Social Media for Social Good: Sevenly

Brandie Broihier | @BrandieNic Social media is about more than cat photos, George Takei, and clever hashtags. Sometimes, an organization finds a way to do good, and make it reach further than the average bake sale by using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and even Pinterest to spread their cause.

Sevenly is such an organization who supports a different charity each week - by selling t-shirts. The basic premise is this: you buy a shirt for $20 or so and they donate $7 to that week's cause. Some weeks, they triple their donation amount, like they did with Autism Speaks. They raised over $180,000 in one week and had over 9,000 Facebook "shares."

Founders Dale Partridge and Aaron Chavez created Sevenly to "find a way of battling apathy in the face of widespread suffering." By using social media to promote the weekly campaigns, these entrepreneurs effectively bridged the generational gap between giving and instant gratification.

Sevenly reaches the hearts of the artsy, the hipsters, and the charitable through a blend of real-world need and trend-setting tees. They do this by leveraging the power of social media.

On Twitter, Sevenly reaches out to followers with heartfelt quotes, images of real-time world change, and updates on funds raised for their weekly causes. Not only can followers spread the word by retweeting, they can easily navigate to Sevenly's main page where they have enough options to fulfill both the need to give and the desire to shop.

Facebook is the platform for sharing, and Sevenly knows how to leverage the power of imagery to reach its audience. The huge cover photo provided to Facebook pages is a perfect place to broadcast the week's cause and status updates get shared on an almost viral level fairly often.

If Sevenly hasn't reached you yet, it soon will. They are kind of a big deal. (Even Oprah agrees.)

References: Here, here, and here.