

UNICEF: Give Money, Not Facebook Likes - PankajGhosh
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/unicef-tells-slacktivists-give-money-not-facebook-likes/275429/

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columbo
I'm not on facebook, but from what I've seen there doesn't seem to be an easy
way to broadcast your donation. I wonder if people would be more inclined to
donate if it also broadcasted "columbo gave $2" over "columbo likes this".

If it sorted the highest donations to the top it'd even encourage large
companies to donate for the free advertising - "Nissan gave $2,500"

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camus
it's up to them to create a facebook app that will broadcast messages on their
page whenever someone donates. And I can help , they can hire me since I can
do it ! ;)

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rurounijones
Yep, they could easily add this to their donation system, I am kind of
surprised they didn't do this already.

Hell, this is one instance where they wouldn't even have to be sneaky about
this like some scummier apps.

A big "Post this donation on my facebook page" checkbox/link etc would be
enough since a good number of people would probably want that feature.

It seems we are living in an age of increasing open'ness (dare I say
narcissism?). Might as well harness it.

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waps
Because the vast majority of UNICEF money comes from having friends inside
governments and employing the -usually moronic- kids of foreign government
officials, to give them salaries exceeding the President's pay.

Just like most worthy causes, money comes from relatively few (still hundreds
to thousands in the UNICEF case) very big donors. Small donations just
transfer money to banks.

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dopamean
Maybe there should be a "Like+" button or something. You can fund your
facebook account and every time you "Like+" an image the person or entity who
posted the image receives a dollar which is deducted from your account. Maybe
only certain types of accounts, like UNICEF, should be eligible to receive
funds.

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efuquen
Have you heard of flattr? It operates pretty much in the way you've described:

<http://flattr.com/>

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dopamean
I have not heard of it. Pretty cool, though it doesn't seem to be available
for Facebook.

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benajnim
Bitcoin could play a key role here. In my experience, donating using bitcoin
feels clicking a "like" button. After learning about the system and how to use
the client, its as easy as logging into facebook to like something.

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vbuterin
Leaving this here:

<http://reddit.com/r/bitcointip>

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xiaohanzhang14
It's very disappointing to see such a smart community bicker about a topic
they clearly know little about and have done even less research to back up
their comments. Let's cut the crap about Bitcoin, building esoteric Facebook
apps to broadcast message, and A/B testing funding effectiveness to prove a
point.

An article from Humanosphere (full disclosure, I work with this organization)
[http://www.humanosphere.org/2013/04/unicef-sweden-wants-
your...](http://www.humanosphere.org/2013/04/unicef-sweden-wants-your-money-
not-your-likes/) actually digs a little deeper into the topic. Regardless of
what you think of The Atlantic's article, the UNICEF campaign is fully
integrated with press ads, tv spots, radio commercials, digital material, and
PR. An integrated campaign on this scale is (unfortunately) relatively unheard
of in the development community due to funding issues and uproar whenever any
non-profit's seen to be spending excessively on initiatives that don't
directly go to the task at hand.

I personally think the campaign is effective; UNICEF is going against the
grain by calling out the shortcomings of social media when most other non-
profits (I've had experience working with a couple) are all using likes,
retweets, and pins as KPIs (but clearly don't have a perfect correlation with
the bottom line)

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walshemj
As Bob Geldoff said so elegantly at live Aid "People are dying NOW. Give us
the money NOW!"

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jasallen
Fully on bored with UNICEF, but this article is poorly written.

First of all, the entire article says nothing I didn't get out of the headline
but it used a lot words to say it. And, the paragraph that quotes Zeynep
Tufekci seems to misunderstand, or the very least mis-apply Tufecki's
statement. After all, it never took a full-on _activists_ to donate four euro
to UNICEF.

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zrail
OT: "on board", not "on bored".

~~~
jasallen
yes, that.

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pointernil
I'm working on an idea to tackle/nudge slacktivists into become really active
... or at least make visible to them how volatile and in the end meaningless
their +1, Likes and Favs really are when true/real world/operative support
would be due. If you are interested please stop by at www.sustinion.com as I'm
looking for "external" feedback to validate the ideas.

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paprika
All in all, bad darts from Unicef as 'likers' donate as well. Basically they
say we don't want likes, just money please.

The solution is simple. The platform (in this case Facebook) has enough money
to step up and give 0.01$/0.1$/1$ for each like of the photo/page.

I am pretty sure it wouldn't be a significant dent for Facebook's finances,
actually with proper campaign it could go in their favour via stocks.

But then again, Unicef isn't the only charity in the world and supporting one
and ignoring the others isn't fair as well.

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Skr1bd
Point is well taken, UNICEF. But are the people who Like the pages the same
people who are likely to donate? I suspect that many of the people who Like
the sites are either unable to donate or are too young to donate. So the Likes
are a good idea because they encourage involvement and influence future
behaviour when such people are able to do more. Might not help in the short
term, but it will likely have great benefits in the future.

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smackfu
Seems like they want it both ways. They put share and like and follow buttons
all over their site, but then they say it's meaningless.

"Likes" seem very similar to ads and mailers. They generate donations. At
least Likes don't cost Unicef anything... that mailer they send me stops some
kid from getting a polio vaccination.

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nijk
Do you have an A/B test to back up your claims of fundraising effectiveness?
Fundraising finances vaccinations.

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smackfu
Oh, on average, I'm sure the mailers have a net positive, or at least I hope
so. I'm saying the particular mailer they send me is costing money and they
aren't getting a donation from me because I already have my charities, so it's
actually worse than me Liking one of their posts on Facebook.

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bjhoops1
I take offense at this. My facebook activity has yielded _hundreds_ of grains
of rice for starving children! I also stopped Joseph Kony and brought about
marriage equality.

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anoncow
Likes can lead to money. Think of likes as volunteers helping to spread the
word.

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mrtksn
Actually, likes and shares may make people feel like they did their part and
can move on. Donate, then share culture would help but if everybody thinks
they are doing great job by "charity marketing" then we have a problem.
Probably UNICEF has a problem so they are taking an action against it.

I would not say that sharing the word is volunteering because it's so trivial
that people share and like things by mistake all the time. When was the last
time you heard somebody accidentally helped somebody in need?

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anoncow
>Actually, likes and shares may make people feel like they did their part and
can move on.

That is true.

Perhaps people who donate can share a different message. Not everyone on FB
may be able to donate, but they will help spread the word which may prompt
someone in their network to donate. Ignoring this base might not be smart, but
yes, the message should be to donate instead of like/share/retweet.

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mrtksn
maybe charities can exploit the methods that games use? badges, avatars...
something to differentiate paying and sharing users without scaring away the
sharing folks while rewarding the donors.

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jfb
If people _do_ things, they're by definition not "slacktivists".

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DannyBee
Liking is not doing something, the same way people commenting on internet
forums about something (patents, privacy, whatever) is not actually doing
something.

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nsmartt
Commenting on internet forums and engaging in debate is at least better than
clicking "like". In terms of conversation, the "like" button is DH3, where
comments and debate can potentially be DH4 or higher
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>).

If I "like" a support page about marriage equality, I'm not convincing anyone
who holds an opposing view. That's not necessarily true of commenting on e.g.
HN.

Of course, commenting does nothing for many issues, such as those requiring
money, but a comment can be marginally better than a "like".

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nodata
_upvoted_

