A Social Entrepreneur's Take On Giving Thanks

Published November 26, 2009 @ 09:03AM PT

As one would expect, holidays serve as potent cultural touchstones for creative social entrepreneurs to find new ways the connect the story of their work with the story of individuals and groups they'd like to support them.

One of the more interesting examples of a social entrepreneurs using the context of a holiday to do something different is Epic Change's Tweetsgiving, a campaign conducted through Twitter that asks people to tweet out what they're thankful for. Epic Change is hoping to convert that attention to support for their ongoing education and anti-poverty work in Tanzania.

The campaign is probably a great strategy for fundraising, but more than that, the fact that it has 17,000 people share what they are thankful for is a remarkable demonstration of the strange space between public and private and the power of networks like Twitter to distribute messages farther and wider than ever before.

To learn more about Tweetsgiving, check out their site, or visit the conversation they are hosting on Social Edge.

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Author

Nathaniel is the founder of Assetmap, a San Francisco-based startup that builds web tools to help people better visualize and leverage their social capital. Before that, he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.