser: TREES (Treat Every Environment Special)
Product: Paper Recycling Campaign
Agency: Arc Worldwide, Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia
Treat Every Environment Special (TREES), a non-profit environmental organisation, had rolled out this ambient campaign to encourage paper recycling in the corporate sector and remind them the significance of protecting the environment. It was felt that most of the most employees tend to ignore the need to recycle, so the organization took up the responsibility to remind and educate them. The advertisers focused on the photocopier used in offices, where only one side of the paper is used and most of the paper waste is created, to communicate the message.
The advertisers had supplied a few corporate offices small, clear stickers carrying the message ‘please use both sides and recycle after’ and the company’s website address. The stickers were positioned on the photocopier’s surface making the message without difficulty duplicated on every paper that passed through the machine. The campaign was hugely successful and during the campaign traffic at TREES websites shot up by 68 percent and corporate offices managed to save 17 percent cost of papers.
2. Title: Smoke is Poison - Tanker
Advertiser: Department of Health/Cancer Research UK
Product: Anti-Smoking Message
Agency: Groupe Ogilvy, Londres - United Kingdom
A 12 metre long tanker wrapped up to look like a cigarette was parked in Swindon town centre last week. The vehicle has toured around the UK to raise awareness of the poisons found in cigarette smoke.
There are some 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke – 69 of which are known to cause cancer. Tens of thousands of people are killed by cigarette smoke in the UK every year. By raising awareness of the poisons in cigarette smoke – which include arsenic, cadmium, benzene and formaldehyde – the campaign aims to save some of these many lives.
3. Title: Phone Legends
Advertiser: Land Transport NZ
Product: Anti Drinking-Driving Message
Agency: Clemenger BBDO, Wellington - New Zelande
Land Transport, New Zealand, had recently launched this anti-drink driving direct campaign to urge young males to not to drive after being drunk. The campaign apparently aims at making young males stop driving after getting drunk in a unique way.
A research report revealed that usually when a person of this young genre decides to drive home, their friends are worried, but they do not ask the person to stop driving altogether. Therefore, it was decided to devise a tool to make those friends express their concern anonymously. The advertisers found an interesting way to urge young adults not to drive drunk by reminding them via mobile phones, and the campaign was titled, ‘the phone legends’.
The advertisers made arrangement for a concerned friend to choose a Phone Legends character from a poster or beer coaster at the pub. He then texts the character’s name, along with the probable drink driver’s mobile phone number, to an automated operator. The prospective drink driver then receives a voice message from that character on his mobile phone, comically reminding of the consequences of drink driving.
The campaign had attracted national media attention and contributed to achieving New Zealand’s lowest road toll ever. The campaign was created by CLEMENGER BBDO, Wellington, New Zealand.4. Title: Verb Yellow Ball
Advertiser: Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
Product: Youth Fitness Campaign
Agency: Arc Worldwide, Chicago - USA
This is an innovative and actually engaging outdoor advertisement campaign dedicated to fight against youth obesity. The campaign was developed in response of the challenge to create a movement to make children aged between 9-13 active and inspire them to spread play other kids.
The campaign had created a kid-targeted direct response vehicle. VERB delivered 500,000 yellow balls directly into kids’ hands. They looked normal, but each ball contained an exclusive code and directed children to play with the ball, enter the code at the VERB website and blog their story, then it was desirable that ball should be passed to other kid.
This engaging campaign drew kids into an on-line and off-line community dedicated to spreading play. Kids could post a blog, read the stories from all across the country and track their ball’s journey. Since the ball was a response device, they distributed it directly into the hands of targeted mass.
Problem:
Every weekend in New Zealand, young males drink drive. Our brief was to stop them. From research, we knew that if a member of this demographic was drunk and decided to drive home, his friends would be worried. But we also knew that his friends wouldn’t actually say anything to stop him - in the world of young adult peer pressure, this is a very un-cool thing to do. We needed a way for friends to express their concerns anonymously.
Solution:
The solution was found in mobile phones, an accessory every young male takes to the pub. We created a campaign called the Phone Legends. It works like this. First, a concerned friend chooses a Phone Legends character from a poster or beer coaster at the pub. He then texts that character’s name, along with the prospective drink driver’s mobile phone number, to our automated operator. The prospective drink driver then receives a voice message from that character on his mobile phone: a humorous yet timely reminder of the consequences of drink driving.
Result:
By using mobile phone technology we were able to reach our audience at exactly the moment they decided to drink and drive. We launched the campaign in over 200 New Zealand pubs, and to date over 12,500 concerned friends have used the service so far. It attracted national media attention and contributed to achieving New Zealand’s lowest road toll ever (2006).
<via>
Recent Comments