The Student News Site of North Carolina A&T State University

The A&T Register

The Student News Site of North Carolina A&T State University

The A&T Register

The Student News Site of North Carolina A&T State University

The A&T Register

    How to do social good with social media

    Youtube videos seeking gift donations for children of incarcerated parents, Facebook pages with updates on new charitable initiatives, and Tweets that secure $100,000 pledges from A-list celebrities – this is fundraising in a digital world.

    Recognizing that ringing a bell outside a store, or sending solicitations through snail mail may no longer be the best way to reach an increasingly techno-savvy – and youthful – pool of potential donors, charities are learning to use social media to promote social good.

    Even organizations as venerable as the 40-plus-year-old Prison Fellowship, which strives to help prisoners reconcile with their families and communities, are finding new ways to reach potential donors, and raise funds, through social media. This year, the organization is using Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to spread its message and seek donations for its Angel Tree initiative, which helps prison inmates give their children a Christmas gift.

    “With the holidays rapidly approaching, using social media allows us to really convey to the public the urgency of the needs of these children,” says Mark Earley of Prison Fellowship. “More than 1.7 million American children have parents behind bars. Every time a parent goes to prison, their sentence is also a form of punishment for their children. These kids don’t necessarily understand why their parents are not with them for the holidays. They only want to be with their parents, and to feel their parents’ love, just as any other child would during this special time of year.”

    Children whose parents are serving time struggle with emotions of anger, abandonment, loneliness and despair. At Christmas, a gift from an incarcerated parent can help them realize they are still loved, and that the parent-child connection can survive the separation of imprisonment.

    Angel Tree delivers Christmas gifts to children on behalf of their incarcerated parents. This year, more than 50,000 children need gifts. Since its founding, Angel Tree has helped nearly 2.7 million children.

    Angel Tree founder Mary Kay Beard knows firsthand the toll imprisonment can take on a parent-child relationship. Beard went to prison in the early ’70s for robbery. She spent three Christmases in an Alabama prison for women, where she saw local church groups bring the prisoners gifts of toothpaste and soap. The prisoners would wrap these small gifts and give them to their children when they came to visit at Christmas.

    “Most children wouldn’t think much of such small gifts, but in prison there was such joy on their faces,” Beard says. “It didn’t really matter to them what they got; it was from Mama.”

    After gaining parole, Beard became Prison Fellowship’s first Alabama state director in 1982. And the image of those children receiving such small tokens for Christmas inspired her to organize a program that would help inmates deliver real Christmas gifts to their children. The first Angel Tree was placed in a mall. Prisoners can sign up for the program and Angel Tree team members contact their children’s caretakers to determine what each child would most like for Christmas. Each child’s wish is then written on an angel ornament and placed on the Angel Tree, where shoppers can select a child and fulfill his or her Christmas wish.

    This year, you can support Angel Tree through social media like Facebook. You can “like” Angel Tree through Facebook, and even give a secure gift online on the charity’s official website. A donation of just $11.44 will fund a Christmas toy for a child. And, thanks to a matching grant from a friend of the ministry, one contribution will provide toys for two children.

    You can learn more about Angel Tree, or donate today, at www.angeltree.org/social. Or follow the initiative on twitter @prisonfellowshp.