Foursquare, Cause Marketing Find Home with Housing Charity

Jul 26, 2011 9:00 AM ET

Selfish Giving Blog by Joe Waters

I love this cause marketing promotion from a UK housing charity that brings together eight Edinburgh thrift shops with the leading location-based service, Foursquare.

It capitalizes on a physical location. Shelter Scotland helps people with all sorts of housing problems from homelessness to poor living conditions. 16 percent of Shelter’s annual donations come from its two dozen thrift shops throughout Scotland. Not all nonprofits are destinations for shoppers or visitors. But the ones that are should follow Shelter’s lead and tap Foursquare, which just isn’t for nonprofits that are cultural institutions and museums. What about thrift-store giant Goodwill or a busy historical attraction like the Freedom Trail in Boston? Foursquare should be part of their [cause] marketing too.

Shelter jumped in with both feet. They launched the program in eight stores to start and created a great video to educate supporters about the campaign and how to use Foursquare. Shelter isn’t assuming anything. They’re building a Foursquare promotion one user at a time and are not giving people a reason to say no (e.g. “I’ve never heard of Foursquare.” “I don’t know how to use it.”).

Continue Reading FOURSQUARE, CAUSE MARKETING FIND HOME WITH HOUSING CHARITY