Social Media Nets Donations for Samaritan House

Many people "Tweet" or "Facebook" every day, but how many of those posts are for a cause?

Thousands of dollars were raised recently in the 's Social Media Challenge for financial education and client services development, the San Mateo-based agency announced.

Fans and Followers raised $5,000 and Franklin Templeton Investments, a global investment management organization, matched that money for a total of $10,000 in donations.

 “We are very pleased about the opportunity to help jump-start Samaritan House’s effort to engage the public in a new and exciting way,” Amanda Byers, head of Corporate Citizenship for Franklin Templeton, said in a statement.

“By using social media to engage their supporters, Samaritan House can educate and mobilize our community to help clients achieve their goals of self-sufficiency.” 

Kitty Lopez, Samaritan House Executive Director, also commented on her delight to see donations and charitable giving taken to the next level.

“We at Samaritan House want to help make investing in our work easy, and open to more individuals, throughout the community, and beyond,” Lopez said in a statement.

The program launched on Aug. 1, with an invitation for supporters to:

• “Like” our Facebook page ($5)
• Comment on or “like” any post on the page ($2)
• Follow us on Twitter ($5)
• RT or mention our Twitter handle, @Samaritan_House  ($2)

Participants were encouraged in a story on the blog to share the Facebook Page with their Networks. And to spread the word on Twitter, a preset tweet was created: “$5 to @Samaritan_House from Franklin Templeton for each new Twitter follower in Aug! $5 to like them on FB, too!”

Fans climbed from 0 to more than 400 by the end of the campaign.

Other promotions for the challenge included highlighting it on the association website, www.samaritanhouse.com.