Fans of Facebook Choose Deserving Charities

A US retailing giant is urging the online community to use the social networking tool Facebook to help it decide how much money goes to a list of its favourite charities.

The US Target chain, which gives $3US million a week to support charities across the country launched a campaign called Bullseye Gives, a two-week-long giving campaign on its Facebook Page where people were asked to make a powerful choice and decide how 10 national charities should receive a portion of Target’s $3 million in weekly charitable giving.

The charities include:
· American Red Cross
· Breast Cancer Research Foundation
· Feeding America
· HandsOn Network/Points of Light Institute
· Kids In Need Foundation
· Operation Gratitude
· Parent Teacher Association
· National Park Foundation
· St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®
· The Salvation Army

The percentage of votes per charitable organisation correlated to the charities’ portion of the $3 million. All votes and dollars allocated were updated in real time on the Target Facebook Page at facebook.com/target throughout the course of the contest.

Site visitors were allowed to vote once per day, every day, throughout the contest. The final charitable donation allocations per charity were then tallied. With more than 300,000 facebook-hits so far the campaign is certain to create a lot of interest in charitable giving via a new audience.

As an additional service through Bullseye Gives, Target also helped to connect voters with service and volunteer opportunities in their local communities.

Laysha Ward, president of community relations at Target says Bullseye Gives is an incredible opportunity to continue to engage Target guests and the online community in a unique way to help raise awareness of the important work these deserving charities do and increase volunteerism .

Since 1946, Target has given 5 percent of the company’s income to support education, social services, the arts, and volunteerism.