Auctioning my 150,000th tweet for charity #150kHB604 Stage 1: Finding the charity

About a year ago, I auctioned my 100,000th tweet for charity to raise funds for the British Columbia Cancer Foundation (the successful bidder and awesome all around guy, @BobSongs was kind enough to donate $300 AND the 100,000th tweet to the BC Cancer Foundation). I am about to hit another milestone: 150,000 tweets. So, maybe it’s time I do another bidding for charity. Remember, I don’t make any money nor do I gain anything from this, other than feeling really good.

The obvious question that everybody asks me is what do bidders gain from bidding for your 150,000th tweet? The answer is simple: Given the size of my online following on all of my combined social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr, and obviously my blog) chances are that the particular tweet will be widely retweeted, reshared, repinned, etc. This is an excellent promotional tool.

I am also upping the ante: I will add a blog post to go with the highest bid, but to entice people to place bids, I will provide 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes to the top 3 bids. So, even if you don’t win my actual 150,000th tweet, you could place the second highest bid at the time of closing the auction and you still would get rewards (as long as, of course, you donate your bid to the cause). And so on with the third. And the rewards of course would include promotional support here. So, for example, if Molson Coors placed the highest bid for my 150,000th tweet, they could win a month’s worth of advertisement space on my sidebar, the 150,000th tweet and a blog post about their most recent campaign (or something relevant to them). And obviously cross-platform promotion in all of my channels. The second highest bid could come say, from Four Seasons Hotels, and they could win for example, 2 weeks of advertisement space on my sidebar, and a few mentions on my social platforms, etc. And so on, for the third place.

I thought of different ways to find the charity, and much as I hate “popularity contests”, I figured I could do a “show of hands” or voting on charities based out of British Columbia. I could narrow down the top 5 charities, and have folks who are associated with the non-profit sector (but not of the charities that are participating) to help me decide on the top 3. And then, assign bidding prizes to the top 3 bidders.

In my view, everyone wins. So, I’m issuing a public request for suggestions of charities to consider auctioning my 150,000th tweet for. It can also be charitable projects or campaigns, even if they’re not established charities. I would also appreciate if you can reshare, “Like” on Facebook, Pin on Pinterest and +1 on Google Plus so that this campaign goes wide.

Thanks!