Briefings One Good Idea: Picture More Donors

“We have an online community already established, and what we did was when this campaign first started, we went out to people with an action, and over 96,000 took an action to support Ethiopian coffee farmers. And so from that list of the people who took actions, we kept going back to them, keeping them updated and keeping them engaged,” Oxfam America Press Officer Helen Dasilva says.

The initial action was a fax. Then the organization asked people who sent faxes to call. Supporters who called got a request to go into a store.

Looking for a fun way to engage ongoing supporters of the campaign, Oxfam America came up with a Starbucks Flickr petition that encouraged supporters to upload photos of themselves with a sign reading, “I support Ethiopian coffee farmers” or their version of that message. (See photo below.) As of this writing, 580 photos have been uploaded to Flickr for the campaign.

“The fact that people have to make the sign, take the picture, post it online; it’s quite a few steps, and to get a supporter to go through those steps to a conclusion is a pretty exciting accomplishment,” Dasilva says.

The Flickr campaign proved to be a great — and different — way to engage advocates and drive traffic to Oxfam America’s site.

“One of the things that we took advantage of in this instance is that with Flickr, when you post photos you have the opportunity to provide links with each photo, so it provides you with an opportunity for people to click back to your Web site,” she says. “In this case, we have them click back to our Starbucks page, so it gave them all the information on the campaign and it gives them all the updates.”