Every now and then, I will share a quick anecdote that can serve as a reminder to all of you wonderful fundraisers out there why you should be taking part in the ever-expanding community of fundraising and non-profit professionals on Twitter. Here’s my first one, so please do enjoy . . .
When I first joined Twitter almost two years ago, I really had no idea that other fundraisers were using it, let alone how they were making use of it. Now I never imagined that I could end up using Twitter as a source of prospect research, but it turns out that I did earlier this year. While checking the latest tweets of the day, I stumbled upon a link to an article from Bloomberg Markets magazine entitled “Hidden Billionaires: Eight Really Rich People You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.” Now if you know me (which some of you dear readers do, if only through this blog, LinkedIn and/or Twitter), you know that I see this sort of list as a bit of a challenge; when I see things like this, I always check the names on the off chance that someone is in our alumni database or is perhaps related to someone who is. Occasionally I find a connection and this was one of those great times — it turns out that one of the billionaires on this list is married to an I-House alumnus. Now I can say with great certainty that there is very little possibility that I would have stumbled upon this information at a later date, because we did not even know that this alumnus was married.
I say all of this to strongly encourage you to join Twitter, to start following your fellow fundraising & non-profit professionals (along with those news sources that interest you), and to join this dynamic community! And when you join, be sure to tweet me @dan_blakemore.