Sometimes the hubbub and buzz over a new site causes an entire system to crash due to overwhelming excitement. And yesterday was one of those times as Jumo made its online debut. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, the technical genius who helped Barack Obama develop his winning online presidential campaign, is the brains behind Jumo. The site marries social media, nonprofit fundraising and the spirit of giving. But how does Jumo work and will it prove to be a powerful marketing tool for nonprofits and charitable organizations?
Given Hughes’ roots, Jumo operates a lot like Facebook. Jumo users receive newsfeeds with the usual pictures, comments and links from their friends and favorite charitable organizations. When users initially sign up, they are encouraged to pick causes and issues they care the most about. Every issue includes pages for corresponding charities and projects. To keep it legit, charities on Jumo have to be registered with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in order to accept contributions from users. Naturally, Jumo is hoping to become the one-stop for nonprofits and social media. Therefore the site makes transferring information from Facebook and Twitter super easy.
Hughes is definitely on to something here. By allowing Jumo to be specifically designated for charitable causes and nonprofit organizations, marketers can target their supporters directly without wading through a bunch of commercial muck. If the site stays true to its simple and effective mission statement, there is no reason why Jumo can’t be mixed in with our social media marketing strategies for nonprofit clients. The prospect is clearly exciting to thousands of people and organizations dying to find new ways to raise money for their well-meaning causes. Once Jumo is equipped to deal with the stampede of users, we’ll have a better idea on the impact it could make.
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