Another reason why I love the blogosphere...

Our ability to do good works is greatly amplified.

I blogged a few days ago about an interesting experiment that Shel Israel was conducting involving using Facebook Flyers to auction off 2 hours of his time. In return, Shel agreed to donate half of the winning bid to the charity Room to Read.

Shel found that while Facebook Flyers failed him, his community of readers rallied to the cause. He also has changed the terms to give all the money to Room to Read:

So here's what I'm going to do. Rob, you are locked in at $500. Send me the check and I will match it and send it on to RoomtoRead. Wayne, you are high bidder right now at $450. If you win, I will not match you, but will forward you donation to RoomtoRead. That will give them nearly $1500, enough to build about half a library in Sri Lanka or to educate a few Cambodian girls for more than an entire year. Each year of learning increases family income by over 10%.

Room to Read founder John Wood found Shel's post, and added this in the comments:

Hello from San Francisco. Through the miracle of Google Media Alerts, I saw this exchange and wanted to thank everyone for their generous support of Room to Read. We are trying to help millions of kids across the developing world to break the cycle of poverty through the power of education, and your support will get us closer to our long-term goal. All the best!

John Wood
Founder and CEO
Room to Read
www.roomtoread.org
jwood@roomtoread.org

If you would like to place a bid, leave a comment to this post. The deadline is 12 a.m. PST the 15th. So you have about 3 and a half more hours from the time this post goes live. The current high bid for 2 hours of consulting time with a true social media expert is $450. That's a bargain folks.

BTW Rob adds this in the comments:

"@Shel - Thanks. I'll personally donate $200 dollars to Roomtoread outside of this auction. I'll also go through my book collection and promise to donate (and ship) a minimum of 50 paperback books to Roomtoread.

Thanks for doing this Shel - it was very cool, and the benefits to the kids can't even start to be measured.

Rob"

So unless my Alabama math is failing me, Room to Read is set to get at least $1,650 plus 50 paperback books. All because one blogger left one post about helping a worthy charity, and the community ran with it.

Another example of The Power of Being Second.

Tags:The Viral Garden, Marketing

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