{"id":4026,"date":"2012-09-08T13:53:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-08T20:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/?p=4026"},"modified":"2012-09-08T17:50:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-09T00:50:20","slug":"hopemobs-generous-strangers-support-stories-of-need-through-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/hopemobs-generous-strangers-support-stories-of-need-through-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"HopeMob’s Generous Strangers Support Stories of Need through Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shaun
Shaun King<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As he created\u00a0HopeMob.org<\/a>, the Internet-based non-profit \u201cwhere generous strangers unite,\u201d techno-humanitarian, Shaun King asked himself: \u201cIf Dr. Martin Luther King were alive today, how would he do things differently — for the same effect?\u201d A 32-year-old graduate of Atlanta\u2019s Morehouse College, Shaun King is a former pastor himself. He had America\u2019s most revered reverend at the center of his thinking as he considered both the stands HopeMob should take and the tools to use to align with Dr. King’s\u00a0teachings and actions.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDr. King helped the oppressed, focusing on people nobody else was helping at the time. He gave his last speech to sanitation workers. A lot has changed since the 1960s. And if he were alive today, he wouldn’t approach things today exactly the same way as he did then — so neither do we. We internalized his principles and imagined what he would do with them in our own millennial context,\u201d says Shaun. “Forty years of technological advancement has made the world a much smaller place. That\u2019s why\u00a0HopeMob\u00a0is about 50 percent domestic and 50 percent international in scope. It\u2019s a natural evolution of the work that great 20th century humanitarians like Dr. King, Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi began.” \u00a0Through their @HOPE<\/a>\u00a0account on Twitter with over 350,000 followers (and counting),\u00a0HopeMob.org tells one story at a time and rallies generous strangers to help people that can\u2019t find help anywhere else.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0funding handicap-accessible facilities<\/a>\u00a0for terminally ill, 6-year-old Haley\u2019s home to helping a mother who was a\u00a0victim of human trafficking in Thailand<\/a>\u00a0become an entrepreneur,\u00a0HopeMob\u00a0is dedicated to making sure that the stories of the voiceless get heard, and get help from HopeMob donors.<\/p>\n

How to lead on the Internet: Lessons from the first \u2018Facebook Pastor\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the first clergy to use Facebook to reach people, Shaun became known as the \u201cFacebook Pastor\u201d after helping coach a suicidal young man who contacted him via the social network back in 2008. A few weeks later, Facebook asked him to become the first pastor to write an official blog for Facebook on how churches could effectively utilize social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy 2008, I was already using social media extensively to communicate the work I was doing. There were only a few hundred thousand people on Twitter at the time,\u201d Shaun explains. His reputation as an online humanitarian began to grow that same year, when he needed to raise $35,000 for the holidays to benefit Frank L. Stanton Elementary School in Atlanta.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe built a simple microsite to raise the money. Though it sounds natural today, five years ago no one was doing that. \u00a0It got picked up by the Today Show<\/a>, and hundreds of publications around the country. We were able to replicate that formula in 2009 to raise a million dollars to aid victims of the 2009 floods in Greater Atlanta. Then in 2010, we launched A Home in Haiti,\u201d an organization Shaun founded with support from actress Eva Longoria to provide shelter for earthquake survivors.\u00a0 That next year Shaun won the Mashable Award for the Most Creative Social Good Campaign<\/a> with his celebrity charity Twitter auction called TwitChange<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By this time, people knew Shaun for building lean, efficient charities that spent every penny they could to directly impact those in need. He began to hear regularly from two types of people: People of means who had grown to trust him to point their available time and resources in the right direction, and people with desperate stories who were falling through the cracks.<\/p>\n

Thus\u00a0in April of 2012, Shaun launched\u00a0HopeMob with a Google-hosted party at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA. Chartered with the purpose of \u00a0sharing the stories of the voiceless with people they would otherwise never encounter: \u201cgenerous strangers\u201d who genuinely wanted to help the less fortunate.<\/p>\n

Who does Shaun King look to lead social media by example?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve taken huge inspiration from Scott Harrison of\u00a0Charity: Water<\/a>, and \u00a0Paull Young,\u00a0the organization\u2019s Director of Digital Engagement,\u201d says Shaun. \u201cThey think like the best brands, and their social media is world-class.\u00a0HopeMob\u00a0has adopted that same posture. We operate much more like a tech startup than a typical charity and try to appeal to people in ways that make sense in 2012.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since launching just a few months ago,\u00a0HopeMob\u00a0has already successfully told and supported nearly 25 stories from all over the world.\u00a0 If you would like to submit a story of a person or cause in need or would like to JOIN THE\u00a0MOB\u00a0and help bring people\u00a0hope, do so today @\u00a0HopeMob.org<\/a>!<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As he created\u00a0HopeMob.org, the Internet-based non-profit \u201cwhere generous strangers unite,\u201d techno-humanitarian, Shaun King asked himself: \u201cIf Dr. Martin Luther King were alive today, how would he do things differently — for the same effect?\u201d A 32-year-old graduate of Atlanta\u2019s Morehouse College, Shaun King is a former pastor himself. He had America\u2019s most revered reverend at … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “HopeMob’s Generous Strangers Support Stories of Need through Social Media”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[134,152,48,61,31,4],"tags":[28,57,65,110,36,37,11,98],"class_list":["post-4026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-case-studies","category-engage-2","category-grab-attention","category-interview","category-nonprofit","category-social-media","tag-engage","tag-fundraising","tag-giving","tag-grab-attention-2","tag-nonprofits","tag-social-media-2","tag-storytelling-2","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BBCq-12W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4026"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4045,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4026\/revisions\/4045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}