How to make money and influence people

If you are a charity, what’s the best way to raise £100,000?

If you are a charity, what’s the best way to raise £100,000?

A celebrity endorsement? An advert in a national newspaper? Engage a firm of professional fundraisers?

There’s something to be said for all of these. But NSPCC have been the beneficiaries of a very different form of fundraising.

£100,000 was donated to NSPCC as a result of a Facebook campaign. This campaign asked people to change their profile picture to their favourite cartoon character to show their support for an end to violence against children.

Nothing out of the ordinary there you might say. Well the amazing thing is that the campaign was not started or assisted in any way by the NSPCC. But they were the beneficiaries.

The campaign took off through the connections which are sustained through Facebook. Here is a representation of these connections.

In the summer we published a pamphlet by Paul Omerod which argued that understanding networks was vital to modern policy making.

Perhaps the success of this campaign gives us a hint about what this means in practice?