WWF has signed up more than 30,000 supporters in a week to a microdonation campaign on Twitter by using emojis featuring endangered species and the hashtag #EndangeredEmoji.

Emojis are small digital icons, such as a smiley face, that can be used express an emotion or thought. The emoji alphabet contains a number of animal characters, including pandas, whales and penguins.

WWF is seeking to use the popularity of emojis to encourage people to donate when they use them. To become an emoji donor people need to retweet WWF’s tweet featuring all 17 animal icons, which automatically signs them up.

Then for every time users include an emoji in their tweet WWF will add 10p to a voluntary monthly donation. Users will be notified at the end of each month and be able to choose how much to donate.

Rachel Bloodworth, head of engagement at WWF-UK, said: “Innovation is at the heart of WWF’s work – we want to find new and exciting ways of engaging with people. By using one of the world’s biggest social platforms to highlight the need to protect endangered species, we’re hoping to raise vital funds for their conservation as well as raising awareness globally.”

Why we love it: emojis are being used more and more in every day online conversations, especially by young people, so this is a great way to engage with that audience and open up a new fundraising stream.

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day on Facebook

TV chef and food campaigner Jamie Oliver has worked with musician Ed Sheeran to produce a music video that will highlight the Food Revolution Day campaign, which is backed by his charity the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation.

The video was posted on his Facebook page and has been viewed more than 20 million times and shared almost 500,000. It directs people to a Change.org petition calling on G20 leaders to tackle the problem of child obesity. So far 1.2m people have signed the petition, which has a target of 1.5m.

Other artists who were involved in the music video include Alesha Dixon, Sir Paul McCartney and Jamie Cullum.

Why we love it: With a simple and clear message that is hard to argue against, the video has a strong call to action.

Jessica’s Promise, raising money for Anthony Nolan

Jessica Stoate took part in this year’s London Marathon to raise money for Anthony Nolan and set up a Jessica’s Promise Facebook page to share updates and share her story and posted regular video updates.

Having sadly lost both her parents before she was 15 she set up the campaign to raise money as part of her promise to do “anything I could think of to make sure that as many Mums and Dads as possible could survive cancer and be around to watch their children grow”.

She completed the marathon and raised more than £12,000.

Why we love it: a powerful reminder of what drives individual fundraisers; we challenge you not get teary-eyed watching the final video.

And finally

While Spy normally contains itself to keeping an eye on how charities are using social media to raise money and awareness, it couldn’t help but spot Mark Astarita, director of fundraising at the British Red Cross and former chair of the IoF, tweeting his nominations for Fundraising Magazine's Most Influential poll.

He’s also conducting a pre-poll poll by asking people to favourite if they agree with his nominations, and while we’d caution against the reliability of polling data, do get involved and use the hashtag #InfluentialFundraiser.

Click on the image below to go to Astarita's Twitter page and find out who he's nominated so far. 

 

Nominations for this year's poll close on 12 June and the results will be revealed in July's magazine.