Teens, Texting and Ten Dollars: A Volunteer Project for Today
How can texting a friend raise significant funds to help patients and families who are battling brain tumors? The answer is simple for Judy Zocchi and Olivia Questore, the two driving forces behind “Text for 10,” a unique fundraising event to benefit Monmouth Medical Center’s Davis S. Zocchi Brain Tumor Center in Long Beach, New Jersey.
In 2007, Zocchi had just learned to text. Questore, like all teens and tweens today, could nimbly text like the best of them. And both shared the experience of losing a loved one to a brain tumor. So Zocchi, the CEO of a multi-media company, and Questore, then a middle school student, created an innovative fundraiser – one that has been repeated every year since.
e-Volunteerism Senior Editor Margaret O. Kirk interviews both Zocchi and Questore for this story, which presents their creative, replicable idea and probes the volunteer management challenges that both faced in this inter-generational, modern media effort.
Susan Ellis, Editor, e-Volunteerism
Fri, 07/01/2011Teens and texting for charitable causes is gaining traction. The New York Times just profiled the organization Do Something and its decision to go mobile in reaching out to teen volunteers. "No longer could it rely on its Web site to motivate young people to take part in social activism. Instead, it would rely on mobile technology ... The goal is to use mobile technology to sign up 3.8 million members by 2014, up from 1.2 million in 2010 who were involved in at least one of the more than 50 "campaigns" Do Something runs each year." Read the full article at: http://nyti.ms/l0CagY.