Deborah Kay Wants to Build a School and Needs Your Help
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Day 40: Campaign Update

11/19/2015

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40 days ago I launched this Campaign to raise US$25,000 to build a school in Laos.  I gave myself 12 months to raise $25,000. It's been 40 days, and the campaign has raised over $21,000.  We're just $3,625 short of building a school! 

BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE SUPPORTERS, ESPECIALLY THE ANONYMOUS DONORS FROM TWITTER.

The campaign has gone so well that Pencils of Promise have asked if I will partner with them for their holiday special - Season of Promise - where they are committing to build 30 schools over the holiday period. 

I am offering to go to local schools to teach website design, graphic design, social media marketing - all the tactics that have worked for me in driving donations over the December school holidays. 

I think that asking a child "if he's willing to give up his Christmas presents so that a less fortunate child can have a pencil" is a good way to educate them about children that don't have schools to go to and can't read or write. It's also a good test of character and a great way to teach empathy and social responsibility. 

If anyone is interested in being a part of the 'Season of Promise' campaign, please get in touch!

Thanks again for your support!

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Day 30 Campaign Update: The Value of a Tweet

11/11/2015

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It's been exactly a month since I launched this campaign, and almost $14,000 has been raised, thanks to the contributions of 53 generous individuals.  THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN TO ALL THE SUPPORTERS! 

​The rate at which donations are coming in have slowed down, but I'm still getting at least one donation a day which I am very grateful for. Based on the latest data, the projected  date for achieving my campaign target has been moved back 2 days to 30 November 2015.
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The value of a Tweet

One of the amazing things that I've noticed is an increase in the number of anonymous donations after I posted my one-size-fits-all hack on Twitter as well as on Medium.  Twitter is the only social media channel that I am actively using to promote my campaign to the public (my Facebook profile is limited to friends only and my Facebook page is also only followed by friends.)  On hindsight, I should have appended UTM trackers to the Medium post to see how many of them ended up on this website, but unfortunately, I didn't so we'll just have to lump Twitter and Medium together (largely the same anyway but it would have been nice to know if Medium helped generate more donations).

(If you are one of the anonymous donors and disagree with this assumption, feel free to correct me in the comments below.) ​


This means that almost 10% of my donations have come from Twitter.

The average donor from Twitter for @debbiediscovers  is worth $147
​ - Tweet This: 
http://deb.bi/ValueofaDonor-Tweet-This
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Based on the number of tweets my post generated (15 tweets from the website and 15 retweets from Twitter), the value of my Tweet is $40.67.  Compared to recent research done by Klear, "How much is a Tweet worth for a Kickstarter Campaign" where they estimated the value of a tweet to be $14.30, ​the value of a tweet for my campaign is 2.8X higher.
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Each @debbiediscovers tweet can potentially add $40 to your fundraising campaign - Tweet this: http://deb.bi/AddsValue-Tweet-This
(Note: This is not a pure apples-to-apples comparison; there are slight differences in methodology, Klear takes total amount raised by the Kickstarter campaign  divided by number of mentions, and to level the playing field for campaigns that have been running for different lengths of time, they  normalised the value of the tweet by dividing it by how long the tweet has been live for. I exclude all other donations (because I know exactly where they came from, be it a direct ask or from my Facebook account), and only include anonymous donations that are most likely to be from Twitter. I also don't normalise it.)
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Special shoutout to Andrew Coppin from Sydney, Australia, who was my 8th donor (lucky 888 Mr Coppin!) and my first Twitter donor.

Who exactly are my Twitter followers?

