Christopher Thorpe and Four Walks in Austria

By alex on Monday, November 9th, 2009 in Inspiration for fundraisers

It’s probably a bit of an understatement to describe social media consultant Christopher Thorpe as an “early adopter”. Chris recently returned from a four-day walking holiday in Austria during which he was raising money for the Child’s i Foundation, “lifestreaming” all the way. That is, Chris was using new technology - including an application he wrote himself - to update his donors with photos, tweets and his GPS location. You can view the results on Chris’s blog here.

Now, you might not have Chris’s technical expertise, but his story is still a great example of how you can use new technology like mobile phones with Internet connectivity to provide your donors with a more interactive fundraising process.

We asked Chris to give us the benefit of his experience.

JustGiving: What inspired you to do four walks in Austria for charity?

Christopher Thorpe: I really needed a holiday and so started planning one, but I’d also been deeply affected by some of the themes of the Activate Summit which I’d helped to set up at The Guardian. The summit was all about the deep societal impact that technology can have if it’s done well. However, the summit also had discussions about the challenges we must face up to such as disease, poverty, oppression and climate change. It struck me that there were many people in the world who would never know what a holiday was, so I wanted to do something good with my time as well as relaxing.

JG: Could you explain a bit about the technology you used on your walks to let people track your event from your website? What are some of the gadgets you used?

CT: I’ve got a couple of mobile phones which I was using for this. One is an Android phone for which I wrote a really simple application that sent my GPS location to a service I’d written, which in turn powered a live-updating Google map. I also used an iPhone 3GS to send and receive Twitter messages, and to send geotagged photos, and to collect GPS trails  - although it crashed as I was walking for so long! I also had Nike+ to give me an idea of how fast, slow, far I was going. The live map, tweets and photos were all pulled into the website as they were uploaded so people could see exactly what I was doing, seeing and feeling. I also used one of the JustGiving widgets so people could see my fundraising progress.

JG: Was it difficult finding signal strength to transmit your location data while you were on the walks? How often were you able to update your location?

CT: Signal strength actually wasn’t too bad. Getting a GPS fix was sometimes a bit tricky, especially in the shadow of some of the mountains, but on most of the walks I could update about once every ten minutes. It was reasonably well automated, but the software I wrote for the Android (in about 3 hours) was a bit crash-prone! I’ve now bought a book and will write it properly this time for the next fun project.

JG: Can you tell us a bit about Child’s I and why you chose to fundraise for them?

CT: They’re a totally wonderful charity for a many reasons. First of all, what they’re trying to do, to build a transitional babies home in Uganda is amazingly worthwhile. In Uganda violence, poverty and HIV/AIDS causes hundreds of babies to be dumped by their desperate mothers. As a father of a young son I just can’t sit still and not do something to help better the chances for these children. Second, I love Child’s I for being powered by volunteers. They’re a “crowdsourced” charity essentially. This keeps their costs and overheads very low which means they can do more with every pound you raise. They’re also great believers in the power of their supporters to be the charity’s voice rather than spending money on advertising. Finally, I love the way they’re using blogs, video, Twitter, Facebook and amazing bits of home grown technology like their totally amazing Buy A Brick website to raise awareness, build community and momentum, and raise money.

JG: Do you think using technology has helped you to raise more money?

CT: I think it did. I’d decided to do the walks a while ago and do them for charity, but due to a hectic work schedule I hadn’t had time to ask for sponsorship or build any of the tech until the week that I left for Austria. Many people sponsored from seeing what was going on live on the site and from me updating on Facebook and Twitter. It think it also raised awareness of the charity, which is important as it brings more potential helpers and donors into contact with the cause.

JG: If JustGiving could implement one piece of cool fundraising technology what would it be?

CT: I think making things a bit more real-time and bidirectional. There is a magical time when you are actually doing the sponsored event, where your supporters can send you messages of support and you can tell them exactly what you’re doing, either through sharing your location or by sending updates. I gained so much from talking to my supporters many miles away. Because I was sending messages and they were replying, it felt like they were with me when I needed them most.

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