For some crazy reason I have made the decision to run the London Marathon in April 2012. I will be raising money for the Blue Cross and have a fundraising target of £1,500.
I have set up a website at www.runmickey.org. Alongside my website I have also set up a Twitter account, a Facebook page and a JustGiving page for donations.
Why bother with all of this?
To help me in my fundraising efforts I decided to put in more effort than simply setting up a JustGiving donation page. Don't get me wrong JustGiving is brilliant, simple to use and is a must to make the process of donating simpler (remember the bad old days of trying to collect cash and IOU's?). Being a web developer I decided to go the whole hog and create my own website. I have previously found that it is very difficult to direct and encourage people to donate to a JustGiving page, it is too easy to ignore on its own.
Social media allows me to keep in touch with people and give them a little nudge towards making a donation. I can share things like my training progress and maintain the interest in my mission. It is also a two way thing. I encourage people to leave me messages of support, then using the Twitter and Facebook API's I can import and show those messages live on my website for all to see (I hope there are no insults!). JustGiving also provide a great API which allows me to import and display the details of my fundraising progress.
These API's allow me to bring everything together. Alone, my website, Twitter, Facebook, JustGiving are fragmented, it would be difficult to direct people to each of them. However, using the provided API's has allowed me to connect everything together into one campaign. Donating, taking part and commenting is simple using my website as a base.
I am currently working with the Google Maps API so you can all track me on training runs and also my progress on the big day.
Go ahead, take a look at www.runmickey.org. Please leave a comment on my facebook page, or tweet me using the #runmickey hashtag... Oh and feel free to make a donation to a worthy cause if you feel like it!
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