 As of 11 Nov 2015, my 2,942 Twitter followers are:
  • 2x more likely to have a  net worth of >$1M 
  • 2X more likely to have gone to grad school
  • 2X more likely to have a home value greater than $500,000
I suspect that a significant portion of my followers are Entrepreneurs, Investors, VCs, Angel Investors, Startup Tweeps
  • If you look at average household income, there is only a 5% difference between my followers and all of Twitter for the highest income category
  • My guess is that comparative Twitter audience insights are based on US data only
  • Most of my US followers are Silicon Valley Startup / Entrepreneur / VC / Investor tweeps (inferred using Wireless Carrier AT&T, interests, lifestyle)
  • This is in line with  a bio search using Social Rank and Followerwonk, though i can't estimate the total number
  • For those category of Tweeps, net worth comes from stocks or carry and not from average household income
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If you are a US marketer, the amount of data that you can derive from Twitter audience insights is pretty amazing

Compared to the overall Twitter community, my followers are also: 
  • 20% more likely to buy premium brands
  • 13% more likely to lead natural living + fresh and healthy lifestyles (I bet they're from California!)
  • 8% more likely to be Kosher (New Yorkers!)
  • 6% more likely to be vegetarian and 4% more likely to be dairy free (OK that's smells like LA)
  • Most of them don't do mundane things like buy eggs or milk and it appears that they're less likely to buy soap either (does shower-gel count? Who uses soap??)
  • But I'm very proud to report that my followers are likely to have good teeth, as they have  have excellent oral hygiene habits (17% more likely to buy oral care).  You can tweet this.: http://deb.bi/FollowerInsights-Tweet-This 
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But how accurate is Twitter Audience Insights? 

1. Country data from Twitter is not accurate: it does not tie in with Regional Data or Wireless Carrier data
  • Many people do not report their location
  • I've noticed on a number of occasions that the default Twitter settings for location and time zone  are wrong (yes I have  11 Twitter accounts, 8 of which I actively use for experiments, clearer social listening... e.g. @littlecodersSG is the one I use to track what's happening with Kids Coding around the world; @giftedSGP is one I use to listen to gtchats or edtech chats)

I've also noticed substantial discrepancies between what Twitter, SocialBro and Klear report.  For USA followers:
  • Twitter reports 40% 
  • Social Bro reports 30%
  • Klear reports 56%

2. My initial hypothesis was that looking at Twitter's Audience Insights on Wireless Carriers should give you a more accurate picture: Based on that (see Chart below):
  • 63% of my Twitter followers use US cell phones  (versus the 40% reported in the first column, Country) 
  • 19% use UK mobile phones versus the 10% reported in Country
  • 12% use SG mobile phones versus the 7% reported in Country
  • 5% use Airtel which is India
(BTW no one uses the term "Cell Phone" in UK or Singapore, not sure about Australia though, anyone care to comment?)

3. If you add it up, that's 99% of my followers which does not make sense either
  • Could be that Twitter counts anyone under the T-Mobile Group or the Singtel Group under Wireless Carriers.  I asked Twitter but no response - anyone know the answer?

4. Even something as basic as Gender has substantial differences:
  • Twitter reports 75% Male vs 25% Female
  • SocialBro reports 67% Male vs 33% Female (leaving out Unknowns)
  • Klear reports 59% vs 41% Female 

(BTW, Klear- care to give me a free upgrade or a View of my Demographics to add to this analysis?) :)
These differences are pretty substantial, which leads me to question the effectiveness of geo-targeting (or any kind of targeting) using Twitter Ads, especially for non-US advertisers. 

Twitter follower growth​

My latest follower count is 2,942.  Not bad for someone who's only been on Twitter for 6 months. I gained my first 1,000 in 2 weeks and the last 1,000 in the last 2 weeks. The period in the middle was when I was experimenting with techniques that didn't work. 

Using SocialBro's Benchmarking tool (which ROCKS!), compared to Social Media and Marketing Tweeps who I assume are the most sophisticated Twitter users, I'm listed 206 times, vs an average of 9 and I have a much higher growth trajectory. :)

Using Followerwonk's Comparison of Users tool, you can see that there's almost no overlap in my 3 user accounts. If you add up all my Twitter accounts, I have a total unique Twitter audience size of 4,809. And you should see my latest one which has been listed over 500 times. :p)

Wanna know my secrets? 

