Day 332

It is not good to know more unless we do more with what we already know. – Bergethon, R. K

It’s 7: 49 PM on day 332 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, watch and donate to the telethon held to raise money for the people of Somalia – I already made my donation to the World Food Programme but I didn’t tell my father that and coaxed him into making anotther donation because I wanted to teach my sister the joy of giving anyway coming back to the telethon 1.2 million rand was raised I am SO proud to be South African today – feed myself banana for breakfast, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck – visit my favourite blogs Love That Max, Chasing Rainbows and Bird on the Street,  feed myself rice and fried fish for lunch, watch TV, feed myself pasta and fried chicken for dinner, brush my teeth once more and help my brother act out the play that he wrote.

Yesterday as I was writing a post publicizing the telethon that took place this morning (if you have no idea what I’m talking about refer to Day 331) I realized that the SABC – South African Broadcasting Corporation – although had the best intentions in wanting to raise money for the people of Somalia were a bit lacking in the knowledge of how to use the internet to publicize the upcoming telethon – I spent hours online looking for the telethon phone number eventually giving up and deciding to wait until the telethon was going on to add the number to my post – so today I am going to give you some tips on how to make the internet work for the philanthropist in you because I believe that knowledge is most powerful when it is shared. Take a look:

How to use the internet to raise awareness and money for your favorite charity: Things I wish someone had told me before I entered the world of philanthropy

• Make sure that the charity you support is registered – most charities will display a tax/EIN number on their respective websites if they don’t email them and ask for it

• Find out whether your charity is linked to a fundraising website e.g. Firstgiving, Justgiving, My Charity Page – the advantage of using a fundraising page to raise money for charity is that you as the fundraiser don’t have to do anything – it’s fully automated – and there’s the added benefit of being able to receive donations from all over the world twenty-four hours a day with the only disadvantage being that the fundraising website gets to keep a small percentage of whatever you raise

• Set up social media accounts e.g. Twitter, Facebook and connect with people who can identify with you – you will often find me asking people who have been affected by disability to make donations to my campaign because I know that they know how hard my life is.

• Create a chain – mingle with the people that your donors interact with and tell them about what your trying to do chances are that they will donate too and when that happens you have to start the process up again and so on and so on

• Don’t pester people – if someone says that they can’t donate to your cause for whatever reason accept that with grace and move on don’t keep sending them Facebook messages/tweets they will get very irritated with you and unfriend/unfollow you

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://twitter.com/Nisha360

If you’ve given to my cause or you can’t give now, please help me by sharing my cause with others. You can tweet about it like my friend Stan Faryna. This is the tweet he uses: @Nisha360 is a brave, smart young woman trying to make a better world for us all. Please help her do an amazing thing. http://bit.ly/hC7vOu

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!