A couple of days ago I posted Social Net Fundraising – All Hype? triggered by a Washington Post article. The Post more or less said that Facebook was failing as a fundraising  tool or venue.

While I think the Post has it essentially right, today I read a powerful countervailing piece on Engage: Moms by Kristi Faulkner, a marketer focused on marketing to women.

Called The New Connectedness, it tells the story of Maddie Spohr, a toddler who tragically died recently of a respiratory virus. Her mom happened to be a Twitter user, and what began as a casual mention of a sick daughter with a cough became over a few days a recounting of the little girl’s worsening illness and then death.

The unfolding of these events was followed by 3,500 Twitter users. Within two days of Maddie’s death, $30,000 was donated by these followers to a March of Dimes account one of them set up in the child’s name. And 35 teams had been formed to participate in the charity’s annual drive.

Compare this to the Post report that fewer than 50 of the 179,000 groups in Facebook’s Causes program have raised $10,000.

What’s the difference between the two?

I think Kristi Faulkner nails it in her piece:

"Social media is the uber-gathering space — better than a beauty shop, supermarket, diner, church, pub, firehouse, school, and town square rolled into one. The scale of Facebook or Twitter is global. Yet, when a human story touches our hearts, we react as intently as we would to a crisis in our own neighborhood …

As marketers, we seek to quantify the power and penetration of nascent social platforms. What percentage of the target audience is engaged in Twitter? How many women 34-55 are on Facebook? How many eyeballs does this blog get compared to that one? And for heaven sakes, what’s our ROI?

Old-school brand engagement metrics are inadequate to frame the essence of a technology-powered global neighborhood. Social media has turned a faceless audience back into individuals, and restored the emotional connectedness of which one-way media robbed us. It doesn’t feel odd to think of our Twitter followers as neighbors. We know them, we see them around. Sometimes we chat, sometimes not. But when a girlfriend is in need, we are there. In mass."

What Twitter delivered in the case of Maddie Spohr was a genuine community. In this case, one that formed spontaneously, quickly, emotionally, authentically. And once formed, it reacted instantly when the tragic ending came.

No moderators. No instructors.

How more distant could that be from slapping an organization’s profile on Facebook and trolling for "friends"?!

Tom