Leveraging Embarrassing Photos in a Fundraiser

A couple of months ago my buddy, Steve, pulled off a successful fundraiser for St. Baldrick's Head Shaving event. The St. Baldrick's Foundation hosts a head shaving event where people raise money and at the end they shave their heads. The money raised funds pediatric cancer research.

Instead of his friends donating money for Steve to shave his head he used embarrassing childhood photos. In the 24 hours before the end of the fundraiser Steve published 24 embarrassing pictures of himself on Facebook. His method was simple. He would release one embarrassing photo for every $20.00 that was donated. Using teaser status updates he had captured the Facebook audience and exceeded his fundraising goal. Steve's final amount raised was $2,390 for St. Baldrick's.


During the fundraiser Steve had 626 Facebook friends. Here are some of the pictures and status updates used for his fundraiser.


 "I will keep posting embarrassing photos....if the donations keep coming in! If I make it to $1070 you all get another picture and then again at $20 increments. I can do this all night because I have ALOT of embarrassing pictures."

"Holding strong at $1156....need $10 more.....The Grand Finale picture is amazing!!!"










"Donations have stalled at $1356 and if you want to see more you've got to keep that money rolling in. At 5pm I will hold up to my end of the bargain and post my most hideous picture so stay tuned. In the meantime here's one for you."

"7 days we were able to raise nearly $1500 dollars and $500 of that was raised just in the last 15 hours! You all ran me out of pictures to show!"















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