Make a donation and I'll reveal as much as your donation is worth.. LOL! (And don't bring the Twitter average down :p)

GO TO DONATE PAGE


P.S. For the Tweeps that have read this already (and thanks for Clicking to Tweet!), I've updated the click links. After painstakingly adding links to every single individual component of my Tweet This graphic on Canva, I realised that it doesn't work when pasted into Weebly's blog, though I have added a link to the graphic so you can click on that. 

Also Add SumoMe's Share Image Plugin would love comments on whether you like it or not

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Campaign Statistics

11/1/2015

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I launched this campaign 20 days ago and total funds raised to date = $10,665. Almost at the half way mark!  BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE SUPPORTERS!!

Those of you that know me well will know that I am a total data-geek.  Give me a database and I can make pivot tables all day. So I've been playing around with various data visualisation tools to try to see if we can display any of my data findings in an online, interactive way: 
  • Plot.ly 
  • Tableau
  • PowerBI
  • Slicers with Excel 

PowerBI is very cool but it does not let you publish online. I could not upload my Excel with slicers either, so unfortunately this update is going to be old school style. it.
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Some interesting and /or amusing facts about my campaign:
  • I have extremely, extremely generous friends, with the average donation at $200. (Please note that this is due to a number of very large donations, which are not going to continue, so I will still need everyone's support and even a $5 / $10 donation will mean a lot to me and my campaign)
  • I have more women donors than men, though the men donate 1.5x more than the women
  • Most donations come from social friends that are not classmates or colleagues 
  • Even classifying "friends" was extremely difficult as I'm friends with all of them (social, school and work) so lumping them into one group doesn't help generate deeper insights
  • Splitting them up into discrete groups was also difficult - most of my friends fit in nicely into either school or work (e.g. Cambridge & Bain)  or one school + work but there was one pesky little friend who spanned across multiple school categories (Cambridge, Wharton and Bain) which makes it more tedious to cut without double counting
  • Most of my donors from work are from Bain (not surprising, I spent 8 years there)
  • Bain women donate 2x more than Bain men 
  • The average Partners Capital donation is more than 3X the average Bain donation (though that's an outlier - due to one very generous donor)
  • I have 3X more Wharton donors than Cambridge ones, though the average Cambridge donation is 5X larger (though this is also an outlier, due to an extremely generous Cambridge friend) 
  • My 47 donors are very international: they were born in 11 countries but live in 15 different cities. At least 10% of them have dual passports. 44% are currently living in a different city from where they were born (66% have done so at some point) and 14% live in multiple cities so it's almost impossible to cut the data by geography (though I am looking into mapping visualisation software)
  • Social media has been surprisingly effective especially Twitter. One of my first donor was a venture capitalist from Sydney, Andrew Coppin who very generously donated $240. The other anonymous donations are 90% likely to come from Twitter as that is the only channel where I am actively promoting this campaign (my Facebook Page is targeted at my Facebook friends, and I don't allow strangers to follow my profile, though they can access my fundraising page). This means that the average Twitter donation is worth $100

Other  interesting insights that I gathered from research that I did:

1. Men donate competitively - if they see large donations by other men, they tend to donate more
2. This amount increases if the fundraiser is an attractive woman
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Based on a projected trendline, I will hit my target by 18 November 2015, which is crazy and beyond my wildest dreams. I am now working with Pencils of Promise to set up their Singapore charter to get more organisations and individuals to launch campaigns for them. Please let me know if you or your company would be interested in launching a campaign too!  

Once again, thank you to all my supporters and all my FUTURE supporters ;)  

​Debbie 

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    DEBORAH KAY

    This is a simple blog to track my fundraising activities and to keep family, friends and supporters updated on my progress.

    This is also to share best practices in fundraising and the hacks I invented to manage the campaign.

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